Chapter Text
Nick is trying to peacefully sleep his way into the afternoon when his phone pings with a notification. Normally he wouldn’t think anything of it, but the notification was a specific sound that he had set up just for the app SoulMatch, so he rolls over and pulls his phone off its charger. Nick had downloaded the app about four years ago in an attempt to finally find his soulmates, or at least he assumed there were two. His soulmate tattoo had two outlines, one of the sun and on of the moon and then a filled in star. Nick is guessing that once he meets his soulmates that they fill in their respective outline.
Nick unlocks his phone and opens up SoulMatch lazily, knowing that this notification is for yet another sun, moon, or star themed tattoo that does not match his. When the app loads he taps on the notification bell and opens up the notification and freezes. Staring back at him on the screen is his exact tattoo except that sun is filled in and the moon and star are outlines. Nick has imagined this moment for years now, imagined how he would react, but in the moment he is frozen in shock. Once he snaps out of it, he taps the green check mark for the first time, accepting that this is a match. The app opens up to a chat screen where Nick once again stares blankly at the screen. He has no idea what to say to this stranger that is his soulmate. He imagines anything would do, but in typical Nick fashion, he types out “so it appears we are missing our third piece” and hits send.
He stares at the screen for a while willing the person on the other side to respond, but nothing happens. He sighs and gets out of bed knowing he can’t go back to sleep now. As he’s walking to the bathroom he sends Rita a quick message to come over ASAP. Nick showers quickly then brushes his teeth. He goes back into the bedroom and tosses his phone on the bed while he goes to put on some clean clothes. As he’s pulling his shirt over his head, two things happen at once. His phone pings with another notification from SoulMatch and he hears his front door open and Rita yell “I brought wine, what’s so important?”
He ignores Rita and quickly pulls his shirt down and hurries to his phone to open up the response from his soulmate. There on the screen is a simple message and phone number.
So it would seem. Text me, that’ll be easier
Rita barges into Nick’s room at that moment. “Nick what the hell has gotten into you? I sent you like five texts- what’s wrong?” She stops as soon as she sees Nick just staring at his phone speechless.
“I found on of my soulmates” Nick snaps his head up “Rita I found one of my soulmates!” Nick jumps up and laughs.
Rita is in shock, she’s the one who encouraged Nick to download the app, but even she gave up hope for him after a while. “Nick that’s great. What’s his name?”
Nick stops at that. He didn’t even ask what his name was. Actually he didn’t even know that he was a he. Nick pales “Rita I don’t even know that it’s a guy. What if it’s a girl. What do I do then?”
Rita laughs at him “Nick, your soulmates are both men, there’s no way the universe would make you and then match you up with a girl. Have you messaged them yet?”
Nick shakes his head and copies the phone number over to a new text message. He looks at the number and pales again. “Rita this isn’t an American phone number. They don’t live in America.”
Rita sits on the bed next to him. “It’ll be alright, just send them a text. Introduce yourself and be nice.”
Nick contemplates for a moment before typing out a text then shows his phone to Rita. “How’s that sound?”
Rita checks it over and nods “That sounds good. Send it.”
Hi there, you gave me your number through SoulMatch. My name is Nick Grimshaw
The two sit and stare at the phone for a moment before Rita stands up. “Right, well there’s no use in sitting here waiting forever. Let’s celebrate”
Rita grabs Nick by the arm and pulls him up and drags him into the kitchen. Nick sits on one of the barstools and stares at his phone while Rita goes to the cabinet and pulls out two wine glasses. She opens up the bottle of wine she brought and fills up the two glasses then sets one on the counter next to Nick. As Nick is reaching for the glass, his phone pings with a text notification. Nick grabs his phone and quickly opens up the text.
Hi Nick, I’m Louis (pronounced like Louie)! I was hoping we would get to meet soon, but I saw that your number isn’t a European number. I live in London. Where are you from?
Nick almost starts crying “Rita, he’s so far away. He’s in England.” Nick starts typing away on his phone again, not wanting to make his soulmate wait.
“That is pretty far, I’m sure you guys will figure it out though. You’re soulmates after all, the universe would have you meet one way or another.” Rita takes a sip of her wine and contemplates on how to make this easier for Nick, but the situation doesn’t look great.
