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janie_tangerineI
The thing about the marks is that they’re random.
There’s no way to know when they’ll show up - if they do, though most do show up before you turn five or six -, they’re different for everyone (some people get a name, some others have a symbol, others have the first words their partner will tell them, others have matching symbols) and there’s just one thing they have in common. They are red when they show up, and stay red if your feelings are requited (because they also might not be, though they usually are), they’ll turn black if they’re not.
It’s a hellish system, and while most people still fall into line with it, because after all if the mark denotes a high compatibility at least then your match has to be someone right for you, others don’t bother. It’s not common and it’s maybe a bit frowned upon, but it happens.
And of course, everyone has their opinions on the topic, but the bottom of the line is, it’s different for everyone.
Ant it’s not necessarily a good thing.
——
Brynden Tully’s mark doesn’t come until he’s well beyond six.
Honestly, by that point he had figured it just wasn’t going to show up at all, and given that the few times he’s ever found anyone nice to look at it was other boys, he wasn’t looking forward to it, and he had made peace with the idea of not having one - he honestly couldn’t imagine his father being all right with it, nor Hoster, given what he hears during dinner when it comes to discussing their neighbor, who broke it off with his wife because it turns out his soulmate was actually a man.
So he’s not expecting it when, on February 6th, 1970, when he’s turned twelve a month ago and therefore is way older than usual, he wakes up one morning feeling an insistent, fastidious tingle on his hip.
What, he thinks as he turns over and looks at it.
Well, fuck it, he thinks, and patience if his mother would wash his mouth with soup if she knew that he was mentally swearing.
There it is.
Right on his skin, written in a nice, clear handwriting.
If only it had been one of those ridiculous symbols, Brynden thinks, but no. There’s a Jon stamped in red right there, and he highly doubts that there are many women in the world named like that.
Honestly, it does make sense that it’s another man, because of course it would be - he never was the kind of person who likes to lie, he never could be, and he knows that girls never appealed to him either way, and he never saw the point in discussing which of his classmates was cuter with his mates in elementary school, because he’d be thinking that there was nothing cute in girls. If the person he’s supposed to be with or whatever it is a he, it just makes sense.
Still, it’s his damned luck that it had to be one of the most common names in existence without a surname.
And on top of that -
He thinks of what would happen if his father found out - honest, he has no idea of how Hoster would take it because other than the neighbor it’s not a topic that gets touched, but he doesn’t think either would take it too well, and then he sighs and decides that at least he got lucky that it didn’t show up on his wrist or somewhere immediately visible.
And he’ll take care to keep it hidden until he’s sure of how well it would be received.
—
He does have a fling with a football mate who’s actually named Jon when he’s fifteen, and it lasts one week before they mutually decide that while it was great to find someone they found attractive enough to actually do something with, they don’t like each other enough to actually risk getting found out - they live in a medium-small Irish town, not in London, and it’s not worth it. Brynden’s mark, though, stays bright red.
It wasn’t him, then, Brynden figures, but then again it’s not as if he actually ever was in love with him, so it’s a moot point.
No one finds out.
They stay friends with benefits, though - once they end up driving to Dublin for the week-end and have some memorable times in the back row of a cinema while the Rocky Horror Picture Show is showing, and they aren’t even the only ones in the room. Of course they see it again since they missed half of the plot, and all along, as they drive back home, Brynden can’t help thinking that he’d really like it better if he was living somewhere… bigger than someplace where everyone knows him and where if it came out -
Given that their former neighbor moved to a completely different town along with his soulmate, he still doubts it would end over well. It’s already getting harder and harder to find excuses to skip mass, but he certainly can’t say, the last time I went Father Aeron spent a good half hour explaining how everyone of my sort would end up in Hell and I don’t think I can stand through it without wanting to leave?
Never mind that he doesn’t really like the idea of a God who hates him for that.
Still, he does have to go to at least the one that’s held every year in remembrance of his mother, and every time it gets worse.
The mark on his hip seems to burn, wherever he walks inside a church, and he can only imagine why.
——
The mysterious Jon isn’t any of the two he meets in university, nor the Welsh kid who only attends his high school on their last year, and none of them was his type anyway. It’s not even his co-worker at the local fish restaurant where he ends up waiting tables when he can’t find anything better - sadly, marine biology is not the degree you get a job with in his town, and after their father’s stroke last year that definitely put him off the job market, they can’t live only on Hoster’s paycheck. Not when after Minisa had two miscarriages she finally had a daughter two years ago and she’s expecting another.
At this point, Brynden’s not even looking for the man anymore - if he ever passes through here, fine, but he’s definitely none of the men named like that in town, and even if he were he should take so many precautions his head pounds just thinking about it.
He figures that he just wasn’t one of those people meant for this whole soulmate thing. Hell, he barely can get laid and he only ever manages when he drives out for the weekend, and not too often.
