Young Writers Society

As they approached the hotel, Kartiel noticed a major problem: Matt was going to stand out like a sore thumb. He had changed his outfit before getting a room; it had made him fit in with the other guests. But Matt didn't look remotely rich, and people were bound to give them curious looks if they saw the two enter the hotel together.

There wasn't a back entrance. He had checked that when he checked in. There was just the front door, which led into a lobby of rich people prone to every kind of gossip underneath the sun.

He pulled Matt into an alleyway a few buildings away from the hotel, quickly removing his hand when he saw the writing on Matt's arm again.

"The hotel I'm staying at is a high class one," he said. "It was the closest one I could find when I ended up here, and I had enough money on me for a room."

He looked Matt over again.

Yeah, he definitely needed an outfit change.

"If you walk in wearing what you normally wear, they're going to know something is off," he said. "I had to change my outfit before I registered for a room. I know some outfit spells - I can change yours, and then I can change it back when we get to my room."

Matt nodded, looking down at his bloodstained self. His sweat shorts and his t-shirt and the tennis shoes that had been white and were now red. Everything was red.

High class hotel. Changing clothes. A spell. Simple enough, really, and after Aeyis, it somehow wasn't hard to take it in stride. Maybe it should've been. It wasn't.

"Yeah, o-okay," he agreed, nodding again. "That sounds like a plan." A pause, then an added "thanks," almost as though it was an afterthought.

A look of worry flickered across Kartiel's face, but he hid it as he started to mutter the words to the outfit changing spell. He would help Matt calm down more once they were in the comfort of his hotel room: with a shower, with food and with the chance to lay down if he needed that to feel better.

The bloodied, dirtied clothes were exchanged for relatively high-end ones. A collared shirt - hiding the all too familiar greeting written on his arm - some very nice jeans and a fancy watch completed the look. It was temporary, and he wasn't sure it really fit Matt, but it was enough to sneak them through the hotel lobby without any questions.

"There you go," Kartiel softly said.

He turned back to the hotel.

"We can go in now," he said. "Just don't say much - I don't think anyone will ask us anything, but I can handle it if they do."

Mattathias only gave a short nod. Some part of him said there should've been more than that, just like he should've thought past the red that stained the clothes that were gone or the fact that it all seemed distant. The fact was that there wasn't, however, so he only opened the door for Kartiel and then fell in behind the god.

The god. To think that even that wasn't weird to say in real life anymore.

He followed him in silence through the lobby and into the hallway. The elevator. His gaze hung somewhere in the air ahead of him as he walked and he took in every detail just like he had as Nerezzar because it was the only thing he knew to do. Why was his heart still pounding at a normal rate? How could he not be panicking right now, when he'd just killed a man, a human, on Earth, and when he now knew that Nerezzar was still there?

He'd made him as fiction. That was all. He was only ever meant to be that: a story, a figment of the imagination. If he was supposed to be anything else he would've been a better person or at least a less aggressive one. He would've been anything but what Matt made him.

But he was what he was, and now he was a part of his maker, too.

He wasn't even mad. He wanted to be. To blame it all on Kartiel and to just cope through that anger but he couldn't. He just felt...empty. Afraid, perhaps. Something more that he was unable to identify.

He led Matt into his room. He didn't say anything to him - he didn't know if he deserved to. Being with Matt right now was like walking on eggshells. He couldn't tell if it was guilt or worry that made him feel that way. Even if he hadn't felt regret about inadvertently making Nerezzar a permanent part of Matt, he would have still been treating him in the same way. Matt seemed so fragile. He was worried that the wrong comment or action would break him, and he wasn't sure he could pick up the pieces if he fell.

"You should take a shower," he finally suggested as he closed the door behind him. "I can use a spell to make clothes that you're more comfortable with, too."

Kartiel was right about that, at least. “That would be great,” he said in reply, starting towards the bathroom. “Just...anything casual would be great,” he added for some clarification with a somewhat forced half-smile before slipping into the bathroom and closing the door behind him.

The water was warm to the touch and he watched as the diluted pink formed at his feet and disappeared into the drain. Did this Earth have non-humans, he wondered? How would that murder be explained away? The young man closed his eyes, trying to push those thoughts away as the water ran in rivulets down his face.

He didn’t know how long he stood there before he finally reached out and grabbed the soap, starting to scrub the blood away. The blood, the ink on his arm—

The ink?!

He looked back down, a faded “hello” still imprinted on his arm. He hadn’t written that. Who’d written that? What the hell?

He shook his head, turning off the shower. It didn’t matter. Not right now. That was a mystery for the morning. He snagged a towel and a few minutes later stepped back out into the hotel room with it around his waist, since the only clothes he had were still covered in crimson.

