#first words

The baby gurgled, the first words bubbling up from their tiny mouth in a way that made Aventurine's heart stutter in his chest.

"Dada..."

His breath hitched. It was a single word, but it held so much meaning. He had been waiting for this moment for what felt like an eternity, never quite knowing how much it would shake him to hear. His lips curved into the faintest of smiles, one that only those who knew him best would ever witness.

"Did you hear that?" he whispered, though the baby was already asleep. He could have sworn the world had momentarily stopped just to let him bask in the miracle of this sound. There was no strategic calculation, no manipulation of circumstances; just pure, unrefined love. The thought that his baby had chosen him, of all people, to be the first to say such a word filled him with a warmth he didn’t often show.

Aventurine carefully reached over and placed a hand on the crib, gently stroking the baby’s tiny hand. He felt the overwhelming desire to protect them, to ensure that they would never have to face the brutal world he had lived in.

"You're mine now, little one. I’ll make sure the world plays by your rules." he whispered softly, his voice laced with love.

He leaned back, taking a deep breath, feeling the weight of this moment settle into his bones. Aventurine, the master of manipulation, was nothing more than a father in this room—vulnerable, unguarded, and completely enchanted by the simple sound of "Dada."

Sunday had never been one to show much emotion outwardly, his calm and composed demeanor always masking the storm of thoughts beneath. But now, as he sat on the edge of the bed, his golden eyes locked on his baby, his chest tightened in a way that he couldn't explain. He was a man of ideals, of lofty dreams for the world, yet nothing could have prepared him for the heart-stirring moment of hearing his child speak.

"Papa..."

The single word was so simple, yet it rang in Sunday’s ears with the clarity of a thousand bells. He felt as though the weight of all the dreams and hopes he had for a perfect world, a place where his loved ones would never have to suffer, had finally taken shape in that single word.

For a moment, Sunday simply stared, stunned by the beauty of it. His hand, once firm and decisive in leadership, trembled ever so slightly as he reached toward his baby. His heart, so used to thinking in ideals and concepts of the greater good, now beat with a singular, overwhelming sense of purpose.

"You... said 'Papa.'" Sunday whispered, his voice almost breaking. His normally steady hands shook as he cradled the baby, feeling their warmth against him. For a man so convinced of the need for a perfect dream, this moment of imperfection—a baby’s first word—was more than enough to fulfill him. The world of dreams he had always sought to create felt tangible now, as though it had been born in that one precious sound.

As he gazed down at his baby, Sunday felt an unfamiliar surge of protectiveness. The weight of leadership and responsibility melted away, and he realized that no matter what happened, this little one would be his reason to keep fighting, to keep dreaming, to keep striving for a world that would never harm them.

"Papa..." he whispered again, feeling the word vibrate through him. The world he wanted to build suddenly felt like it could be real, because of this one small voice that would grow with love, light, and perhaps even a bit of the dreams he held.

Sunday smiled, a rare and genuine smile, as he looked down at his child. "You have no idea how much you mean to me, little one. I will always protect you."

Boothill had always been a man driven by rage, a cyborg cowboy with a heart hardened by years of loss and revenge. But now, as he stood in the quiet of his cabin, looking down at the baby in his arms, something had shifted. Something he couldn't explain.

His baby, wrapped in a soft blanket, gazed up at him with wide, innocent eyes. Boothill’s usual sharp gaze softened as he cradled the tiny form in his arms, his mechanical hand careful not to hurt them. The sound of the baby babbling was almost too much for him to process.

Then, it happened.

"Pa-pa!"

The world seemed to pause. His metallic fingers tightened slightly, but not out of anger—out of something new. Something tender.

Boothill froze, his heart skipping a beat. The world had once taken everything from him—his family, his home, everything he held dear. But here, now, was something that felt like a new beginning. The word “Pa-pa” rang in his ears, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had never imagined such a moment, never thought it would come in the wake of all the destruction and vengeance he had pursued.

"You said it..." Boothill muttered, his voice rough. His eyes, usually so cold and calculating, were now misted over with something softer. For the first time in years, he felt something akin to peace.

His gaze flicked from the baby to the window, where the stars twinkled above, endless and quiet. He had fought for so long, but maybe, just maybe, this little one was what he needed to remind him of the life he had almost forgotten.

"Pa-pa!" the baby cooed again, and Boothill let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

"Yeah," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I’m here, little one. I’ll be here."

It was a vow, but it wasn’t one made from the fury of his past. This vow was different. This one was made for a future, for a family he was determined to protect.