He also tries to shut down the topic whenever Hoster asks him when is he ever going to get settled - usually, saying that he’s not ready for children and he’s more than happy with spoiling his nieces gets him out of that conversation, but he knows that at twenty-seven he is older than average when it comes to get married, and he knows that Hoster probably noticed he has a few female friends but none he’s particularly close with.
Still, he manages to keep it secret, along with the infamous red mark on his hip.
——
That is, until a few days before his thirtieth birthday and a few months before Minisa is due again, Lysa walks into the house’s only bathroom while he’s shaving.
Without a shirt on.
With his hip definitely uncovered.
He tells her to wait a minute and he finishes shaving, hoping that she hasn’t noticed and that she won’t tell, but he’s not so lucky.
“Brynden,” Hoster asks him the moment he walks downstairs for breakfast, “was Lysa making it up when she asked me why you had a soulmark that none of us ever heard about?”
Well, fuck.
It’s been long enough that Brynden knows this conversation won’t go over well. Then again, he figures, not bearing whoever this Jon is any ill, it’s not as if he could have kept it hidden forever.
“No,” he replies. “And if you wanted to know why I haven’t tried to get married yet, you know it. And no, I don’t know who the guy is and I haven’t met him yet. Will this be a problem?” He hopes, he really hopes that a frontal approach to the issue might help, but -
“Are you out of your bloody mind? You’ve just told me that you have a man’s name on your hip and you’re asking if it will be a problem?”
Here it goes, Brynden thinks. Then again - in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
“It’s most probably a man’s name because I’ve always fancied men and I’ve known since I was eight. I’m telling you the facts. And if that changes your opinion of me when you’ve known me this long, I don’t even know what I should tell you.”
A moment later, he realizes that it was a very, very wrong approach to the issue.
——
Two days later, he’s packed his bags, resigned from the fish restaurant - honestly, he didn’t even like working there even if he made manager, and at least it means he has some money saved - and buys a one-way ticket to London.
——
He finds a flat to co-rent in Shoreditch with another three guys who definitely are not into women and are entirely too understanding of his plight, and whose fourth roommate just moved out, so it works great for all of them. Then he goes around looking for a job and for some kind of miracle they’re hiring people to work at the aquarium at Horniman Museum, and at least he gets to use his degree in some way, and when they find out that he spent his birthday on the plane to London his roommates drag him out for drinks and introduce him to their friends, and another one is named Jon and they spend a very nice evening having fully protected sex - they’re not damned stupid, and even if he spent most of his life in a small town where no one died of AIDS he knows the risks, but it’s obvious he’s not the Jon, either.
Still, at least he finally gets to spend the weekend out and to meet people and to get laid properly and reasonably for the first time in his life, and he’s not surprised when he still sends his brother a telegram with his new address and phone number and he doesn’t receive an answer.
He figures that Hoster just needs time to get adjusted to it, or so he hopes.
——
Then, one day when he comes back from work particularly late, the phone rings while he’s trying to find the force of will to cook something and he lets Jeremy take the call.
That is, until he’s told that it’s for him.
He takes it and finds himself talking to his eldest niece, who’s crying into the receiver and telling him that her mother’s died while giving birth and her father said they weren’t supposed to call him but she thought he should know and she found his telegram in the trash and kept it.
“Put your father on the line,” he tells her after trying to console her as much as he can when she’s in Ireland and he’s here.
He asks if he can come back for the funeral.
The phone gets slammed in his face.
That went over well, he sighs, and closes the call.
——
In the next years, he runs into a number of men named Jon, and none of them is the right one.
Of course. At this point, he’s not even looking.
He saves enough money that he can rent his own flat a few years later, even if he stays friends with all his former roommates, and never quite leaves Shoreditch - he likes it, even if it takes one hour of commute to get to his workplace and back. He does like his job, and they like him there, and no one asks anything about why he doesn’t have a girlfriend, and he doesn’t talk to his brother again but Cat calls from time to time or sends him a letter and he sends one back but not at their address - she gave him a friend’s and he uses that one.
On his thirty-eight birthday, he thinks he could have done worse. He has friends, he does get laid more or less regularly if not all the time, if he saves for another ten years or so he’ll get to actually buy that apartment out rather than renting it, he has a job he likes and that pays him well enough and he’s not dead like a few of his friends’ friends - he’s gone to less funerals than most people he knows, but he’s attended enough to know he got lucky. His mark on his hip is still bright red.
The infamous Jon hasn’t showed up and by now he might as well never do.
And he’s not expecting anyone when someone knocks at his door while he’s finishing his meager celebrations with a glass of red wine - he’s working tomorrow and he’ll most probably have dinner with friends on the weekend, but he couldn’t really go out or anything tonight.
He opens the door. And -
“Cat?”
His niece is standing outside, wearing a heavy blue coat and with a suitcase and a backpack hauled on her shoulder.
