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Altare is ten when he lets out a loud sneeze that echoes through their whole house. He stares at the blank ceiling with bleary eyes, and it takes all his energy as he tries to fight the urge to just get out of bed and play video games while he’s alone recovering.
Sooner or later he gives in to the temptation of a good game so he silently creeps out of bed to fish out his Game Boy. As soon as he boots it up to play the new Pokemon game his sister got him for his birthday, a thought crosses his mind.
Well, if I’m sick then they’re sick too.
He wills himself away from the game and ultimately decides to hang around in bed and rest more—no point in making them even more sick at this point. It’d be too selfish of him to just play games all day and make his fever worse. What if they don’t have any games to play? That’d be super boring for them.
So who’s they, you ask? His soulmate of course.
His mother always told him that soulmates would share the same sickness and that no matter how healthy you are, you will always get sick once your pair is sick. He remembers the time she told the story of how she first caught a cold the day after his father offered her his umbrella and ran through the rain to get home instead of sharing an umbrella with her. They got sick with the same symptoms at the same time, and they just knew they were soulmates. She always tells the story in an irritated tone, but he can hear the underlying fondness in her voice when she says, “that idiot just ran home thinking that he wouldn’t get sick!”. Altare half-listens the second, third, and fourth time around; but he remembers the small smile she has on her face when she finally finishes reminiscing.
The door creaks open and his mom smiles at him and pats his head seeing that he chose to rest. Altare does his best to try and fall asleep when she tucks him in and places a glass of water on a nearby table.
“Hey bud, I’m surprised to see you in bed and not all over that machine you like so much.”
“Mom it’s called a Game Boy-“
“Yeah sure- this is why I leave these things to your sister.”
“-and my soulmate might be even more sick than me.”
His mother raises a brow at him, trying to decipher who kidnapped her son and replaced him with a responsible kid. She starts constructing a jab at him in her head but she bites back seeing in his bright green eyes that he’s genuine. She decides on ruffling his hair a bit before praising him.
“Oh look at you being all responsible! Your soulmate would be lucky to have you.”, she coos at him. He beams at her because of the praise directed at him.
He sure hopes they do because he doesn’t give up playing video games just for anybody. He secretly hopes his soulmate is pretty and likes to play videogames too so they could have fun playing them together someday when they meet. At that point, would he like them? Would they like him? When will he meet them? A billion thoughts race through his head about his soulmate- a lot of his peers found their pair easily because they were near proximity or just someone from their class, but why can’t he?
His mother catches him frowning and she makes a show of wiping the creases on his head and she softly asks him, “Sweetie what’s wrong? Something on your mind?”.
Altare snaps out of his train of thought and he just shrugs, “Mom… what if- I.. what if my soulmate likes someone else? What if I like someone else? I don’t know what I’ll do if they hate me…”
His mom smooths out the damp towel on his forehead and she just replies as simply as she could to a ten-year old.
“Oh sweetie… don’t stress about it too much, soulmates were just born to love each other even though it doesn’t start out that way.”
Altare’s brain doesn’t come up with anything to respond with except the word, “Cool.”
-/-
Altare is 20 when he meets Magni Dezmond in college, and maybe Altare is just a little bit in love with the senior.
I mean, who can’t love Magni Dezmond.
They’re in some classes together since they have the same course- just different years. Altare could talk to you about his “tiny” crush endlessly- the way that he has an amazing laugh, how his presence commands the whole room, he’s straight to the point and maybe just a little bit too blunt, but he admires his honesty and idolizes the way he gives his all in everything he does.
Altare thinks that soulmates would be damned if he could just date him. Just so happens that the stars have aligned so that they’re in the same groups for a few projects, and Dezmond likes his work ethic since a lot of freeloaders with too much dead weight end up with them. During these times it’s just the two of them in the dark of the library trying to come up with some way to bridge the gaps of unfinished work that the others left them.
“How’re you holding up there Tartar?”
‘Tartar’, a nickname assigned to him by the senior. They’ve been spending a lot more time together that they formed this more or less- a type of friendship built on camaraderie since their group mates ditched them. It’s goofy as hell but he’ll take anything from him because while he doesn’t want to admit it, he’s head over heels for him.
