Soulmates? (L.S. AU)

The bracelets arrive on your tenth birthday- unremovable, and already counting down. Everyone has one. Everyone knows what it means.

When the timer hits zero on your twentieth birthday, you have forty-eight hours to meet your soulmate. No exceptions. When you find them, both bracelets begin to beep-loud, certain, undeniable. Love, in this world, isn't a mystery. It's a guarantee.

Except for him.

His timer reaches zero, and nothing happens. Hours pass. Then days. The silence turns heavy, noticeable. People whisper. He pretends not to care.

A week later, the beeping finally starts.

It's sudden, sharp, impossible to ignore. His chest tightens as he looks up-and finds the sound reflected in someone else.

A man.

Their eyes lock. The bracelets pulse between them, insistent, certain. But the world doesn't shift the way it's supposed to. It doesn't soften. It doesn't make room.

Because this isn't supposed to happen.

So they silence the sound, hands shaking, and walk away like strangers.

In a world where love is promised, theirs is the only kind that isn't allowed.

And yet, it exists.