Batfamily One Shots.

Searchlight

• 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐔: When you write on your arm, it appears on your soulmate's arm.
...

Title from Searchlight by Phillip Phillips

Trigger warnings for: Implied underage prostitution (It's like one or two sentences. Not graphic.) Manipulation. Pain. Sadness. Jason's death. Depression. Etc.

...

When you turn 13 years old, you receive the first message from your soulmate. And they'll receive your's. 

For Jason, it didn't happen. So, he figured he didn't have a soulmate. 

But people who didn't have soulmates were shunned by the community. So he had to pretend. 

It wasn't the only time he had to pretend. It wouldn't be the last. 

So, he wrote. 

Sometimes it was class notes. Sometimes it was poetry. Usually it was rants about the books he'd recently read, and how the movie adaptations failed.

And not once did he receive a response. 

It was fine though. He was fine. 

He was just... Fine. 

...

Ryland winced as he limped home from work, trying to ignore how each stepped jostled the bruises lining his back and arms. 

His client tonight had been more... Rough... Then he was used too, and Ryland new that tomorrow he'd be super sore. 

But, the show must go on, as they say, and if the show could go on, Ryland could too. 

Even though he was only 16, he'd learned a long time ago that stopping for a break would only lead to death. It was what happened to his older sister, after all. 

Feeling a tingling on his arm, he glanced down to see his soulmate had written another long paragraph of an endless rant about how their English teacher was ignorant and knew nothing about literature. 

Adorable. His soulmate was adorable. 

But he didn't write back. 

He couldn't. 

Who would want a soulmate like him? Living on the streets since he was 6, in and out of Juvie, someone who didn't even save themselves for their soulmate, but sold their body on the street?

No. He was a curse. He couldn't do that to whatever boy was his soulmate. 

He couldn't. 

He wouldn't. 

He just hoped his soulmate wouldn't hate him too much. 

... 

Jason was almost 15 when he found out that he did, in fact, have a soulmate. 

And he was absolutely positive his soulmate had no idea he knew. And he had no intentions of telling him. 

It was an accident, he was positive. His soulmate hadn't said a word to him in 2 years. Why would he start now? Especially this way?

See the thing about Soulmate Writings (the official name for whatever this connection was) was that it didn't disappear from your arm until your soulmate cleaned their's. 

And some ink just didn't come off easily. 

And Jason knew for a fact he wasn't anywhere near black ink today. Just red.