“I’m going to see if he’ll want to skype? Does that seem weird after just finding him?”
Nick looks at Rita but she just shrugs “I don’t think that would be weird.”
Nick sighs and finishes his message and hits send
I’m from New York City. I would love to meet you, but in the meantime how does skype sound?
After he hits send he realizes instantly his mistake. “Rita what if he says yes and want to skype right now? I’m not dressed properly and I need to fix my hair.” He looks at Rita wide-eyed.
“Ok, calm down. That probably won’t happen, but we can go pick out some clothes while we wait to find out.” She grabs their wine glasses and walks back to the bedroom and Nick follows while clutching onto his phone.
His phone goes off again as he sits down on the bed and Rita is going towards the closet.
It’s dinner time here right now, but we can skype in a couple hours if you want.
“A couple hours. He wants to skype in a couple hours. That’s doable, that gives me time to get ready.” Nick looks up at Rita “He says it’s dinner time there. The time change is going to be hard to work around for a while.”
A couple hours from now will work. In the meantime, do you want to just ask each other simple questions?
Nick falls back on the bed “Rita how am I going to do this?” He flails an arm over his eyes and the other out on the bed.
Rita kicks his foot that is dangling off the edge. “Quit being dramatic. You’ve waited years to meet your soulmate and you’ve finally found him, or one of them at least. You will both figure it out together because you’re soulmates and that’s what soulmates do. Now get up, let’s make a bit of food then get you ready for a skype date.”
Nick groans even more “Don’t call it a date, that’s just going to make me more nervous” He sits up and thinks for a moment then gets another text.
That sounds great. Let’s start simple. What’s your favorite color?
“He agreed to just ask each other simple questions back and forth. I can do that, that’s easy.” Nick types out a simple response.
Blue. What’s yours?
Rita just rolls her eyes at him. “Right, well you go fix yourself up and I’ll figure out what we can eat. Any preferences?”
Nick doesn’t tear his eyes away from his phone when he says “I think I have some frozen pizzas in the freezer if that sounds good to you.”
Green. Your turn for a question
How old are you?
Nick doesn’t notice Rita leaving the room, he’s so enraptured by his phone, but he gets and goes to find some better clothes and fix his hair.
I’m 28. You?
At that Nick stops and reads the message over again then yells “Oh my god Rita he’s only 28!”
“Age is but a number, you’ll learn that one day!” Rita shouts back
I’m 35, old I know.
Don’t worry about age, love. We’re soulmates for a reason.
Love. Nick sighs happily. He’s finally found his soulmate, or at least one of his soulmates. He knows that his life is finally starting to get towards what he wants, even if that entails a long-distance relationship.
Nick and Louis chat mindlessly back and forth for a couple hours and in the meantime Nick gets properly dressed in a casual but nice sweater and jeans, fixes his hair so it’s not so messy and happily eats the pizza Rita so kindly made.
When it gets closer to time to skype with Louis, Rita leaves so Nick can embarrass himself in privacy. What feels like had been days and only a minute at the same time, Louis is calling him on skype. Nick quickly answers, turns on his video and waits for the screen to load. When it does, his breath catches and if anyone were to ask he didn’t shed a tear or two. The boy looking back at him is absolutely gorgeous with fluffy brown hair and eyes as blue as the ocean.
Nick realizes he can’t stare too long without it being awkward so he lets out a nervous “Hi”
Louis gently laughs in response “Hello to you too”
They’re both quiet for a second, just smiling big at each other. Neither really know what to say, but it’s clear they’re both happy.
“So I guess we should get to know each other, right?” Nick is still grinning from ear to ear. He can’t believe the boy he’s looking at is his soulmate.
“I guess we should. How do you want to do that?” Louis has a gentle smile on his face that Nick can easily see himself falling for.
“Well I can go first I guess. My name is Nicholas Grimshaw, but you can call me Nick or my friends call me Grimmy. My birthday is August 14th, I’m 35. Uh, I’m a radio DJ in New York City. I was born and raised here. I don’t know what else, is there anything else you want to know?” Nick looks at Louis with a questioning smile, unsure and nervous.