A fucking simp.
He looks up from the stack of papers and his laptop to look at Dezmond from across him. As he sets his eyes on him, he desperately tries to shake away thoughts of how his hair catches the moonlight filtering through the library windows in a dreamlike way, and how the glow of the laptop screen light makes him look soft.
“Just a bit stuck in this part…”, he gestures vaguely toward a page with graphs clumped up together. It’s too much of a mess to decipher and actually understand, considering he’s exhausted since his finals are coming up.
“Oh can I see?”
“Yeah sure! Let me just-”
He starts to move his book towards him but apparently Dezmond is faster, and he ends up just mere inches away from his face. Altare’s cheeks turn red upon realizing their close proximity, but he clears his throat and points to a specific number to direct the older’s attention away from him and onto the book.
Luckily, it works wonders because Dezmond settles comfortably on a chair beside Altare instead of all up in his face so close that he could smell his cologne (he denies leaning closer to get a better whiff of it).
“Your cologne smells good.”, He says absentmindedly.
He only realizes what just came out of his mouth when Dezmond pauses to look at him. Before he can eat his words the senior laughs lightheartedly and Altare feels himself blush out of embarrassment and he’s praying to every god out there that it doesn’t show despite his face feeling like it was on fire., “Well aren’t you a cute one~. I don’t actually wear any, but thanks Tartar.”
Dezmond goes back to teaching him, and while he should probably take advantage of the fact that a senior knows more about the topic than him, and he actually was struggling with it- all his brain processes was how his voice was soothing to his ears, and the breaths he took in between sentences were something that stirred up his heart like crazy.
“So that’s it! Did you get that?”
He doesn’t have the courage to tell him he hasn’t listened since the beginning because he was too enamored by the older.
“I… I’m uh-”
“Well, we can always go over it again if you don’t understand it. Besides you-”
Oh god he’s so pretty.
“I like you Dez.”, he blurts out.
The senior shoots him a questioning look and Altare can feel his heart at his throat like it’s about to jump out of his mouth in pure fear that he ruined everything good between them.
He’s going to hate me I’m so fucke-
A laugh echoes through the mostly empty library and for a moment he feels at ease, up until the next words in their conversation come to stab him with disappointment.
“Pfft, of course you do kid. Who doesn’t? You don’t need to flatter little old me, you’ve already got my full attention-”
“Yeah but-”
Dezmond pushes a pointer finger to his lips to silence him, “Nu-uh. I’m already teaching you about this stupid subject already, it’s the least that I could do for a friend.”
Friend.
Altare offers him a weary smile hoping that the dim light could hide his disappointment.
It’s always been like that.
Over the past months he has been doing his best to woo him with everything he’s got but the senior always takes it as a joke or something that friends do. He never takes him seriously and he just waves it off, but he keeps on trying because he just believes that someday he'll get him to see that he’s not just a silly little kid with a crush, and that he’s actually serious about him.
Then he hits a breakthrough.
One time he caught a light cold after staying out in the snow waiting for the bus for far too long since he missed his ride, and the next day he finds the senior sniffling just like him. Now, he doesn't want to jump and bombard the older with questions so he waits and observes every chance he gets sick without fail, if it would affect him. Just when he thought he had it down and was very sure Dezmond was his soulmate-
He finds out that he started dating someone else.
It happened sometime around the end of the school year. He sees Dezmond holding hands with someone from his year, he recognizes them as his assistant and it twists Altare’s gut in many different ways- none of them good. The butterflies that once flooded his stomach felt like weights upon weights that were too heavy to bear. After weeks of mulling over his loss and how he’d misjudged the situation, and how he should have accepted the fact that he’s just a kid in his eyes instead of daydreaming of the day he’ll come to like him. Back in his bed during winter break at his home, he decides to bury his feelings deep down and hide them away. In the first place, Dezmond never recognized them in the first place.
He wasn’t his soulmate. Dezmond had a different pair.
“Soulmates were just born to love each other” my ass.
-/-
It’s the present day. Altare is over soulmates and over Magni Dezmond.