“Uncle,” she says. “Uh, it’s been a long time, is it?”
“It has,” he replies, and suddenly he feels horribly sad for not having been there while she grew up all long, but he knew that he wouldn’t be welcomed if he actually tried to go back. “And come in instead of freezing.”
She does, and he can’t help notice that she looks to the ground a moment later, almost - guiltily?
“Hey,” he tells her, “I don’t know if it was a surprise visit or something else, but - is there something wrong?”
“I kind of wanted this to be a surprise visit,” she says, “but - I kind of need your help. Maybe.”
“For what?”
She sits on the sofa and doesn’t quite look at him as she speaks. “I, had a boyfriend.”
“You had one?”
“He moved into town a few years ago - he was twenty then, and it was for work. His father owns a restaurants chain and they were looking to open one and he was managing the entire thing. We met because I interviewed to work there a year ago or so - Father’s not getting any younger and we needed the extra money.”
“You know I could have -”
She shakes her head. “I know, but just mentioning you to Father is really not a good idea. The last time I tried, he sent me to confess.”
“What?”
“Well, if it consoles you, the new priest isn’t half as terrible as Father Aeron. When I told him why, he said that according to him hating - queers is ridiculous because if God created you like that then He can’t hate you, and I agreed, and we spent twenty minutes talking shop. That said, it wasn’t an option. Anyway.” She sighs and shows Brynden her hand - there’s a wolf’s head inked in red inside it.
“It’s the same shape as their chain’s logo. And when Brandon asked me out I thought he was the one, so - when things got farther than that, I didn’t - I didn’t say no.”
“Fair enough. And?”
She sighs. “He moved out two months later saying that he always knew. And - I felt horribly and I think half of the town knows that we weren’t chaste and people look at me wrong, but that mark didn’t turn black, so - if it’s him - I don’t know, but I knew he was moving back here and I thought I would try to find him. Father might have made me understand that I’d better come back with a ring on my finger, but knowing him - I don’t know. Anyway, I - I think I need a place to sleep until I find him.”
He shakes his head and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Cat, you know you don’t have to ask, do you?”
He’s not surprised when she throws her arms around his shoulders and breaks down crying into his jacket, and he’s not surprised to hear her say, when she’s also drinking some of his wine later, that apparently everyone in town doesn’t even call him by his name anymore.
“Really. And how do they call me?”
“Blackfish,” she sighs. “It’s not nice, but -”
“You know what,” Brynden smiles, “it’s actually not bad at all. If I have to be the black sheep of the family and I work with fish, I might as well embrace it.”
“What, seriously?”
“Finish your wine, tomorrow I’ll wire your father to inform him I’m delighted.”
She laughs, and he laughs with her, and he just hopes she does find her guy.
——
Cat does end up with a ring on her finger a year later.
Except that it’s not Brandon Stark as she had thought. It’s his brother, who has nothing to do with the family chain but works in the police and was appalled when he found out what kind of arse his brother had been and had helped her track Brandon down because he was on a business trip in South America.
Turns out that by the time they had, Cat was more than smitten with Ned Stark instead, and then realized that if the wolf was the logo of their family brand maybe her soulmate wasn’t the one she thought it was, and when she pointed that out to Ned he suddenly seemed to realize something. Turns out that his soulmark was a TRIFOGLIO, and both that and the wolf on her hand glowed red the moment he showed it to her.
Turns out that Brynden finally met his brother again at Cat’s wedding, and they are civil to each other, and even if it doesn’t get to be more than that he figures it’s better than nothing. Lysa grew up lovely but she’s also apparently not happy that her father doesn’t approve of her boyfriend, while Edmure - who Brynden meets for the first time - is the most polite eight year old Brynden’s ever met and he has a feeling it’s Cat’s merit.
He ends up being Cat’s witness, and if he feels a tiny bit jealous that she did meet her match and that they look so happy together his teeth could rot, patience.
He has a feeling that it’s good enough he got here in the first place, that he survived the eighties and that not counting that, his life is pretty good and now he might have most of his family back in it.
If he never ends up running into the infamous Jon whose name still burns bright red on his hip, well, maybe he was never meant to be with someone specifically, but he’s lived until now, he’ll survive for the rest of his life.
It really, really could have been a lot worse.
II
When Jon wakes up in the morning of February 6th, 1976, his sixth birthday, his shoulder is tingling, exactly as it should have.
It must be my soul mark, he thinks excitedly as he gets out of bed and runs over to his mirror.
It’s a name, written in neat, small caps.
It reads Rhaegar.
Jon doesn’t know anyone with that name, but he immediately likes it - it’s unique, and it sounds lovely as he says it out loud once, twice. It sounds like its out of a fairytale - it’s the name he’d give to some prince who rides a dragon, if he had to write one. And whoever it is, it certainly won’t be hard to recognize it - after all, he doubts it’s common or anything of the kind. For a moment he’s about to run out of the room to show it to his father, and then he remembers that he couldn’t be here - he’s on a work trip to France and he won’t be back until next week.
