Yuki sits on the cliffside, legs dangling over the edge, swaying with the wind, feeling the warmth radiating off of Javi’s hand, brushing against the wet skin of his palm.

The sea is dyed orange, like the warmth of Javi’s smile, the kindness of his hands. The sun is dripping red, like the roaring flames that lick Yuki’s chest and face every time they touch. The flowers are tinted yellow, like the safety of Javi’s embrace. The stars are blooming pink, like Javi’s lips, his sparkling eyes, his laugh.

The two of them sit side by side on the cliffside, staring out over the endless sea.

Their voices break the tranquil atmosphere.

“Do you miss them?” Yuki asks, murmuring into the gentle breeze.

“I do.” It’s nothing but barely a whisper that drifts out of Javi’s lips in reply.

* * *

“What are soulmates mommy?” A hand reaches down and pats Yuki’s head gently.

“They are two people, intertwined by fate, who will love each other forever.”

“Where is yours, mommy?” She smiles sadly.

“He is gone. I… I let him go.” Yuki, younger, more naive, cocks his head to the side curiously.

“Why would you do that, mommy?” He furrows his brows. His mother laughs quietly, an underlying tone of mournfulness ringing in her chest. Her warm hand comes up to comb through his hair, and he melts under the gesture, just barely catching her next words.

“Perhaps you will understand someday, my son.”

* * *

The sun glares down at them with the strength of a thousand stars, and heat rises from the ground like magma. Lava penetrates Yuki’s pale skin and settles uncomfortably in his chest. Sweat glistens and drips from his pores, turning everything sticky and unpleasant. Yuki’s skin burns but despite the unbearable heat racing through his veins, he keeps a tight hold on the hand holding his own.

He never wants to let go.

“My home is somewhere across that ocean.” Javi’s chocolate, calloused hand, connected to a thin, bruised wrist points to somewhere far, far, away, over the horizon.

Yuki pauses and squints, staring out into the endless stretch of blinding, glistening water, following the line of Javi’s finger. Then, quietly, Yuki stares back at Javi, watching carefully as he stares almost sorrowfully at the thin line where the water meets the sky.

There is a hint of a memory, etched into those dark irises, perhaps of the terrifying boat ride with his hands in chains, perhaps of the rough voices of the slave traders talking above his blinded head, perhaps remembering a family living halfway across the world that he could never return to.

Yuki would never know.

Because somewhere across those hundreds of thousands of meters, lies Javi’s home.

Yuki opens his mouth, but he doesn’t know what to say.

“I see…”

* * *

Yuki walks down the long hall, passing Javi’s room when the sound of muffled sobs freezes him.

Behind the door, someone is crying. Javi’s familiar voice is choked with tears, and the cries are choked and broken. Ugly, snot-filled crying. The type that leaves behind puffy eyes, runny noses, and a heart feeling like lead in a chest.

Yuki’s heart drops and pain stabs like thorns inside of him as he listens to the suffering across the thick panel of wood.

Through the slightly open door, he can see the shadow of Javi’s figure, obscured from the bright white light from the window, hunched over the ground, something in his hands. Javi’s hands are clutched tightly over his chest, and Yuki feels a twinge of pain in his own heart.

Javi is murmuring something in halting sobs, over and over and over.

“Mana, Papa, hermana…”

He should say something.

“Joseph, Carlos…”

Anything.

“Mi familia…”

Instead, the door is an insurmountable barrier, a thousand miles, separating them.

Yuki shuts the door, Javi’s voice echoing in his mind.

Mi familia.

My family.

He walks away.

* * *

The light of a million stars shine down on them in the dark of the night, the waning crescent moon shading everything dark and dusty. All Yuki has to light his way is the guidance of the stars as they look down upon him coldly, and a pair of calloused, safe hands. Javi’s eyes sparkle in the dark like twin suns and stare at him with a warmth that Yuki has never felt before. Javi’s entrancing lips quirk into a large smile, dimples hidden in the shadows of the night.

Something explodes in Yuki’s chest, and he is glad for the darkness that covers up the heat that rises in his cheeks.