At least he hopes he is because the job he got was part of a unit under his supervision. What were the odds that merely being in the same department in college with him would lead him here? He’s pretty sure in his past life he was some adventurer or something, always throwing himself in the way of danger.
After the senior graduated, Altare dismissed it as a fleeting thing that he would forget and laugh about sometime along the road of life. Then he graduated and Altare is just confident that he could just pretend it never happened.
Apparently, pretending his feelings were a lie is a difficult task considering that not only would he have to deal with Dezmond as his supervisor, he would also have to accept the fact that the assigned employee to guide him throughout the first month was him as well, seeing as the office was short on staff for the quarter.
“Regis Altare… You’re that freshman kid in my group in Economics, right?”
Along with numerous general subjects and Accounting- yes.
He simply nods his head alongside replying with a curt, “Yes.”, hoping that that would suffice because he might just burst like a bubble if he had to interact with him more than that- he needs time to collect his thoughts.
“You haven’t grown taller since the last time I saw you.”
“Hey!”
He can feel his supervisor smirk behind his application papers, “Or perhaps you did, and I just grew taller?”
Altare’s pride won’t let him back down, so he tries to subtly stand even straighter, “I’m at least 3 inches taller than before.”
“Sure Tartar.”, Dezmond puts down the papers and he offers him a teasing, but genuine smile.
That was a nickname he hadn’t heard in years.
“Whatever, Dez.”, he smiles back, for real this time.
Just like that they’re back to normal.
By some cruel fate, he feels like he’s a freshman in college- working with his crush again. As much as Altare could, he buried thoughts related to Magni Dezmond’s eyes, his voice, his sassy comments, his friendly banter, his everything, because his heart can’t take another hit after what happened previously. He was probably still dating that assistant of his back then so that made him even more adamant on staying focused.
Altare was doing fine for the first weeks of the month until the unit decided to throw his welcome party.
While the party overall was great, it all started going downhill fast as it ended. Too many passed out drunks lining the couches in the private room, random fluids on the floor, and the others who were awake were busy fighting over the karaoke machine. It came to a point where his entire unit (and other people from other departments) had caused such a ruckus that they all had to be escorted out since they were disrupting other individuals.
Once the rest of the staff in his unit start to leave, Altare starts feeling absolutely blasted- like he drank at least 5 shots of vodka. He rushes to the restaurant washroom to kneel over the toilet bowl, trying his best to keep his guts in check. Surprisingly it works in his favor, but he feels queasy, and his vision is spinning. He rethinks back to everything he ate and drank at the party, and he is hundred percent sure he did not consume anything that would upset his stomach to death. By the time he composes himself in the washroom, it’s already half past midnight but luckily before he could call the sidewalk his new bed, he manages to get in a cab home.
The next morning, he wakes up sick and it’s not even the second month into this new job, just his luck. He doesn’t want to disappoint his coworkers, so he drags himself to work even though the feeling of death feels closer each time he takes a step.
He arrives with little trouble aside from the constant headache and stomachache, so he starts looking for Dezmond. He walks up to Hakka since he’s always the earliest to work, so he might have seen where he is.
“Hey Hakka, I- do you know where Magni is? He said to meet him before lunch so he could brief me on the latest project, but I haven’t seen him at all ever since I got here.”
“Have you checked your phone?”
Hakka makes a questioning face at him like he should’ve known something, but he spares Altare the question and instead shows him their section group chat. It’s a picture of his cubicle seatmate, Axel- dragging Dezmond away from the drinks and towards the toilet. Hakka swipes across a few more pictures showing how the situation progressed (badly). He pockets his phone once he ran out of pictures to show, “Doesn’t look like our supervisor is going to show up today- if you need anything urgent Vesper might help.”
He offers Hakka a small smile which might’ve come out more as a wince since he feels like throwing up all over again and the feeling of his head splitting in two isn’t doing him any favors. If the other saw, he didn’t push it since he knew how stubborn he was.
It’s the end of the day and while he starts packing up, through his peripheral he sees a plastic bag land on the edge of the table.
“Hey man, could you do me a favor?”
Altare fully turns around and he sees Axel, he’s a great cubicle mate and he’s a genuinely nice guy that has helped him during his first week; so it wouldn’t hurt to hear his request.