(His mother died of a late comeback of MORBILLO when he was four - he barely remembers her, for that matter.)
So he does the next best thing and shows it to his nanny, who’s around for the entire week-end, and when she sees it, she gasps.
“Is there something bad about it?” Jon asks.
She shakes her head. “It’s not a girl,” she replies, keeping her voice down.
“So?” He doesn’t see the problem. If women can like men in movies, then surely men can like men too, right?
She shakes her head. “Well, there’s - nothing wrong with it, in itself. But - most people think it’s not natural, and not many boys have boys’s names on them. Don’t just tell anyone, all right?”
“I - I won’t,” he promises, because she sounds serious.
He still doesn’t think there’s much wrong with it, but he figures he will follow the advice - for now.
——
He does show it to his father, a few months later. But he’s tired - he always is - and he just glances at it, congratulates him and goes back to his phone to call one of his partners to discuss selling shares or whatever it is they do.
Jon sighs and figures that he’ll keep it for himself until he finds Rhaegar - after all, who else needs to know?
——
He meets Rhaegar the first day of high school.
He’s not surprised to find out he comes from actual blue blood - after all, they’re going to an exclusive private school that only accepts a limited number of pupils and Jon got in both because his father could afford it and because he had the grades for it. But the moment they are introduced, Jon thinks, I was right when I said he could be a prince out of fairytales. He’s just slightly taller than Jon himself, has long blonde hair so pale it looks almost silver and violet eyes of such a unique shade, Jon has to fight himself to not stare too long when they’re introduced. But other than that, he has a nicely toned body - though not too muscled, which is, well, very pleasing on the eyes -, a face that seems just out of an ancient Greek sculpture and pale, smooth skin without a single flaw, and such a lovely smile, Jon thinks he would be smitten even if Rhaegar wasn’t his soulmate.
He’s maybe slightly disappointed when they introduce but nothing happens - he knows that when soulmates recognize each other their marks glow red and stay red and you can feel it, but then again it’s when both people recognize the other. And not everyone has a soulmark with the other’s name on it - what if Rhaegar has something other than Jon’s name and hasn’t put two and two together? Yes, that has to be it. And it’s not like Jon’s in a hurry - after all, he knows who his soulmate is, and they are sitting at the same desk, and he’s sure they’ll be friends in a short time also because Rhaegar is charming and definitely not the kind of person who doesn’t talk to you, so why hurrying?
For real, if he just looks at Rhaegar, he knows he could wait years for him to figure it out. It’s fine, after all. If he’s Jon’s soulmate, he will have to at some point, and he has nothing but time in front of him.
——
Thing is: Rhaegar is the most amazing person he’s ever met and the more time they spend together the more Jon knows he’s the right one, no doubt about it. It’s not just that he’s breathtakingly beautiful and he’s a delight to be with and he’s great at everything he does, and if you’re his friend he gives you his full attention every time you need him; it’s that, just being with him makes him feel like a planet orbiting around a beautiful, bright star, and Jon can’t honestly imagine ever wanting anyone else.
Right, he can appreciate a nicely looking guy, and he definitely knows he doesn’t feel attracted to women in any way, shape or form by the time he’s fifteen and he’s only ever jerked off thinking about Rhaegar’s lovely, bright violet eyes, but Rhaegar’s just an entire different level, and what if he dreams of the moment Rhaegar figures out?
Sure, Jon could tell him, but -
Thing is, he’s been over at Rhaegar’s house - pardon, manor - more than once, either on his own or with their friends, and while Rhaegar is the best person he’s ever ran into, his father - well, his father is a piece of work, and from what little Jon has seen and heard of the man he’s hardly tolerant. Hell, he’s not even tolerant of immigrants, never mind queers. He knows Rhaegar doesn’t care or Jon wouldn’t be his soulmate and he would have had a problem or ten when Oberyn told the whole lot of them he liked both men and women, but -
It’s not a good climate these days, and as much as Jon doesn’t know anyone outside his group of friends it doesn’t mean he doesn’t read the news and he doesn’t know that people like him (and Oberyn) are dying at an alarming rate of that HIV disease everyone talks about, and he doesn’t really want to risk things between them getting weird before Rhaegar finds out.
So he keeps his mouth shut.
He does tell Oberyn after his sixteenth birthday party, though, if anything because he has to tell someone and he knows that if he told his father he would most likely not even hear him and react the way he would if Jon informed him that tomorrow the weather might be rainy.
“Finally,” Oberyn laughs.
“What?”
“I’ve known since the first day of school. The way you look at Rhaegar isn’t exactly subtle, Connington.”
