SoulMates // 5sos

m.c. part one

Michael thought that maybe he was destined to be alone.

After all 'To the moon'did seem like a pretty complete tattoo in its own merit, how was he supposed to find someone whose tattoo matched that?

He thought that the whole SoulMates system was pretty shit really.

For one, it meant that he couldn't get any other tattoos; apparently it would be unfair and people could cheat the system blah blah blah. Michael really liked tattoos though, he thought they were a great medium for self-expression and he liked being about to control something about his appearance.

The other reason he thought it was stupid was that it meant that he didn't have any say in who he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with. That hardly seemed fair. Sure, maybe the universe was convinced that they were supposed to be perfect for one another, but what if the two of them had irreconcilable differences (what if she didn't like pepperoni pizza, or she was a morning person?).

Despite the fact that he hated it, there was nothing Michael could do.

The way the SoulMates system worked was that, on the morning of their eighteenth birthday, a person would wake up with a tattoo. That tattoo would technically be one half of a tattoo (Michael had seen a few that were literally halves of pictures, his didn't seem so bad in comparison) and your soul mate would have the complementary tattoo.

What you did after that was your choice. You could choose to ignore it and never pursue your soul mate, or you could look for them. It wasn't too bad in that aspect except if you chose not to find your soul mate you couldn't date anyone else (up until you turned eighteen you could do whatever you wanted but after that it was your soul mate or nothing). He often wondered if a soul mates geographical location had any say in the matter, it didn't seem fair that maybe his soul mate lived on the other side of the world.

Michael had tried to avoid it as much as possible. The tattoo appeared while you were asleep so he'd stayed up all night in the lead up to his eighteenth birthday. When it got to 12 noon and nothing had happened, he figured he was in the clear and went to sleep, a little bit pleased with himself. Of course, when he woke up he'd noticed the slight sting in his right arm and he'd looked down to see the words inked into his skin.

To the moon.

The tattoo itself wasn't so bad, Michael actually kind of liked it. He could make some meaning out of his unlike some of his friends. And it didn't look ridiculous if he chose not to search for his soul mate.

That brought him back to his main problem though; his tattoo didn't seem to be one half of a set. It appeared to be pretty complete all on its own, which is why he thought that maybe he hadn't been allotted a soul mate. Maybe his staying up all night had cheated the system, just not in the way he'd hoped it would.

Meeting girls since the system had been implemented was an interesting affair. Some of them didn't care at all, they would still have a normal conversation with you and sometimes it became something more, but it was still only ever a one night thing. Other girls, however, wouldn't give you two seconds of their time if they checked your tattoo and it didn't match theirs.

Michael had lost count of how many websites and mobile apps were dedicated to helping people find their soul mates. Almost every private investigator alive was out searching for the tattoos that matched their clients'. There was a lot of money to be found in this soul mates business.

No one quite knew how it started, the whole SoulMates system. There were so many stories that no one knew who to believe, if they believed any one at all.

Some people thought that it was an evolutionary thing, the next step in human existence, natural selection pairing us with the person most suitable for them to continue the human race (Michael thought that was ridiculous because he'd met people who absolutely hated their soul mates).