A sound so sweet, of you and me - Lutteo

Prologue - Way before I ever called your name

Basic idea by this fic: http://andonewillbringhisfall.tumblr.com/post/148682735266/notahairoutofplacetypical-theinsidiouspitch

Updates: every Wednesday and Sunday, starting on April 18th

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First meetings

The teacher assigned him his spot.

It wasn't as much of a surprise to Matteo as to the brunette guy who now stared at him, completely frozen. Shocked, even. For whatever reason that boy – the teacher called him Gastón now – looked like a cow right before a car accident just because he had to share his table, but from his experience Matteo figured he'd get over it. (In two, maximum five minutes.)

Straightening his shoulders, Matteo walked up to the bench with the kind of smile that said Hey, sorry for interrupting but I'm not too fond of this either. Gastón shortly returned his gaze, a silent Whatever in his eyes but soon focused on the blackboard when the teacher started the lesson.

He silently sighed. Told himself to just get this over with.

Just like in every first class of a first day at a new school, Matteo took his brand-new pen and brand-new notebook, opened it on the first page and began to take notes. However, his attention slipped away like water dripping through his hands when he tried to catch it as a young boy, playing at an Italian beach.

It slipped because the teacher talked ridiculously slow, as if the words ran free in his head and they needed to be caught and broken in before they formed coherent sentences able to leave his mouth.

Second, it slipped because the teacher's tie distracted him, with the bright yellow and purple and the pattern too ugly to even find the words for it.

And lastly (and mostly) because his nerves tingled from a strange desire demanding him to talk to the boy next to him.

Usually, during a first day in school, it took him roughly two classes to find a suitable possible friend. Usually, always, and he honestly had believed Buenos Aires would be no difference. However, something about Gastón made him excited to get to know him, made him excited to sit next to him for possibly a whole school year.

When the teacher shortly left the room to get the copies he had forgotten in his office, and his new classmates started chatting, he leaned over to ask something. Later, he didn't remember what he even planned to say. Ask for a pencil? A tour through the school? Ask if this joke of a teacher always wore those bow ties?

Not that it mattered. When the name slipped across his lips, he knew.

Gastón.

His heart sped up. Fast, faster, the fastest.

For a moment, Matteo forgot how to breathe.

For a moment, his lungs burst from something he couldn't quite yet catch, something bigger than himself.

For a moment, his whole body froze like an iceberg.

When he drew air in, his mind felt sharpened and fresh, as if he took a nap and woke up to a new, better reality. Although the effect lasted only a few second, he knew his life had spun around with no return.

"Hey, are you alright?", Gastón brought him back to the classroom, to real life, "It was Matteo, wasn't...." He whispered but stopped right away.

His eyes widened.

The one. The one person he never had expected to find. His soulmate.

Gastón leaned closer. Automatically, Matteo mirrored his movement. "Do we have to make out now?", Gastón asked and in that moment Matteo decided he liked him, soulmate or not.

///

Two years later, Matteo still smiled when he thought of that day, the beginning of a friendship he had hoped and wished for ever since he got old enough to grasp the concept of soulmates.

The memory popped into his head again now, when Gastón met him in front of the school, a smile so big on his face Matteo was certain it hurt like hell. "Okay, you either had three cups of the Italian coffee I got you or something happened."

If possible, his smile got wider.

"Okay...", Matteo pondered, hand rubbing the skin on his neck for a second before he stopped, "What is it?" Still that smile.

He seriously considered avoiding his best friend if he kept on smiling that way. It was creepy, like he had found the ultimate pun and turned into the pun monster, no going back, stealing Matteo's will to live. (Perhaps he got a bit ahead of himself.)

"Remember that girl from photography class?", Gastón asked.

"You mean Nina, the girl you won't shut up about since a few weeks? Actually, since the beginning of the school year?" To his satisfaction, a blush accompanied Gastón's smile. "Nina, yeah", he admitted, then straightened his back, "She is my soulmate."

"What?!"

His vision blurred. Weakness sneaked into his knees, made him want to sit down. Shock might be the wrong word to describe the fear pulsing through his every cell at this revelation – it couldn't even begin to grasp the storm inside him. For the first time he heard of someone with two soulmates, or maybe – and his heart broke just thinking about this – maybe Gastón and him weren't soulmates, maybe they both imagined it and...

"Hey, Matteo, no need to look like you saw a ghost, I still love you", Gastón tried to cheer him up, yet a hint of worry slipped into his voice. "Really, you can relax. I don't feel less certain about you being my soulmate. Hey, who knows, maybe there's a second soulmate for you too!"

That managed to get a snort out of Matteo. "Don't be ridiculous", he spitted out, a bitter taste in his throat, similar to the gin he once sneaked out of his dad's liquor cabinet. (And never again.)

"Oh, come on, there are more ridiculous things. Like that movie you showed me the other night or when you dated Ámbar although you knew you weren't soulmates and she's, well..."

They entered the hallway. With no delay, Gastón changed, his sentence hanging in the air. His posture turned straighter, more confident while his eyes hurried through the crowd. Matteo would bet his skates that his best friend was looking for Nina.

"There's no rule or law that allows only relationships with your soulmate", Matteo gave it one last shot at staying on topic. (Even if Gastón had a point, dating Ámbar didn't turn out to be a good idea.) "I mean, if that was a thing, would you leave Nina for me? Or would I have to die a broken-hearted virgin?"

His friend failed to answer as he discovered Nina and his feet carried him over before Matteo got to add: "Yeah, just leave me here, a broken-hearted virgin! Leave me and my broken heart on the floor!"

Gastón ignored him.

"You didn't answer my question!", Matteo shouted, only for his friend to flip him off.

///

To Matteo's own surprise he never developed a feeling of jealousy towards the new girl by his best friend's side after that day.

(Okay, maybe a bit, but only during lonely lunch meals or boring evenings when they had a date night and when Gastón spent much more time with her than with him.)

Nina seemed nice, shy at first, but she made Gastón happy. Ridiculously happy. For mysterious reasons she also liked his puns, which meant Matteo finally had to hear less of them.

Life felt good like this. He had friends, a soulmate, a place to finally call home that he stayed in for more than just one year. These supposedly-heartwarming soulmate-stories in the media stopped bothering him. After finding his own happiness he had no need to jealously stare at other's. At all. Gastón was the kind of person by his side that he had been searching for his own life, the one friend he never wanted to let go of. Now, Matteo looked at the future without worry.

And then everything changed again when he collided with the moon.