Jon shrugs and figures that since there is someone he can talk about it with, he might as well go all in. He pulls up the sleeve of his shirt and shows Oberyn his shoulder.
“Oh,” Oberyn says, suddenly turning serious. “Oh. Well, that - that makes sense. But - doesn’t he know?”
“I don’t think he has my name,” he replies. “He must have something else. And - you know how his father is. I just - I’d rather wait until he figures it out.”
“Fair enough,” Oberyn replies, but he sounds pensive. “It’s just - never mind. Those things are weird. I’m sure he’ll figure that out,” he says, clapping Jon on the shoulder. “And if in the meantime you want to get laid, just ask me. Don’t worry, I’m clean.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that,” Jon tells him. “But - I’d rather wait for him, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Hey, sure thing, I never forced anyone. Offer’s open until I run into Ellaria, or so she should be called. And if she’s my soulmate, she probably won’t be against sharing.”
Jon laughs, figuring that it would only make sense. “Good luck,” he tells Oberyn, and means it.
——
When he turns seventeen, he doesn’t change his mind about waiting for Rhaegar to come around, but he realizes that he can’t just hang out with the same six, seven people only one of which knows that he likes men. He asks Oberyn if he might tag along next time he goes out to one of those clubs he always raves about and Oberyn accepts gladly.
There, he finds out clubs are really not his thing - he’s fine with dancing but he’s not into the music, and given that he’s not here to hook up he feels like a fish out of water, but while smoking a cigarette outside, he start talking to this woman in her twenties who’s also outside in order to smoke. She says her name is Dacey and she’s into both men and women, and she’s in her local GLF group and she invites him to the next meeting.
He goes, figuring that at most he’s not going to come back, but then he comes back the next week, and it’s not as if his father will notice or like anyone will know where he goes on Thursday afternoon. He gets asked out a few times, he says no because he’s waiting for his soulmate, everyone respects it and they wish the best to him and that Rhaegar figures it out soon.
Jon is sure he will - he’s confident he will. But he makes some friends and if at some point people ask him how things go with his silver prince because that’s how it sounds like from the way he talks about him, he thinks he likes how it sounds.
——
By the time he’s graduated high school and turned eighteen, Rhaegar hasn’t figured it out yet, but Jon doesn’t fault him for it, especially given that from what he says his parents are having issues and he’s looking after his siblings half of the time - they all chime in to help, of course, but it’s obvious he has bigger issues on his mind than worrying about his love life.
By the time he’s nineteen, things on that front haven’t changed, but half of the people who used to come to those meetings don’t come anymore and while Jon won’t risk going to marches and outing himself, he does not so secretly slip the local GLF circle as much money as he can spare to help out with buying meds or pay out rents, since whoever’s not coming anymore is also not working anymore, in most cases.
By the time he’s twenty, he’s attended some ten funerals and half of them he attended along with Oberyn, who comes with the infamous Ellaria (he met her in university and she definitely isn’t against sharing, as long as they’re all responsible).
After the thirteenth, right at the beginning of the new year, he goes with Oberyn for drinks.
They say nothing for some twenty minutes.
Then -
“Jon, not to pry, and I know it’s not what I should be asking you after burying someone, but has Rhaegar -”
“Not yet,” Jon sighs. “But I’m all right with waiting. Really.”
Oberyn raises an eyebrow. “Mate, you sure always had more force of will than I ever had. Still, maybe you should tell him? I mean, if you do, he will realize.”
It’s - a fair point. “I know, but he’s busy these days, and you know his father’s really… out of it lately.”
“I do,” Oberyn mutters, “but still, you’ve known him how long? Almost seven years? I mean, that can’t be healthy. Right, I guess you dodged a few bullets while waiting for him, but - I love the man, I do, but I’ve known him since elementary school and he can be slow on the uptake.”
“It’s all right,” Jon says, “really. I don’t mind. He’s the one, after all. However much time it takes him, it can’t be that long.”
Oberyn doesn’t look too convinced. “If you say so,” he shrugs. “But think about it. It can’t be healthy.”
He does have a point, Jon figures, but it’s all right. It really is. He can wait, and he can’t go and bother Rhaegar with it when it’s obvious he has other things on his mind.
He doesn’t mind. Really, he doesn’t.
——
By the time he’s gotten his (boring, safe) economics degree that will allow him to take his father’s place when it’s time (not the job he wants, but he doesn’t know how to say otherwise) and Rhaegar also got his from Eton (of course he did), he still hasn’t figured it out and out of everyone Jon used to know at his local support group, only two people are still attending. Everyone else is dead or sick or about to leave this mortal coil. Jon has been to more funerals than his own father, most probably, and the sad thing is that he doesn’t even know, but then again he doesn’t remember the last time they actually talked about anything in a not entirely superficial way.
By the time his twenty-fifth birthday rolls by, the situation has barely changed except that not as many people in the new wave of members disappear after a few months.
