A/N: I found this soulmate AU idea on AO3, where whenever your soulmate writes something on their skin, it'll show up on you, too. I decided to try it out, except I decided to make it that you can't write things like last names or specific locations (because that would be just too easy).

Jake studies his arm curiously, looking at the purple ink marking his skin.

One of his soulmates has written down an equation on his left forearm, a string of neat, lovely cursive letters, symbols, and numbers that stretches from the bend of his elbow all the way down to the crease of his wrist. It's way beyond his high school math, more like the kind of stuff one might see on the blackboard of a physicist or rocket scientist. Finally, he leans out to take a black pen from the cup on his desk and writes underneath the equation: I've been staring at this fucking thing for forty minutes and my head still hurts. If you actually get this shit, kudos to you.

Not a moment later, he feels a tickle on his other wrist and peeks under his bracelets. In a different hand, this one quick and scrawling, new words in red ink appear: You kiss your mother with that mouth, mate?

Your mother, maybe, he writes beneath the red.

Children, play nicely or you can't play together.

Jake can't help but laugh a little.

With a pained groan, Jake flops down on his bed, feeling sore and aching in every last part of him. The old man had been too drunk to work again, so he's just come off a double shift on the rig, but he still finds the wherewithal to wriggle the fine-tip pen out of his pocket and write on a patch of relatively clean skin. I've come to the realisation that there is no difference between black magic and physical exercise. They both hurt your body and drain your energy, but the more you dabble in it, the more powerful you become.

He waits a moment, and without fail, he gets his reply, one in red ink, the other in purple.

That's the most inspiring thing I've heard all week. This in purple.

And underneath it, in red, I'll just stick to black magic, thank you very much.

He stares at the writing for a moment, running his fingers back and forth across hues of ink, before reluctantly heaving himself to his feet and shuffling towards the shower.

He thinks about telling them about himself. He knows how the soulmate bond works. He can't write a specific location or his full name – it'll only show up as an indecipherable smear of ink on his soulmates' arms, one of the universe's little 'jokes' – but he can tell them about him. About his work. About his four degrees. About how much he hates his life here and wants so badly to find them that it's a physical ache in his chest.

But he doesn't. Stubborn as he is, it's too hot in Oklahoma to wear a long-sleeved shirt in summer, and all it takes is one person getting a good look at his arm for the entire town – and his old man – to know. Instead, he sticks to writing random things on his arms, small things that he can claim he heard on the radio or read on a Snapple cap or something.

I've finally found out why it's goose/geese but not moose/meese, and I am very happy about it.

No way. Tell.

Goose is a derivative of an ancient Germanic word that undergoes strong declension in the pattern of foot/feet and tooth/teeth, wherein the 'oo' is mutated to 'ee' but 'moose' is a Native American word that was added into the English lexicon only about 400 years ago and therefore lacks the etymological reason to be pluralized that way.

Oh, baby, keep talking dirty to me.

You're such an ass.

You love it.

He does. It's a very unique form of masochism, he thinks, but it's better than nothing.

You can't write secret messages between person A and person B when person C can literally bloody see everything you write.

You can if A and B speak a language that C doesn't.

Wait, what?

Parlez-vous Français?

Oui, mon chéri.

Oui. Bon essai cependant.

Okay, smarty-pants. а ты говоришь по русски?

На самом деле я делаю.

What the actual hell is that? It looks like those buttons you never push on a calculator. No fair!

Жизнь не честна.

tuHmoH qem SoH wo'vaD.

The fuck is that? You have a dyslexic episode or something?

No, it's Klingon.

Dear God.

Seriously? Klingon?

Got you writing in English again, didn't I?

The inside of his mouth tastes like newpenny copper and heavy salt.

Jake winces as he holds a towel-wrapped icepack against the back of his head, accidentally pressing down on the swollen knot underneath his hair where he'd hit the wall, a sharp ache spreading down his neck to his shoulders. A bag of frozen peas rests over his other wrist on the table, and his back feels like it's made of torn up iron. The sound of his father's truck is still audible, rattling down the winding stretch of gravel path that runs from the house to the road, and he knows without a doubt that it'll turn left and head straight for Jawbones' parking lot. It's Thursday – poker night.

He drops his gaze to his forearm, to the scribbled conversation that'd started this whole shitstorm of an argument with his old man, red and purple ink in two different hands, and a surge of anger, hot and irrational, wells up in his chest, snaring in his throat until he's choking on it. Ignoring the fact that it makes his wrist hurt, he drops the icepack, goes to the junk drawer, and pulls out a black Sharpie marker. Able only to think about the taste of blood on his tongue, he snatches the cap off and writes across the red and purple words in capital letters, his hand shaking so badly he nearly drops the marker twice.

DO YOU NEVER FUCKING SHOWER? WASH THIS SHIT OFF AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!

When he's done, he throws the marker across the kitchen, hears it skitter under the fridge. The moment he does, he wants to take it back, to grab a goddamn Brillo pad and scrub the words off his skin, but he can't. Instead, he sits on the scuffed linoleum and stares at his arms in numb anguish as the familiar, comforting, loving words, red and purple both, fade and disappear as his soulmates wash the words off. When they're gone, only the stark black Sharpie left to mark him, Jake leans his aching head back against the cabinets and wishes the universe would just go fuck itself.

The radio silence lasts for over a week before finally, purple ink appears on his inner wrist, very small and shaky.

What did we do wrong? Please?

Jake stares at the words, tracing his finger along them as if to permanently etch them into his skin, and he wants to apologise, to take it back. But instead he takes up a black pen.

Go away and stop fucking writing me.

It takes only a few seconds, and the writing that shows up is in scrawling red, somewhat more tremulous than usual. Fuck you, too, mate.

