Mark My Words || DNF Soulmate AU

Chapter 46

George thought it would have been difficult to asleep, but two tumbleweeds of empty thoughts rolling across his mind later, he finds himself falling under.

Waking up is a relatively regular event, George checking the time to see that about an hour had gone by since he tucked himself into the comforts of blankets and unconsciousness. He drags a heavy palm down the side of his face and throws off the blanket, relinquishing the final layer of warmth coiled around him.

It's instinct to immediately make his way to the desk and turn on his computer, and George only stops himself halfway through inputting the password. His right-hand curls loosely into a fist as he debates going online or spending some time alone with his thoughts.

In the end, he deletes whatever characters he had entered into the computer and pushes himself out from the desk. He stretches his arms and legs out with a yawn, and makes his way to the kitchen aimlessly.

Making a quick trip back to his set-up to grab his phone and the latest Mr. Beast cup he had depleted of water, George scrolls through social media as he sets the cup into the sink and grabs a new, refrigerated cup. He sips, his eyes never leaving the screen, and drinks in small gulps. The cup is set down on a nearby table as George then walks to his couch, all the while expertly navigating his way through walls and obstacles.

Having gone through the rest of what Twitter and the rest of its kind has to offer, George refreshes a few more times hoping for something that will keep his attention, and gives up in due time. He traces his eyes over the room and falls back against the couch as his eyes rake a vertical line of sight all the way up to the paper-white ceiling.

"Okay, fine," he says to the ceiling, as if finally having been convinced after great struggle, "I'll think about it."

The words leave his mouth, but his mind isn't entirely ready to set out on the journey yet.

It lingers on the transitory period before thoughts truly form to coherency, and spends a little too long dallying in the gray space.

George doesn't like ambiguity, doesn't like art forms that are difficult to decipher, doesn't like passive philosophizing that results in more questions than answers.

He prefers accuracy, the crispness of one correct answer, the clean-cut method of deduction.

Why waste your time doing something that won't ever really have a "right" answer?

When the stretch of his neck bent against the back of the couch gets too uncomfortable, George tilts his head straight again and brings one of his legs up to hug against his chest as he reluctantly delves through the situation at hand.

He sighs as he allows all the information to surge to the front of his mind.

George has a soulmate, a stranger fitted perfectly to him, someone who could potentially be aware of his existence now that Dream has matched their information.

He was supposed to have found this person some time, somewhere, and they should have danced off into the sunset as bubbles of love trailed in their path. It would have been an experience of magic, of the ingenuity of fate, of the sophistication that plaits and braids the strings of destiny.

It would have been perfect, as soulmates and soulmarks and love were expected to be.

But perfection's greatest fear is reality, and even the most steadfast tapestries fray when subject to the trampling footsteps of time.

Dream's ghoulmark, the wild-card that unexpectedly unleashed its full powers of disruption, stirred the placid surface of what should have been George's simple path to love.