“Where are you taking me?” He asks into the cold night air.

“It’s a secret!” Is the excited answer that returns.

A fire roars in his chest, his heart pounds in his mind.

He’s falling, falling.

* * *

Yuki is at his desk, the early rays of the rising sun peeking in through the window when he hears a tiny gasp from behind him. He turns, a question on his lips, when he spots Javi, staring at a paper in his hands.

Tears drip like crystals, gleaming like diamonds as they drip down Javi’s cheeks.

Yuki’s eyes widen and he is speechless, out of his chair and reaching out an unsure hand in less than a second, wavering just a couple of inches from Javi’s face. Yuki’s heart beats unsteadily in his chest and he opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

His fingers are shaking.

The moment breaks when Javi reaches up a hand to his face and wipes his tears away and Yuki jerks his hand back quickly, awkwardly staring at the wall as the other composes himself.

“Sorry,” Javi starts, red-rimmed eyes staring at Yuki ruefully, pointing to a village on a map. “It’s just… I lived there.” His finger points at a speck on the paper, the name in a language across the sea that Yuki can’t even start to decipher.

Once again, Yuki can find no words on his lips that can even start to imply the things that he wishes he could say. Javi deserves to go back to his village, a thousand miles across that wide sea, and live his life as a free man, happy with his family and friends and job. He deserves to be back in a country where the language is his own, and he is no longer nothing but a slave, forced to follow his master’s orders. He deserves to stop suffering.

But Yuki is selfish.

He doesn’t want to lose him.

So he can find no words of comfort.

He doesn’t deserve to say words of comfort.

“Oh…”

* * *

The market is bustling with people, shopkeepers yelling over the din with prices, offers, deals. Foreign smells of spices and cooked meat waft through the cobblestone streets and mix into an aroma of foods from lands far, far, away. Yuki buys his usual goods, and then he reaches Kino’s stand, which holds just as much ink and paper as usual. He grins at her, and she grins back, twice as enthusiastic.

“My usual customer! Run out of paper already?” Kino yells excitedly at his face, and Yuki can’t help but laugh at that.

“Yeah. Drawings aren’t coming out as well.” He replies, and watches, amused, as Kino rolls her eyes and pats his shoulder.

“Oh come on, I’m sure they’re just as great as ever. Stop being so modest.” He scrunches his nose in reply, shrugging.

She gathers his usual stack of papers and starts to wrap them. As usual, she starts talking about random things to fill the time. And as usual, he tunes it out, but as she hands him his stack, he hears something interesting.

“I’m actually getting a chance to go to Cinoto to gather some new spices actually-”

Javi had lived in Cinoto, hadn’t he.

“Wait, Cinoto?” Yuki interrupts her, suddenly frantic.

“Yeah! Cool, right?” Kino replies, oblivious to the undefined feelings she has just stirred up inside of him.

Even as Yuki walks away, even as he reaches his house, even as he lies in bed that night, ready to go to sleep, he can’t help but remember that conversation. It circles in his head like a vulture, returning full force every time he sees the bruises healing on Javi’s wrists and ankles, every time he sees the tears that drip down Javi’s face when he thinks that Yuki isn’t looking. Every time he sees the map in Javi’s room with the red circle around the small dot, Cinoto. Every time he sees that tattoo, a beautiful rose inked onto Javi’s forearms spelling out ‘My heart belongs to the soil’ in looping letters, foreign to his eyes. Every time that he sees Javi’s face, his shaky smiles, his dark eyes, a dark, ugly feeling rises up within him.

It takes him days before he realizes what it is.

Guilt.

* * *

“How do you know who your soulmate is?” Yuki’s teacher lets out an exasperated sigh at the question that explodes out of Yuki’s lungs in the middle of their writing time.

“We’re supposed to be learning how to write…”

“Please!” Yuki’s teacher rolls his eyes.

“Alright, fine. Only one person in a pair of soulmates knows who their soulmate is. The other won’t know until they fall in love. The one person who knows will fall in love without question, and extremely fast. They will know their soulmate when they see them. No one knows how, but it just clicks. Like someone whispering in your brain: soulmate. The other person won’t have a clue. They might fall in love, they might not. But if the person who knows confesses too early, then they will never be loved back.”