They don't write him anymore.

Sometimes there's notes that appear on the backs of his hands, but impersonal things, reminders hastily scrawled so they're not forgotten. There's a lot of doctor's appointments in purple ink, which makes him anxious for reasons he can't quite put his finger on, and each time he sees it, his hands twitch towards a pen, wanting to ask if everything's okay.

In red ink, there's lists of times, dates, and blurred smudges that have to be addresses, all written in strings like some kind of code he doesn't have the key to. That worries him too, for a different reason, and then those are all scrubbed away, too, with a precise fervor that leaves no trace.

He never gives in to the urge to write back, to beg for their forgiveness, to ask for them to please love him again because without them his life is hardly worth living. He didn't think that he could be any lonelier than he is now, alone in a town full of people, but boy, is he ever wrong. He finds himself constantly rubbing his arms, longing for the tickle of a pen on his skin, but it never comes.

The universe really does have a fucked sense of humour. He means that on the sincerest, most personal level.

Because of all the seven-odd billion people on the goddamn planet, who else shows up at the Library – the magic Library, he's still not over that – but his soulmates? Both of them? He doesn't realise it at first, not with the ninjas and the flying sword and the magic Library, but there's something familiar about Cassandra Cillian and Ezekiel Jones, itching in the back of his skull. Something about the way Ezekiel has a smart-ass remark for every damn thing, about how Cassandra is so full of energy and excitement and a childlike wonder. It's not until he's standing right next to Cassandra that he notices it.

On the palm of her hand, in blurry purple pen, is a date and time for a doctor's appointment from the day before yesterday; it's identical to the faded writing on his own hand, shoved in his pocket. Maybe it's instinct or subconscious awareness of his soulmates, but his gaze flicks to Ezekiel, just in time to see the thief push his hand in the pocket of his trousers, thought not fast enough that he doesn't see a smudge of purple ink. Well, I'll be goddamned, he thinks in surprise. For a moment, he considers ignoring it, pretending he hadn't seen...but he's done too much of that for far too long, and they're right there, so close to him, just the way he's always wished and hoped.

As Cassandra turns away from him and Ezekiel starts up the staircase, Jake pulls a black fine-tip pen out of his pocket – he never goes anywhere without one – and uncaps it with his teeth, tugging back his sleeve a little so he can write across the back of his left hand: Found you.

Almost in perfect unison, Cassandra and Ezekiel look down at their hands, then turn to look first at each other, then at him. Still holding the pen cap in his teeth, Jake smiles at them, waving the pen a little. Cassandra blinks at him in disbelief for a moment, but then a brilliant smile he's never seen from her before dawns on her face, darting around the edge of the table to run across the Annex and fling her arms around his neck, burying her face in his scarf. He clings to her just as happily, spitting out the cap and turning his head into her thick red hair, inhaling the scent of her. Ezekiel is still standing on the staircase, one hand on the railing, staring down at them with the expression of one recently struck 'round the head with a baseball bat.

After a moment, Cassandra releases him and darts up the staircase to hug Ezekiel too, the Australian thief still frozen in place. Jake follows her with a little more restraint, reaching out to place his hand on the railing beside the other man's, their fingertips only just brushing. Finally, Ezekiel seems to recover from his shock, one arm going around Cassandra's waist as he smirks at Jake. "Universe's got a fucked-up sense of humour, don't it?" he asks.

"Certainly seems that way." He has so much explaining to do, he knows it, and even now he wants to fall to his knees on the stairs and beg for them to forgive him if they haven't already. But he doesn't. There will be time for that later, when they're safe and the Serpent Brotherhood is dealt with.

Cassandra reaches out to grasp Jake's free hand in hers, rubbing her thumb across his scarred knuckles, over the black ink scrawled on the back of his hand. "My boys," she sighs happily.

Ezekiel snorts through his nose. "So we're automatically your boys now?" he asks even as he slides his hand down the railing to rest over Jake's, and the touch is so warm.

"Yes," Cassandra replies in a voice that brooks no argument, standing on her toes a little to kiss his cheek as she squeezes Jake's hand in her own.

A small gasp slips from him as a tingling, bubbling warmth suddenly spreads up his arms from where his hands are clasped with theirs, a gentle heat curling through his limbs, easing away the remnants of a tension he didn't even know was there. It pools contentedly in his chest, wrapping around his heart and loosening the barbed wire that'd snared up there so long ago. He realises in a vague sort of way that their bond is settling itself, anchored solidly in the three of them, tying them together irrefutably. The other two have matching looks of surprised pleasure on their faces, and he understands why. Physical contact settles the bond, but usually it is intimate physical contact – serious make-outs, heavy petting, usually below-the-belt action. Not holding hands and a kiss on the cheek.

Jake curls his fingers around Ezekiel's wrist, leaning closer as if the bond is pulling taut, drawing them close to each other. Cassandra smiles wider and lays her left hand over Jake's and Ezekiel's, keeping her other arm draped around the thief. "My boys," she repeats, and this time, neither of them argue the claim.

He looks down at their hands, lying on the bannister – his, callused and broad, with scarred knuckles from years of physical labor; Cassandra's, small and delicate, with dark-painted nails contrasting against pale skin; Ezekiel's, tanned and quick, with slim fingers made for picking locks and pockets alike. Smudged black ink on the back of each hand, Found you, stands out boldly.

"Yeah, Cassie. Yours," he agrees softly, then leans closer and presses his lips to her temple. "Ours."

A/N: That really is a transliteration of the Klingon language, and it says "You bring shame to the Empire." If you don't believe me, go to Bing Translator. Dead serious. Also, I have no idea how to read or write in Russian and/or French, I have only online translators, so blame them if it's off at all.