Then his father dies in his sleep because of an aneurysm, and there’s nothing to be done about it, and Jon is nowhere near ready to run a company or to take his place.
Of course, he can’t invite Dacey nor anyone from the GLF, but he invites all his other friends, and when Rhaegar comes inside the church all dressed in black and actually hugs him when offering condolences, Jon feels ashamed that for a moment he thinks, maybe he figured it out, but no, his mark doesn’t hurt, even if when he checks it later he finds it still bright red, if maybe a shade darker. Still -
He commits to memory the feeling of Rhaegar’s body pressed against his, of his arms around his shoulders, of his hands on his skin, and he thinks, one day it won’t be a one-off occasion.
I just have to be patient.
——
That is, until six months later he has lunch with Rhaegar and finds him - very excited?
Why?
They have lunch once per week usually, and he never looked this happy.
Might it be that -
“I see you might be the bearer of good news?” Jon asks him, cautiously.
“You can’t imagine,” Rhaegar says. “But anyway, I think I have very good news. I haven’t told anyone yet.”
“I’m honored to be the first,” Jon says, smiling, and he means it. Come on, he thinks, tell me you figured it out.
“See,” Rhaegar says, “I think I might have run into the right person.”
Jon’s blood goes cold. “The - the right person?” He asks, keeping his voice even.
“Well,” Rhaegar says, “Thing is, I never told anyone because, well, people would have talked.”
“About what?”
“About my mark.”
Oh, finally. “Well, you never - said anything about it.”
“I couldn’t, since I don’t have one.”
Suddenly, Jon’s blood isn’t running cold anymore. It’s freezing. “You - you don’t?”
“I never got one. Not that it changed my life that greatly, but you know, sometimes people don’t, and others assume they’re heartless or unlovable or psychopaths. It’s not anything I’d like people to assume about me, since I’m not that.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Jon blurts, trying to keep his heart from bursting out of his chest. Which might as well happen, given what Rhaegar is saying.
“Well, yesterday I was at a company party. Father wants to do business with Rickard Stark - you know, the guy who owns Winterfell.”
Oh. That famous restaurants chain. “Sure. I’ve eaten at one of his places a couple times.”
“His daughter was there. And - we started talking. Turns out, she doesn’t have a mark either.”
Oh.
“She - she doesn’t?”
“No,” Rhaegar says, “and she was also relieved at running into someone… who was like her, shall we say. And you don’t know how liberating it would be to get to be with someone who doesn’t expect you to be their match or with whom you know it cannot work out because you know they’re not.”
“I - I can imagine,” Jon says, on autopilot, as he forces himself to bring his artichokes to his mouth without throwing them up.
“So, I think I’ll have dinner with her soon and we’ll see. Isn’t it great?”
“Of - of course it is,” Jon says, swallowing the artichokes along with the tears he wants to shed. “I’m happy for you. Really.”
“Thank you,” Rhaegar says, smiling brightly. “I knew you would understand. You always do.”
Jon smiles.
He thinks, maybe I should’ve been an actor, because if Rhaegar doesn’t ask himself whether he meant it, he must have really pulled it off.
Because everything he’s feeling inside, is certainly not happiness.
——
He drives back home and forgets the entire ride until he’s parked the car.
He goes to the bathroom and takes off his shirt with shaking hands.
Rhaegar’s name is still there.
Too bad that it’s turned from red to black.
——
The next day, he calls Oberyn.
“Listen,” he asks, “if Ellaria still agrees, is your offer to get me laid still valid?”
“… That was unexpected,” Oberyn says. “But it might be. I always thought you were fairly easy on the eyes. But why?”
He figures that at least he owes Oberyn the truth.
“I went to lunch with Rhaegar yesterday and it turns out that he’s never had a mark and that he’s very much interested into a girl he met who doesn’t have one either, and his name on my shoulder just turned black, and he still doesn’t know, and I’ve known him for ten years and I got that mark exactly twenty years ago, and I think I really bloody need to get laid. And you’re a friend, so it would be entirely less embarrassing to me if it was you. But if it can’t be, I’ll just get out and -”
“Jon,” Oberyn interrupts him, “you’re not losing your v-card in some club’s stall with some guy you don’t even know. I’m coming over. If anything, I am going to make you forget about Rhaegar or my rep is absolutely not deserved.”
Jon snorts so that he doesn’t cry into the receiver.
——
Turns out, Oberyn’s that good and Jon does definitely not think about Rhaegar for half of the afternoon.
At least that.
——
After that, he dates sparingly. Every time he ends up in bed with blonde guys, he feels so bad about it, he eventually gives up on saying yes if anyone who even remotely looks like Rhaegar proposes him. If they don’t look like him, it’s better. Still - it feels not quite right.
And then two things happen at once.
First, Rhaegar calls him at five in the morning from the cabin below his house, telling him that he and Lyanna Stark are eloping and they need a witness, would he please come down?