* * *

“Kino says she’s going to Cinoto to pick up spices tomorrow.”

Javi stiffens, mouth falling open, an unidentifiable expression sliding onto his face. After a few awkward moments of silence that seem to stretch on forever, Javi finally manages to stammer out an answer, staring at Yuki with wide eyes.

“I-Is she really?” Yuki avoids that shocked gaze, fingers fidgeting under their sleeves.

“Yeah….” Yuki grimaces. “And I was thinking, you know, you could maybe send a letter to your family to let them know that… that you aren’t dead or something and- and… yeah….” He trails off awkwardly, not sure if this is the right thing to do.

There is a long silence again, and Yuki’s hands tremble behind his back. His gut twists in his stomach.

Then suddenly arms circle around Yuki and pull him close. They feel warm and secure against his back. Safe. Yuki can feel the up and down of Javi’s chest, each breath tickling the back of his neck. He can hear each heartbeat that pounds in Javi’s gut, and he can smell that sweet scent of earth and honey that he carries with him.

Yuki’s cheeks explode into red, and he feels weak, like he will melt into the ground.

Slowly, Yuki wraps his own arms around Javi as he feels wet tears trickle down his skin.

“Thank you.” Javi whispers into the crook of Yuki’s neck, his breath tickling the sensitive skin there, sending shivers down his spine.

For a moment they are not two, but one.

* * *

Yuki had first seen Javi in a slave-trading ring. The world he had been born into was one of slaves and masters. One of cruelty.

He did not agree with slaves, but he was nothing but a commoner, and there was nothing he could do about it. However much he hated the system, he was still forced to attend trades, so he was there. The day slowly passed in slave after slave dragged out and shouts of numbers after numbers after meaningless numbers.

Then, Javi had been called out.

And for a moment, Yuki had been breathless.

Soulmate! His mind had called out. Soulmate!

No. It couldn’t be.

But people were already starting to shout out numbers, and there had been nothing else he could do. That was his soulmate.

In the end, he’d won the auction.

He’d felt disgusting, slimy.

He’d bought his soulmate.

* * *

They walk down a trail, heading down to the lake, canvas, paint and brushes in hand. Yuki had been wanting to paint the lake for a long time now, and with Javi to help him around the house, he’d finally found the time to go. The sun peeks out from behind the sweeping lines of the mountains, no larger than the size of his little finger. An array of pale pinks and yellows bleed smoothly into blues and purples, the stars winking out as they disappear on the opposite end of the sky.

The shadowy figures of the houses slowly fade into trees as the path continues to wind its way around great boulders and small seedlings of green sprouting from the earth. Yuki walks gently, letting his hands swing by his sides as the great oaks around them start to thin. In front of them, the trees start to open up, and Yuki can’t help but quicken his pace a little, impatient to get to the lake he’d been wanting to paint for so long.

The soft golden rays of the rising sun illuminate a field of blooming pink flowers, their petals stretching out from the center like a thousand stars, facing the two men as if waving ‘welcome, welcome’. A dark shade of pink shades the middle of the petals, lightening into a beautiful, lighter pink as it reaches the outer edges until it finally gives way to a pure white. The wind brushes the hundreds of flowers, swaying them gently from left to right, left to right. The golden rays of the sun dye the flowers gold and purple, and standing among the field of these flowers that he has never seen before, Yuki can’t help but let out a gasp.

Javi steps forwards quietly to stand next to him, just at the edge of a field of beauty.

For a moment, they stand together, taking in the soothing world around them. The wind caresses them and the sun, spilling out over the mountains, hugs them in its warmth. They are lost in time and space in this field of flowers.

“Lilies.” Javi murmurs softly into the wind, voice so quiet that Yuki barely hears him. “I used to come to a field just like this with my sister a long time ago.” His eyes are soft, all walls completely down. Deep pools of nostalgia are reflected in that glassy gaze, and his eyes squint with such overwhelming longing that Yuki feels as if he cannot breathe.