“What’s up?”, he asks while eyeing the plastic bag on his desk.
“Ok look, Vesper told me to drop by Magni’s place to give some soup and medicine because he’s been having a shitty hangover- but I got a meeting with some of the higher ups since one of the fuckers supposed to present took a leave without filing it.”
“And you need me to get this to him?”
Without taking a second more for Altare to agree or decline his request, Axel hands him a scrap of paper with what looked like a poorly written address- as if he knew he’d say yes, “Great! Here’s his home address. You’re the shit, man.”.
Just like that he’s gone, and he hopes “the shit” means “the best”.
He finally gets to the place and the rain starts pouring, as if this day could possibly get any worse. He was in such a rush to get to work that he couldn’t bother to check the weather report, or to even bring an umbrella.
It’s just a quick drop, there's nothing to it. It’s not like before. Altare you just ate something bad, you aren’t soulmates. Stop being delusional, you're a coworker to him.
He rings the doorbell and waits. He hears shuffling from behind it and locks clicking open.
“Vesper I am a grown man I can take care of myself!”
The door opens to reveal Magni Dezmond in the flesh. In pajamas.
Altare’s stands awkwardly while he figures out what to say, but his eyes gravitate towards the shoe rack by the door, and it stings a bit when he realizes that there were tell-tale signs that someone else must be living here.
They must not be around at the moment.
“Tartar?”, Dezmond opens the door more and Altare tries to be as nonchalant as possible.
“Oh, this is from Axel- well I… Vesper- Vesper told me, him…told Axel and- Vesper gave this to Axel and Axel told me to give it you-”
“Neat. Well thanks do you need an umbrella-”
Altare tunes out the noise around him and goes back to thinking about how Dezmond already had a pair like an incurable cycle. He decides that staying within the premises would only hurt more and resurface the feelings that were dead, gone, and buried. So he shoves the bag into the elder’s arms.
“I have to go.”, He says bluntly.
Dezmond grabs him by the sleeve before he can leave and Altare can see the concern flitting across his face. It hurts to know that he was the reason for such concern. He wishes he could just shake him off and leave but deep down, he would beg to stay.
“Wait Tartar, there’s something wrong with you. If you need someone to talk to, know that I’m here for you, okay? I’m not just your supervisor or your coworker, I am your friend for god sakes.”
He abruptly pulls his arm away like Dezmond touching him, burns him, and for the first time he snaps, “Yeah. Your friend.”
With all his willpower he tears himself away from Dezmond’s doorstep and runs out. He hears Dezmond run after him.
“Altare you’re going to get sick what are you thinking- “
He doesn’t respond for more than a few moments. The thoughts in his head from when he was ten come flooding back like faint waves of insecurity and anxiety.
What if his soulmate doesn’t like him back. What if this won't work out? What if he’s just being delusional about the whole soulmate bullshit because he’s so in love with Magni Dezmond.
“Tartar? Kid listen, come on let's get you inside and- “
Altare hears Dezmond go on and on, but he doesn’t listen to the words spilling out of his mouth
“Don’t call me 'kid’. I’m old enough to know that you’ve ruined me enough that I can’t love anyone else now.”
“What?”
“I’ve been trying to make you love me for years Dez. You never listen!”, he feels his voice cracking, as if he wasn’t already feeling broken in the first place.
He dreads the silence that comes after the words he said come tumbling out. The scenario back in the library replays in his head like a broken record; afraid, but secretly hoping that Dezmond would just brush him off like he always did.
No laugh comes this time.
Altare looks at Dezmond’s face and he looks conflicted, his face swirling with so many emotions that he can’t tell at all what he’s thinking.
He’s been at the top of his class ever since, he is both book smart and street smart, he is practical, and he thinks before he acts but ever since he met Magni Dezmond his brain shuts down during the worst possible times and he’s reduced to a bumbling fool around him.
He doesn’t think. Not anymore.
