as though we were separate things

“TwitchCon,” Wilbur says. “I came up behind him and poked him on the neck to say hello - Did we seriously never mention it?”Techno flips the cap off the pen, fits it back on with his thumb, repeats the motion, over and over and over until the pads of his fingers begin to ache. “I don’t think so,” he says.“Ah. Well, it’s not that deep,” Wilbur says, like a soul-bond is something that can be dismissed over Sunday brunch, or whatever it is they eat in England when it’s three in the morning PST time. “Phil’s got a little flower on his neck, now. And he bullies me over the placement. Like a fingertip isn’t the shitter end of the deal.”

Or: Soulmarks appear in the first place you touch your soulmate, skin to skin, and Techno just happens to live an ocean away from the people he wants desperately to believe are his.