It didn’t occur to Matt how different he looked from the last time Kartiel had really seen him. The once-skinny, bespectacled boy had been replaced by a much leaner individual. Ever since his return he hadn’t been able to handle the weakness of his human self. He didn’t rival Nerezzar’s body—not yet, and likely not ever, given the draconian heritage of the latter—but it was definitely nothing to scoff at. He wasn’t ripped or buff, and never tried to be, but the well-defined musculature of a his abs and pecs was definitely noticeable, although Matt didn’t pay any attention to it.

Kartiel knew that Matt had been hitting the gym.

He knew that Matt still kept up some of the same kinds of habits that he had before returning to "normal" - he made sure to check in every so often, never mustering the courage to actually go up and say something. But every time that he had checked in, it had been after Matt had left the gym, and never when Matt was shirtless.

He had never expected that Matt would be so muscular.

There were probably more muscular people in the multiverse, but the sight of him shirtless brought an unfamiliar warm sensation to his cheeks. He cursed the warmth, cursed the writing on his arm and on Matt's arm - which he could every easily see when Matt was shirtless - and cursed the realization that the mechanics of this world might have actually been onto something.

Was he feeling this way because he knew that Matt was meant to be his soulmate according to this other Earth, or because he honestly felt that way about him?

...He wasn't ready to deal with something like this.

"Did you get a tattoo?" he asked, nonchalant, as he got to his feet. His cheeks were still burning, but he hoped that Matt didn't notice. Then he continued on, pretending like that single, traitorous word written in all too familiar writing was just an afterthought and not the most pressing matter of the night. "Do you want regular clothes, or pajamas? It's late out - I'm sure you're tired right now."

His gaze went back down to the faded ink and he shook his head. "No," he said, but didn't elaborate. "Uh...I'll probably be up for a little while, but some sweatpants or something would be great."

He didn't usually sleep in a shirt, and he fully intended to go to bed after he'd had some time to unwind. He wandered over to the small desk and grabbed the cheap ballpoint pen and tiny notepad the hotel supplied, tossing them onto the foot of the bed.

He uttered the words to a spell.

A pair of gray sweatpants took the place of the towel, but he made no sure to cover Matt's upper half. He knew that he should have, even if Matt never asked for it - he couldn't handle looking at him like that right now.

"I can't sleep, either," he admitted. "Ending up in another world is disorientating..."

Ending up in another world with you is disorientating, he corrected. He was used to things like that. What he wasn't using to was Matt being like this. He wasn't used to questioning how he felt about people, and wasn't used to feeling this way about someone he actually knew. It was usually just crushes on passing strangers in the different worlds he went to.

He looked away.

He couldn't pretend that he didn't know what the writing was. But he could pretend like he didn't know it was his, because there was no way that Matt would ever be alright with him being his soulmate.

"That's not a tattoo?" he asked, perching precariously on the edge of his bed. His clothes were still the same as before - he would head out later and ask questions about soulmates, just to make sure this truly was like the soulmates stories he had seen online.

He didn't give Matt a chance to respond.

"I heard some people talking in the lobby before I found you," he said. "They mentioned soulmates existing on this world. I think it's like the stories from your Earth - if you ever read them. If your soulmate writes something on themself, it appears on you, too."

He held out his own arms for emphasis, even though they were covered by his sleeves.

"...I already checked mine," he admitted, "but I didn't see anything."

The lie felt disgusting as it slipped off of his lips.

Soulmates? That was bizarre, but no more than other things he'd run into, he supposed. He glanced down at his arm again. "Oh," he said, sitting down cross-legged on the foot of the bed. "I guess that explains it, then."

He fell silent as he popped the cap off the pen and started to sketch on the paper. He wasn't sure what he was drawing as light lines began to dominate the page in vague shapes that started to take form.

He watched Matt draw for another minute before deciding that he couldn't stay in the room any longer. He needed to get away from him - even if it was just for ten minutes - and think through everything that had just happened. The bit of Nerezzar still in Matt was something to worry about now, but he also needed to wrap his head around the idea that this world had decided he and Matt were soulmates.

"I'm going to head out into the rest of the hotel," he said. "I'll try to find out more about this world, and figure out a way to get us back to our version of Earth."

He didn't give Matt a chance to speak - he just slipped out of the room, glanced around the hallway, and changed his form with a spell when he realized no one else was there. He didn't do anything too major, but it was just enough that no one would ask questions if they saw him again in the morning.

Short, windswept auburn hair in the place of his long black hair, and hazel eyes instead of blue. A suit that was similarly colored to the one that he was wearing before, but just different enough that no one noticed the similarities.

He went down to the bar.