It’s raining like hell on both of them, but he pulls him close to his chest gently and they fit perfectly- like two pieces of a puzzle. Altare mentally ingrains in his brain how beautiful Dezmond’s eyelashes gently catch the raindrops pouring on them because he’s afraid he will never get to see this sight again in this lifetime. They’re so close he can feel their breaths mingle and despite the cool weather he feels pure warmth emanating between them. Altare feels a finger gently tilt up his face and he finds himself looking up to meet Dezmond’s eyes. His heart is pounding miles per minute it might just jump out of his chest- so he closes his eyes to regain his composure.
Dezmond took that as a sign to kiss him, it catches Altare off-guard for a second, but he’s been waiting for months to do this. Before they know it, their simple kiss deepens and their mouths slotting perfectly against each other with every movement make Altare albeit, a bit greedy so he dips the older ever so slightly to gain more access which makes Dezmond moan a bit into his mouth. They allow their hands to roam a bit more through and under their soaked clothes before they break for a gasp of air- hands still on each other.
Altare is breathing heavily, and he feels a cold hand touch his face.
That shocks him back to reality and he pushes Dezmond back as if distancing himself would reverse what he initiated.
“Altare what-”
“I’m sorry that was rude of me and I shouldn’t have-”
“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence! I swear I’m going to strangle you later at my place-”
“Why would you bring me to you and your partner’s place? To torture me more? I can’t take this anymore Dez. Let’s just leave it here.”, he starts walking away to the nearest station but Dezmond grabs his hand with a force that prevents him from taking a step forward.
”Do you need me to point out the shoes in your hallway?”
”What- shoes? Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about-”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about-”, He steps a foot closer but he doesn’t flinch away. They are now face to face and Dezmond looks pissed. He jabs a finger at the center of Altare’s chest.
“Altare you stupid dumb fuck I’m not dating anyone! Those are all mine you asshole.”
There’s a pause between them. Dezmond backs off and runs his hand through his soaked hair; Altare on the other hand is experiencing varying degrees of shock that he cannot decide what to say first.
“I’m not dating anyone right now. Probably because a blue-haired man can’t leave my mind”, he repeats in a begrudging tone but without any bite.
“Then who were you with back at college?”
Dezmond visibly flinches a bit at the statement, as if it triggered a memory he did not want to remember, but he masks it quickly, “We… went our separate ways after graduation.”
“Oh.”, he replies dumbly.
“Yeah.”
He breathes in and tries to hold back from prying but deep down he needs to know because the ambiguity has been eating at him since the beginning.
“Were they your soulmate?”
The elder just shrugs, “No, they weren’t. We never got sick at the same time, but I don’t care about that soulmate bullshit. I like who I like, but apparently it doesn’t ever always work out.”
So, if it wasn’t them then…
Altare doesn’t even know he’s crying until a hand starts wiping away his tears. Relief.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier- I… I don’t know what came over me. Please forget about-”
Dezmond cups his face using his hands and coos at him teasingly, a grin splayed across his face.
“Tartar I never said ‘no’~”.
He tries his best to come up with a snarky reply, but he sneezes instead.
“Oh, I’m sorry-”
A sneeze follows through, albeit muted by the rain. While Altare wipes the snot dripping from his nose, he looks to see Dezmond looking as crappy as him. He offers him an extra handkerchief and the other looks at him in disbelief.
Dezmond quietly and slowly speaks as if going any louder would break the moment, “Did you happen to get so blackout drunk the other day that it had you reeling over the toilet bowl for hours and- “
“-the feeling of your head splitting it two that you couldn’t move a muscle or think because of how much it hurt?”, Altare finished.
They both stare at each other for a moment, then they both start laughing to themselves. A rush of pure happiness goes through Altare, something that he hadn’t felt in ages. He can’t believe it himself. After all these years he finally found him.
Dezmond wipes away the happy tears in between laughs, “You fucker-”
“I kind of had an idea but I wasn’t sure since you were already dating someone else at the time.”, he admits.
He replies with a pout, “Next time, ask me out directly.”
Altare replies with a brief kiss on his lips which makes Dezmond turn as red as a tomato, “I did! It’s not my fault that you’re so dense-”.
“I hate you.”
“Fine.”
He gets down on knees and takes both of his hands into his, “The Great Magni Dezmond, will you go out with me?”
Dezmond pulls him up from the ground and brings him in for a kiss, smiling into it.
“I’ll think about it, Tartar.”