Jon, who’s still in love with him even if he wishes he wasn’t, says yes and joins Arthur Dayne in the back of Rhaegar’s car. It’s the first time he sees Lyanna Stark - she’s young, has to be around twenty, with dark hair and grey eyes, and he can’t find anything attractive about her, but then again, when has he ever found a woman attractive?
Arthur ends up being her witness, he is Rhaegar’s. They disappear driving towards France after then. Arthur drives him back home and says nothing, probably sensing his mood.
That evening, he gets so drunk he can barely drag himself to bed after, and then the next morning he throws up on the floor while his head pounds, but then his entire arm does, and what the hell?
He checks and finds out that Rhaegar’s name on his shoulder has disappeared, and that something else took his place.
This one isn’t a name.
This one is a shape. He blinks, checks better.
It’s a fish.
Some fish that might be a trout, Jon thinks, maybe, but -
The thing is -
It’s black. It’s pitch, full black, and after staring at it for a moment, he drops back sitting on the bed, puts his hands to his face and bursts out crying.
Fuck’s sake, he loses Rhaegar when he was never his in the first place, and he gets a new mark, that’s already black and therefore it means that even if he moves on, his feelings won’t ever be returned?
Why does the universe hate him so fucking much?
He doesn’t know.
But does it even matter? He puts himself together long enough to call his office and tell them that he’ll take a sick day, and then he throws himself back on the bed after closing the blinds.
He’ll clean up the floor later.
——
He shows the mark to Oberyn a few days later, if only because he had guessed that something wasn’t right.
Oberyn’s eyes go very, very wide.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says, apologetically. “I mean, these things are random, we all know that, but -”
“They might as well be a damned prison,” Jon sighs. “Anyway, I think the universe is trying to tell me I’m never going to find anyone, I might as well fucking embrace it.” He tops that sentence by drinking half of his vodka in one go.
Oberyn grimaces openly. “Don’t be that - doom and gloom about it. I mean, it’s - in theory it shouldn’t be black from the get-go, or it doesn’t have a point. Maybe it’s just something else weird about it.”
“As if,” Jon sighs, “I think I had enough of weird marks with the first one.”
Then he downs the rest of his vodka so that if tears come to his eyes, at least he has an excuse.
——
Then, it turns out that Rhaegar and Lyanna didn’t lose time and they move back into his mansion when it turns out she’s pregnant, too.
Jon thinks that maybe he should quite the company and go into acting for real if Rhaegar doesn’t understand that he was slowly dying inside as he told him all about how that baby would have been revolutionary and a sign that people could just be with each other without a damned soulmark, or without caring about it.
They do that already, Jon wants to tell him, but what’s the point? He congratulates Rhaegar on the good news, tells him that he’ll be there for anything should he need him, miraculously doesn’t break down in tears when Rhaegar’s hand covers his as he thanks him for being such a great friend, and he just hopes for that child’s sake that they’ve moved out before he’s born because the last thing anyone under the age of ten needs is being around Aerys Targaryen.
——
They don’t move out.
Jon swallows his pride and any jealous feeling he might have for Lyanna and shows up at the mansion regularly, he agrees with Arthur when it’s time to organize the baby shower and whatever else needs to be organized, he’s there whenever he’s needed even if it kills him to be and from the way Oberyn looks at him it’s obvious that he’s this close to miserable, except that of course no one who doesn’t know would notice.
When it turns out they’re naming the kid after him, he bursts out crying and he doesn’t even know his feelings about it, but if that’s the most he gets from Rhaegar and from the universe, he’s definitely not going to be an asshole about it and he’ll appreciate the gesture for what it is.
At least, when the baby’s born, it’s obvious he looks like Lyanna, which does not please his grandfather at all - the things he says on the day they invite most of their friends to the manor to celebrate that both baby and mother are healthy and back home make Jon’s skin crawl, but he says them under his breath and Rhaegar doesn’t hear them, and Jon vows to keep his eyes open.
“Er, I didn’t want to ask them,” he asks Oberyn later, when they’re out on the balcony for a cigarette, “but do you know why it’s just us and Rhaegar’s relatives and not Lyanna’s?”
Oberyn shrugs and shakes his head. “I think that business operation went awry after Stark’s daughter eloped with him. They aren’t in good relations. I mean, if I’m not wrong her brother got married a bit after she and Rhaegar did, but she didn’t attend.”
“That - doesn’t sound too great,” Jon says, exhaling smoke into the cold air. He really needs to quit.
“Don’t you tell me,” Oberyn shrugs, “where I come from, this kinda thing doesn’t fly. But what do I know. We’ll see how it goes.”
“Fair enough.”
“And are you sure you don’t want me to introduce you to a couple friends -”
“No,” he immediately says. “I - I wouldn’t really be great company right now. I’m fine. If I need to get laid you’ll be the first to know.”
