baris-thoughts

[baris-thoughts]

THE PITT 1.15 — 9:00 P.M.

[baris-thoughts]

I’m going to start posting my mavadi fics I scrapped. Most of them, I didn’t really know how to finish them.

Here’s one I started called Marked.

Mateo didn’t believe in soulmates.

Not really. Not that he thought they weren’t real. He wasn’t one of those skeptics who rolled their eyes and said it was all psychosomatic nonsense or government microchips or mass hysteria. He believed people had connections. Shared experiences. Chemistry, even. He’d seen it happen—between his mom and his dad in the old photo albums, between patients who refused to leave each other’s sides, between friends who always showed up at the exact right moment with the same right words.

So yeah. He knew soul marks were real. He didn’t think they meant anything.

Most people acted like they were the greatest cosmic gift ever delivered—proof that you weren’t alone, that somewhere out there was someone tethered to you by invisible threads and shared skin. For them, every new mark was a message. A clue. A love letter. They drew smiley faces on their arms in the hopes that someone would smile back. They scribbled song lyrics on their thighs, hearts on their knuckles, entire conversations across their collarbones. And they waited. Obsessively. Desperately. It sounded like a fairy tale. A nice one, sure. Poetic, even. But still a fairy tale.

Mateo found the whole thing exhausting.

Growing up, he’d see kids comparing marker lines on their arms, wide-eyed and breathless like they were decoding the universe one squiggle at a time. He’d hear the gasps in school hallways when someone developed a sudden nosebleed, or the giggles when a classmate woke up with “poophead” written on their forehead in mirrored Sharpie letters.

People made jokes like, “Better not get a tattoo unless you want your soulmate to hate you,” and he laughed along. Smiled. Nodded. Played the game. But he never gave it much thought.

Mateo didn’t chase it. Didn’t draw messages back. Didn’t sit up late at night staring at some fresh ink wondering who they were, what they looked like, or what they were doing when they wrote it. He didn’t scribble hearts or coordinates or poetic half-sentences. And he didn’t build his life around finding someone he might never meet.

“Do you ever wonder what they’re like?” people would ask him.

“Sure,” he’d say. “In the same way, I wonder what’s inside a locked box I’m never gonna open.”

It wasn’t bitterness. Not really. Mateo just wasn’t wired for fantasy. Love, in his mind, wasn’t something that was scribbled on your skin by someone miles away. It was something built—day by day, with effort and patience and arguments about where to order takeout. Something earned. Not assigned.

He dated like normal people did. He fell in love once, and it ended like most first loves do—awkwardly, with mutual apologies and silent bruises that had nothing to do with soulmarks. She’d gotten a doodle once on her stomach—a little blue wave—and asked if he thought it meant anything.

“I think someone was bored in math class,” he said.

She laughed. That was one of the better memories.

So yeah, he got cuts. Bruises. The occasional weird red mark he couldn’t explain.

And maybe sometimes, late at night, he’d stare at a mystery scratch or a weird half-heart ink stain and wonder. Just for a moment. But nothing ever lasted. Nothing ever matched.

He figured his soulmate was either boring, unlucky, or didn’t exist.

And honestly?

That was fine.

Mateo had enough to worry about—nursing school, paying rent, making sure his mom didn’t overwork herself back in Carolina. Surviving twelve-hour shifts without throwing up in the supply closet. He didn’t have the luxury of dreaming about destiny. He didn’t need to be mooning over mystery scars.

Besides, it was always the same story. His friends would get hopeful over a birthmark or a shared freckle. They’d fall in love with a bruise and get their hearts broken when it faded. Soulmates were a gamble. And Mateo didn’t play games he couldn’t afford to lose.

Then came the hospital. Residency. Long nights. Bright lights. Lives in his hands. Still, no soulmarks meant anything.

Until Victoria Javadi.

Before he even met her, he heard she’d fainted.

Not exactly rare in the ER, especially among med students on their first rotations. Most showed up in spotless sneakers and crisp scrubs, wide-eyed and jittery until the adrenaline kicked in. She looked the part. Spoke the part. Did everything right.

And then she collapsed.

Dropped like a stone—slammed to the ground beside a “leg” that looked like it had been fed through an industrial shredder. She crumpled on impact, and when she came to, she sat bolt upright, like sheer posture could erase what had just happened.

The nickname came quickly, courtesy of Santos: Crash.

She hated it.

But she earned her redemption during Pittfest. Trusted her instincts. Stood up to her mother. Came back a few days later with a tighter ponytail and tighter posture, pretending she wasn’t running on fumes. She took the teasing with a thin-lipped smile, eyes glassy but unyielding making it clear she'd rather die than go down like that again.

Mateo found himself watching her. Not in a creepy way. Just... curious.

She was young. Brilliant. Ridiculously overprepared in the way people were when they had something to prove. She asked smart questions. Took meticulous notes. Got flustered when he teased her about the alphabetized highlighter collection in her coat pocket.

She looked at him like she was trying not to. Like noticing him was a problem she hadn’t yet figured out how to solve.

It was endearing.

He didn’t push.

Mateo had a rule: don’t date people at work. Especially not skittish med students with obvious crushes and famous last names.

But he noticed things.

The pen lines, for one.

Little doodles on her palm in green ink. “Breathe” written in blocky letters near her thumb. Tiny flowers curled at her wrist like ivy. Once, she had a quote from The Little Prince across the back of her hand, already fading by noon. She chewed her pen caps and sketched like she was trying to write reminders to herself in a language only she understood—something coded, something private. Like her thoughts were spilling out, and ink was the only way she could keep them from vanishing completely.

He never asked her about them. It felt too personal. Like asking why someone talks in their sleep, or what they dream about. But he noticed. Every day, something new bloomed on her skin—stars, hearts, constellations, strange symbols that made him want to Google runes just to see if they meant anything.

Then, later that week, he found matching ink smudges on his hand.

Just a faint green streak near his wrist, like a brush of ivy that hadn’t been there earlier. He rubbed it absentmindedly, thinking it might be from a leaky pen at work. But it didn’t come off right away. And the skin underneath tingled—just slightly. Enough to notice.

It could’ve been a coincidence. Could’ve been a shared workspace, or the kind of everyday transfer of ink and smudge that happens when two people sit close enough, long enough. But something itched under his skin. Not painfully. Not even uncomfortably. Just… enough.

He started keeping track, though he never admitted it out loud. Not even to himself. Just a mental tally. Quiet observations.

When she drew a sunflower behind her ear, one appeared on the inside of his elbow the next day. Faint. Delicate. Like a whisper of ink. When she doodled a crooked star near her knuckle, his thumb tingled all afternoon. He scrubbed his hands in the break room bathroom, with harsh soap and hot water. The mark didn’t come off.

Still, he said nothing.

He told himself it was absurd. Impossible. Magical thinking, or maybe sleep deprivation. But part of him waited for it now. Watched her fingers, the way she idly twisted her pen between them. The way she tapped it against her lips before she started drawing. Each new sketch on her skin felt like a secret message he hadn’t learned to read yet. And each time something showed up on his hand, his breath caught in a way he couldn’t explain.

Soulmates were messy. Complicated. And Victoria? Victoria was already a mess of ambition and nerves, all tightly wound focus and trembling hands. She couldn’t afford the distraction, and he couldn’t afford the hope.

He let it go.

Tried to.

And then she got stabbed.

[baris-thoughts]

season 2 mavadi will be returning as an established couple i feel it in my toes