“You miss home.” Yuki says. It is not a question.

Javi laughs quietly, sorrow seeping like blood from his voice.

“More than you could ever imagine.”

* * *

He can’t go back to the lake.

Every time he tries to pass that field of hundreds of lilies, tucked into a small nook of valley, they seem to stare at him reproachfully. They wave at him with what seems like not a gentle, welcoming sway but a sharp, condescending jerk. The sun glares down at him with fury, burning his pale skin, and the trees whisper gossip balefully from their place up in that high, high, sky. Even the lake sloshes against his feet, only murmuring a single name, over and over, spitting it malevolently at his face.

Javi, Javi, Javi.

He can’t.

He can’t paint the lake.

* * *

The guilt sloshes like acid in his stomach, eating him away.

It drags at him, pulls him down.

He feels like throwing up.

* * *

His next painting is made of nothing but illogical strokes of dark, deep blacks and reds and purples, his brush hitting the canvas with such strength and rage that he almost splinters it in half. The lines are dark and dripping with paint, soaking through the thin paper-like blood. It’s rough and dirty and the fastest, most erratic painting he’s ever done.

Yuki stands there, panting in the darkness of his room, his floor splattered with terrible, dark paint and his fingers stained a deep crimson. His hands shake and his heart pounds and guilt only weighs heavier in his stomach.

Staring back at him on the canvas is Javi’s face, dark, mutilated and filled with tears and blood and pain. It’s him, but it’s not, instead a horrible, evil rendition of his kind face with harsh lines of black. Dark bags of red hang under his eyes and paint drips from the canvas like wretched tears. Yuki’s breath catches in his throat and thick oil sloshes in his stomach.

His painting tells him with dark, dead familiar eyes: ‘You did this to me.’

Yuki wrenches his paint-stained hands up to his face, pulling at his skin, his hair, his eyes, black and red lines of paint ripping their way across his face with his nails, and muffles his guilt-wracked scream into the covers of his bedsheets.

* * *

Yuki runs out of paper.

Each one of his paintings shows the same thing. The same lines of black and red and purple. The same dead brown eyes staring up at him. The same gaunt lines of Javi’s face and the same purpling wrists that outline the chains that keep him from the world he belongs in, the world that he longs for so bad.

Himself.

He is the one keeping Javi from everything he wants. He is the greater evil, chaining his own soulmate to him as a slave like a monster. He wishes he could let Javi go. He wishes he was strong enough to pretend that he is okay, to smile as if it isn’t breaking his heart apart as he lets his own soulmate go for his own happiness.

But he is not.

He is not strong enough.

He walks the streets of the market, thoughts swirling in his mind rapidly in a storm of words and guilt and hopes and wishes. Javi is the only thing he can think about.

Always just Javi, Javi, Javi.

He stops in front of Kino. She raises a brow at his paint-stained hands, the dark bags under his eyes, eyes wandering over to the paint streaked across his shirt.

“The usual, please Kino.” Yuki says tiredly. Kino tilts her head, faltering as if she wants to say something, but ultimately doesn’t mention his state as she gently packs his usual amount of papers into a neat pile, tying it all together with practiced ease.

He hands over the money, but before he can leave, Kino finally bursts.

“You okay, Yuki-kun?” Her eyes are searching and he halts under her gaze.

He doesn’t want to let Javi go.

He can’t let Javi go.

But Javi, crying in his room, his sobs coming out in a jumble of ugly weeps, the tears enough to drown Yuki whole. Javi, with his rose tattoo ‘My heart belongs to the soil’. Javi, sitting in the field of lilies with such deep longing in his eyes, staring at the sea as if his gaze alone could bring him back home. Javi, in his own paintings, with tears of blood dripping down his face. ‘You did this to me.’ Javi’s voice in his mind, choked: “Mama, Papa, Hermana, mi familia.”

His mother, so long ago: “He is gone. I let him go.”

Javi, Javi, Javi.

He makes up his mind.