“Fair, as well. But - Jon, really, if I can give you a piece of advice… I’d try to get over him. I know it’s hard, but you also know it wasn’t him and whatever the universe is telling you, you can’t be miserable all your life because he wasn’t - he wasn’t.”
“I know,” Jon tells him, and - he does. He really does.
But he’s been in love with Rhaegar for years.
And it’s hard to just let that go.
——
Turns out: they should have moved out.
As much as Jon would like to say otherwise and as much as a part of him would like to deny it, neither of them was ready for kids and it shows by how much he ends up babysitting his namesake after he decides that he can’t handle company business anymore and that if he has to hate his life he might as well not hate his job and he sells his share to his father’s business associates with the deal that he still gets a percentage of the incomes and he gets to keep what money he earned until now. That means he can finally spend some time doing counseling at the support center and organizing rallies or fundraisers and so on without worrying about corporate business and stock transactions, and it also means that of course he is the designated friend to leave the kid with.
Turns out, he’s actually good with children.
He keeps on thinking that the universe really, really hates him - of course he’s good with them, or at least this one, and of course he’s into men and it’s a miracle that now you can’t be fired for being into the same sex anymore, as if he’ll ever have any of his own.
That’s not the point, though. The point is that his namesake tends to not speak much even after he starts to (later than he should have, Jon has checked it), and while he always is fairly quiet by the time he’s four and he barely makes any noise whenever they drop him at his place, Jon starts thinking something’s not quite right.
He kind of doesn’t want to ask, but then he does, and when he’s calmly told something that basically amounts to Aerys gets mad if he notices that kid is there at all, he wants to punch a wall.
And if the kid’s entirely aware of that at four -
He tries to breach the subject with Rhaegar, but what he gets in return is a shrug and the pediatrician said that it’s normal that they might be quieter than usual until they go to school, and I know Father’s what he is, but he’s better if the entire family’s around. Lyanna, as far as she’s concerned, is - well, she just enrolled for a PhD and apparently her academical career is being brilliant and the fact that she and Rhaegar don’t feel obliged to be with each other means that they’re still having a mutually beneficial relationship or whatever, but she doesn’t really seems cut for kids, and it’s probably not her fault, but -
Listen, Jon is still trying to get over the fact that he barely managed to not scream at Rhaegar when he said they had unprotected sex, he just thinks that if you want children you should be somewhat more responsible about it, or you shouldn’t have them. Sure as hell the poor kid would rather not live with his grandfather than being the living proof that you can have children and a profitable relationship with you both don’t have soul marks. Never mind that a lot of the people he’s met through the years had either ignored theirs and a few didn’t have them, either, and they were better parents than that if they had children, so he has a distinct feeling that it wasn’t about proving a point at all.
He calls Oberyn, again. For all that he and Ellaria are open, sure as hell he’s raising kids who don’t flinch if they make noise.
“Listen,” he asks him, “did you say Lyanna Stark had a brother who got married around the time she had?”
“Yeah,” Oberyn tells him, “the only one in the family who’s not in the business.”
“Why, what does he do?”
“He’s with the Yard. Why?”
“Because I have a feeling Rhaegar’s kid could absolutely benefit from spending time with relatives who don’t want to smite him out of existence if they so much notice he’s there, so unless she has bad relations with this one brother -”
“Well,” Oberyn says, “from what I heard, he’s not in great relations with Brandon Stark for some reason I never knew, but he and Lyanna do have lunch together once per month or something of the kind.”
Jon knows that this is going to possibly ruin things between him and Rhaegar for good, and he’s going to suffer for it, and he shouldn’t overstep his boundaries, but -
Someone in here has to be a responsible adult, damn it.
“Can you find me Stark’s number?” He asks.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Do we all want this kid to grow up completely fucking paranoid about anything he does?”
“… Put it like that. I’ll find you that number.”
——
Thing is -
He had expected them to get angry.
When instead both Rhaegar and Lyanna end up thanking him because they had realized it was a bad situation but they didn’t know how to approach it and she didn’t want to ask such a thing of her brother when his wife’s expecting their second child and Rhaegar agreed that it was the best solution for everyone if Jon actually stayed with Lyanna’s brother, he puts on a practiced smile and says he’s glad it all ended for the best.
Inside, he’s asking himself, why did you even have children if you both weren’t ready for it, but he doesn’t voice that because really, it’d be useless.
At least he did it before Aerys could traumatize that poor child for life.
——
That evening, he spends a full minute staring at that black trout inked on his arm, right where Rhaegar’s name used to be. It’s still black.
Fair enough. He figures it just - wasn’t meant to be.
Whoever this person is, he hopes they found someone - after all, he seems to have a knack for matching with people who won’t match with him. But he’s lived until now and he’ll live.
It could have been a lot worse. He could have found out later than he actually did, after all.