Louis smiles back at him “That will do for now. I’ll go no then I guess. My name is Louis Tomlinson, you can call me Louis or Lou, my friends call me Tommo though. I’m a Christmas Eve baby, I’m 27. I’m an actor in a theatre company based in London, but I’m from Doncaster. England that is, Doncaster, England.”
“An actor in London? That’s pretty cool.” Nick feels like his mind is running a mile a minute, there’s so much to learn about his new soulmate that lives halfway across the globe.
“Yeah, well a radio DJ is pretty cool too.” Louis laughs a bit, “so, should we talk about the elephant in the room?”
Nick’s eyes widen, “What do you mean?”
Louis clearly senses his panic, “No, no nothing bad love. I just meant our tattoos, it seems like we have a third person”
Louis eyes light up and Nick watches as Louis pulls up one of the sleeves on his long-sleeved shirt to look at his tattoo, but then he frowns and looks back at Nick “I was hoping your star would fill in when we actually saw each other. It must only happen in person then.
Nick pulls up the sleeve on his own sweater to look at his tattoo, which still has the blank sun “Must be, yeah. Hopefully we can meet in person soon.”
Nick looks back at the screen to see Louis smiling sadly. “I hope so too. I always imagined meeting my soulmate and going on silly dates until we finally relented and just moved in together.”
Nick can faintly see a bit of blush on Louis’s cheeks “Oh, me too. I’ve been looking for you for so long” Nick rubs at his soulmate tattoo “I downloaded that app ages ago in hopes that it would speed up the process. Nothing has ever come of it and the I got your match notification this morning and was so shocked.”
“I only just downloaded the app yesterday. My friends have already found their soulmates so its been getting a bit lonely being the fifth wheel all the time. They finally convinced me to download SoulMatch, but I didn’t think anything would come of it.” Louis smiles thoughtfully “Guess I should’ve let them convince me sooner”
“All is well, even without the app we were bound to meet one day” Nick is still smiling “We do have a third soulmate to meet still”
“We do. Do you want to just keep the app and see if we match with him eventually?” Louis is looking at his tattoo again, rubbing the moon outline by the looks of it.
Nick smiles softly at Louis “Yeah we should. I’ve waited years for you, I’ll wait years for him too.”
At that Louis looks up “God, I hope it doesn’t take years. It’s going to be a bit weird getting to know you, but knowing we’re missing a piece too”
Nick scrunches his eyebrows at that at looks at his own tattoo “Yeah I agree” He looks back at the screen and smiles back at Louis “Let’s not dwell on that though, we’ve found each other at least”
Louis smiles at that “That we have”
The two end up talking on skype for hours just getting to know each other. They talk about their families and friends. What life is like for each of them, their day-to-day activities. They talk about their dreams and future goals. After a while Nick’s stomach starts to growl at him and Louis is starting to look tired.
Nick looks softly at Louis “I can tell you’re getting tired babe, what time is it there?”
Louis eyes dart to the bottom of the screen and back “Just gone midnight. I’m usually out around eleven because of rehearsals in the morning.”
“You should’ve said, I don’t want to keep you up” Nick worries a bit “Go ahead and go to sleep, can’t have you tired at rehearsals. We can talk more tomorrow”
“I’d stay up all night talking to you if I could” Louis smiles softly “I’ll go to bed though. Text me when you wake up, I’ll respond when I can”
“I will, there’s no getting rid of me now” Nick smiles
“Good. I’m glad I found you Nick, we’ll find our other soulmate soon, I just know it” Louis rubs at his tattoo “Have a good rest of your evening love. I’ll talk to you tomorrow”
“Goodnight Louis” Nick smiles at Louis and waves a bit then ends the call.
Nick lays out on his couch where he’s been sitting for the past few hours and sighs happily. He found one of his soulmates today. He spent hours talking and getting to know Louis. Louis. So bright and happy, but he could sense that Louis has a sassy side to him. Nick hasn’t been this happy in a long time. He can’t imagine how happy he’ll be when they find their other soulmate and complete the triangle. How happy he’ll be when he finally gets to meet them all in person.