He takes a deep breath, swallows down the little, weak voice in the back of his mind, and makes a decision that will change his life forever.

However, even after he makes his decision, it feels like the most impossible task to open his mouth. The words catch in his mind, lost in a sea of other, selfish sentences he wants to say. He digs with shaking fingers through the tangle of words in his mind, struggling with the temptation to pull out a different sentence, any other sentence. Instead, he drags them out, those terrifying, painful words, trying to swallow down the lump in his throat. He pulls the words up his traitorous throat and hesitates.

It hurts. So, so, much.

It feels as if something is squeezing his chest, tighter and tighter. Like someone is pulling his heart out, dragging it from the confines of his protective ribs.

He lets a single tear drip from his eyes, unnoticed.

For Javi.

He shoves the words out of his mouth.

“Can I ask you for a favor, Kino?”

There’s no going back now.

* * *

Yuki stares at Javi, wanting to memorize everything. From the broad curve of his shoulders to the dark tone of his skin to the warm chocolate blazing in his eyes. He wants to memorize the silky, unruly hair that lies like a crow’s nest atop Javi’s head and the sound of his breathy, echoing laugh. He wants to remember the warm safety of Javi’s arms, the down to earth, sweet scent he has, the rough feeling of his palms in his hands.

Everything.

He never wants to forget.

He never wants Javi to leave.

And yet, he knows that it was guaranteed from the very start, when he had first laid eyes on Javi at that fateful trading center.

Javi finally notices Yuki’s gaze, and stares at him, eyebrows quirked.

“Is there something on my face?”

Yuki just continues to stare at him and feels as if he is drowning, something pulling him deep, deep underwater.

“No.” He says, choking back tears. “No, just thought I saw something is all.”

Fate is cruel.

So, so, cruel.

* * *

“Mommy, how will I know I’m in love?” A small smile.

“You’ll just know, sweetie. It’ll come to you.”

It hurt.

* * *

When Yuki wakes the next morning, he is conscious of every passing second, every moment seeming like the last.

They spend the day on the beach, and Javi seems pleasantly surprised at this break. Then, he doesn’t hesitate to throw off his shirt, laugh that beautiful laugh of his, and dive into the cold, salty water. For a moment, Yuki can do nothing but watch as Javi giggles into the foamy, sparkling water, eyes crinkling sadly as he remembers that today will be their last day, the seconds ticking down in his head like a clock, always reminding him that the end is close, too close. Javi’s laugh echoes up from down the beach, and the small gesture brings just a little comfort to his hollow chest. He may lose Javi, but these memories of him, on this beach, he will never forget. Now, these memories may feel like knives to his heart, but perhaps decades later, he will think back on this moment and smile. Perhaps he will find Javi again someday, in some slimmer of a chance of fate.

For now, however, he can’t help but feel like being torn in two.

Noticing that Yuki still hasn’t moved into the water yet, Javi pulls him into the water forcefully, chocolate eyes full of laughter, and despite the sunny day and the smile bursting on the other’s face, Yuki can’t help the few tears that slip unnoticed out of his eyes.

I love you, He thinks, smiling crookedly as Javi splashes him and he is met with a mouthful of salty ocean water. And I will never regret this, no matter how much it hurts me.

* * *

The sun is setting, casting great shadows over them, turning the water a brilliant pool of red, orange, yellow, pink, and they sit on the cliffside like they’ve done a thousand times over, except… Except this is the end.

Yuki’s heart is heavy. For a long, selfish moment, he wants to deny it. He wants to keep Javi with him forever, always by his side, and fall in love with him day by day. He wants to kiss him and hold him close; wants to spend quiet moonlit nights by the seashore, holding hands and digging their feet into the sand like they are children again. He wants to get lost in those mesmerizing brown eyes and comb his fingers through those unruly curls. He wants to curl up in that scent of his and hold that calloused hand forever and ever until they both age and fade away. Even then, he wants to find him in the afterlife and search for him, again and again, every time they are reborn.

But as Yuki spots Kino’s boat slowly making its way across the still water, acceptance sits like a rock in his chest, making it hard to breathe.

