have a little faith | janthony

chapter two: faith

cw: smut

A dreary Thursday morning found Anthony slouched on the sofa in his living room with a cup of coffee in hand. He had about thirty minutes until his shift at the cafe around the corner, so he was savoring the only alone time he'd have for a while. Unfortunately for him, that was disrupted just moments later when his roommate strolled through to the kitchen.

Almost all young adults live with their soulmates, unless, of course, they don't have one. When Will turned eighteen, no marks appeared on his skin, and no buzzing filled his mind. He was one of the unlucky few who would live unmarked, never experiencing the ethereal love of a soulmate.

"Yo Ant," he called out from behind the kitchen counter as he poured himself some cereal, "you comin' out with me tonight?"

A bar a few streets over hosted a club night for unmarked people every Thursday that Will would usually hit up. Some unmarked people like to date, while some think that love would just pale in comparison to what their friends with soulmates would feel, and wouldn't be worth it. Regardless, the unmarked nights can be a fun way to let off steam, and Will certainly thought his friend had been needing that lately. But as usual, his suggestion was met with a scowl. 

"Will, I'm not gonna have this talk with you every fucking week. I'm not unmarked. I'm telling you I'm not going and next time I won't be so nice about it," Anthony threatened. He took a sip of his still too hot coffee, and glared over the rim of the mug at Will, who was just rolling his eyes.

His roommate didn't care for his technicalities. "You're not unmarked, but you live here with me, you've never talked to your soulmate, you've never met your soulmate, shit man, are you even looking for her anymore?"

"Shut the fuck up!" Anthony yelled over the clash of his mug against the coffee table.

Will held up his hands to ease the tension bubbling over in the room, and padded over to sit on a stool facing a now red-faced Anthony. "Look man, I'm not tryna pretend that I know what this is like for you - "

"You don't," Anthony snapped back.

"I know, I'm just saying, you're a mess lately bro. All you do is sleep and work and then disappear for a few hours, even days, at a time. I just think maybe it would be good for you to kind of.. accept things, I guess. Especially if you're not looking anymore, and -"

"It's not that I'm not trying," Anthony interjected with an exasperated sigh, flopping back into the couch.

"But what if she's not out there? What if you're holding yourself back from living life for something that just doesn't exist?"

Anthony tugged down the neck of his t-shirt to reveal the word scarred across his collarbone. "How do you explain this then?" Will responded the same way he always did, with the shake of his head and a deep sigh. "She just doesn't want to let me in. I've tried, and I feel.. I feel something is missing, but she just won't let me in yet. I don't know why, but it's something. You don't feel that way, do you?"

Will could read the pain in his friend's eyes, and saw the same stubborn grit that had been there since the day he turned eighteen. Plus, Anthony had a point. For years he's been talking about the agony of this chase and Will, who was irrefutably unmarked, just couldn't relate to that at all. In any case, the word on his collarbone was hard to deny.

The first couple months had been fine for Anthony; he had his mark, and thought he was just waiting for his soulmate to turn eighteen and be able to reach out. All soulmates are born within a year of one another, with most having birthdays within just a couple months. Even as the timer crept towards that one year mark, Anthony was pretty much unfazed. Will had expected to watch his friend crash and burn on his nineteenth birthday, when he realized if he had a soulmate they'd have to have been eighteen already, but that bull-headed attitude didn't go anywhere. The word "faith" appeared across his collarbone, and Anthony took that word like law.