Javi, sitting by his side, unknowing, turns to him with a smile.

“What’s next?” He says.

Yuki smiles at him sadly. His mother’s words ringing in my ears.

“He is gone. I let him go.”

“Now,” He starts, standing up, closing his eyes, feeling them well up with tears. “Now, I let you go.” Javi stares back at him, uncomprehending, eyebrows furrowed and a question on his lips.

“What?” Yuki takes a deep breath, and it takes everything inside of him to stop himself from sobbing.

“I know you miss home, Javi. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, but every day, knowing that I’m the only thing keeping you here…” Yuki swallows, staring into those shimmering chocolate eyes one last time. “I decided that- that you deserve better. You’re the kindest man I’ve ever met, Javi, and you deserve to be back where you belong. I asked Kino, and she agreed to let you onto her boat to Cinoto. You’re… You’re going home, Javi.” Javi stares back at him, his eyes wide. It is obvious that he cannot comprehend the gravity of what is happening. His lips part and he searches for any sign of trickery on Yuki’s pale face, dyed honey from the sun, on his lips pulled into a tight smile, in his shimmering midnight black eyes. Javi finds nothing but painful truth. He parts his lips but finds that no words can even begin to describe the feeling that rises up from his stomach as he looks, lost, into the face of this man he has come to know so well.

“You- What?” Javi barely manages to choke out, mouth faltering even as it spouts out these short sentences. Yuki smiles, feeling oddly melancholy. He knows that later, when he will sit alone at the dinner table with food meant for two, he will break. He will cry, he will sob, and he will curse fate for torturing him this way. But for now, he smiles back at this man that he loves so much.

“You are a free man.” Yuki answers, and hands Javi his luggage with feather-light fingers. Javi gapes at him, shaking hands slowly taking the bags as if they are great, fragile worlds of glass, eyes straying towards the boat, waiting at the shore. Outlined by the beautiful light of the sun at his back, Javi’s hair shimmers like gold and his eyes dance like fire. His skin turns to honey, and he looks as if he is an angel, descending from the heavens. He is ethereal, in Yuki’s eyes.

“But… But I…” Javi stammers, staring from the luggage in his hands, to the boat, and finally back to Yuki, understanding dawning on face. Yuki can see joy lighting in his eyes at the thought of returning home. But there is a shadow in his eyes, some tiny voice making him hesitate.

“But what about you?” The question takes Yuki aback, surprising him in a way that makes his heart jump and the churning boulder in his gut weigh heavier. “Who will take care of you, and- and help you and drag you away from your art when it gets too late and-” Yuki’s heart breaks as he realizes that despite the freedom that Javi has just been granted, he still hesitates for him.

Yuki doesn’t deserve Javi, this kind, kind man from a world far, far away.

Yuki lets out a sigh, swallowing down the wail of agony that rises in his throat, and gently takes Javi’s baggage-filled hands within his own.

“I’ll be alright.” He reaches up and brushes a piece of those unruly curls behind Javi’s ears gently, reverently. Yuki doesn’t want him to leave feeling torn. He doesn’t want him to return home only to worry about some guy in a land far across the sea.

He just wants him to be happy.

“Just go.” Yuki whispers.

For a moment, they stand there, and their hearts beat at the same rhythm and they breathe at the same time. For a moment, they are lost in time and fate pulls them together. For a moment, Yuki wonders if he should tell him. Tell him that they are soulmates, that they are destined together, that they are a perfect match.

That he loves him.

And then, before he can say or do anything, Javi mutters a quiet “Thank you.”, and

He

Leaves.

It is only when Yuki reaches his house again, still wet from the beach, hands still warm from his touch, face still blank from the shock that Javi is really, truly gone, does it come crashing upon him. Dinner, not for two, but for one. A room across the hall not full, but empty. Not two shoes by the shoe stand, but one.

Only one.

An overwhelming loneliness comes crashing down upon Yuki’s shoulders.

Javi is happy, he reminds himself.

That is all that matters.

And yet, he cannot stop the tears that fall from his eyes.

He is gone.

I let him go.