Gepard stood in the nursery, his large frame leaning against the doorframe as he watched his baby sleep in the crib. The weight of his position as Captain of the Silvermane Guards was always with him, but now, in this quiet moment, it seemed almost insignificant compared to the tiny life he had brought into the world.

His eyes softened as the baby stirred slightly, their small hands reaching out as if sensing him in the room. It was then that the baby spoke—barely a whisper, but enough to make his heart stop for a brief moment.

"Buba!"

The word echoed in his mind, and a small, stunned smile spread across Gepard's face. His hand instinctively reached toward the crib, resting on the edge as he leaned down, his heart overflowing with emotion. It was as if the weight of all his responsibilities had suddenly been lifted, replaced by this singular, precious connection.

"Buba!" the baby said again, their voice soft but filled with trust.

Gepard’s breath caught. He had spent so much of his life focused on the welfare of others, on the grand ideals of justice and protection, but now, as he looked at this tiny soul, he realized that this was where his true duty lay. He would protect them at all costs, no matter the challenges that lay ahead.

"Yes, my little one," Gepard murmured, his voice thick with emotion. "Buba’s here. Always."

He carefully scooped the baby into his arms, cradling them close. For the first time in a long while, Gepard felt something other than the weight of duty—he felt love, deep and unyielding. And as he rocked the baby gently in his arms, he knew he would fight for them, not as a captain or a warrior, but as a father.

~~~

Soulmates weren’t uncommon. Approximately two thirds of the population had them, and out of those, about half eventually managed to find their soulmate during their lifetime.

The people who had soulmates were easy to identify – they were born with irregular blots on their skin, somewhere on their bodies, in different shades of beige or brown or black. As they grew older, the blots formed into words; the First Words their soulmate would ever say to them while touching them.

Naturally, this meant that no one who hadn’t found their soulmate ever shook hands with strangers while saying pleasantries. You said your hellos and your nice to meet yous, and only after that, if both parties seemed to agree, you shook hands, and said something that was nice enough but that would hopefully set you apart from others. It could be your soulmate’s first impression of you, after all. And everybody knew that it was important to make a good first impression.

Billy’s ink blots formed into words when he was young, before he was old enough to read them. They were on his upper arm, right in his line of vision if he lay down on his side and splayed his arm out in front of him. As a kid, he used to fall asleep like that, tracing them with a finger and sometimes even kissing the marks goodnight, because his mother had told him all about soulmates and the words that would form and how they meant that he had someone out there who would love him, who would be his.

But when they started changing, slowly forming letters, his mother’s excitement died down. She stopped smiling, and stopped telling him stories about his soulmate, even when he begged her. Instead, she told him that not everyone who had a soulmate ended up with that person. That half of the people who had soulmates never found them, but were happy anyway; finding love and friendship and belonging with other people, no matter if they had words on their skin or not.

She also told him that she loved him very much and that he must never forget that, ever.

And then one day, when Billy was trying to play with the older kids in the neighborhood, one of them pushed him down on the ground and pointed at the words on his arm – only half-hidden by the sleeve of his T-shirt – and laughed at him. “Go away, no one wants to be friends with you. Not even your soulmate!”

He went home crying and asked his mother what it meant, and she finally admitted what his words said. Only, he was young, so she tried to soften the blow. “Go home,” she read, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Of course, Billy learned how to read shortly after that. And judging by how everyone reacted when they read his words, he wasn’t even surprised to learn that his mother had lied to him.

The words on his arm, written in dark brown that was almost black, read: ”Get the fuck out, no one wants you here.”

~~~

A soulmate is supposed to be your person. The one you are destined to be with, and who is destined to be with you. Meeting them is supposed to feel like coming home.

Billy learned early that he was the exception. His soulmate wouldn’t want to be with him, wouldn’t even want him around – and not only was it a truth for Billy to grow up with, it was also there for everyone else to see.

It made things … difficult for him. Things at home weren’t perfect. His father was an angry man and while his mother did what she could to protect her son, she couldn’t always, and she often got hurt doing it. Billy was a tense child. Tenser still, when his peers learned what his words said, and what it meant. Some of them teased him the way children do, pushing him around and calling him names. Others avoided him; some on instinct, and others because their parents told them to. Billy didn’t understand it until he got older, that they were afraid to let their children close to him because of what his words implied. Because if not even his soulmate wanted to be around him, why would anyone else?

~~~

And then his mother left. Left her abusive husband, left Billy, and didn’t come back – and Billy couldn’t help but think that it was partly because of his words. His soulmate didn’t want him, the people at school didn’t want him, and his father had made it abundantly clear on several occasions that he wasn’t exactly happy to be around him, either. So it made a certain kind of sense to Billy that his mother left him too. Even as he cried himself to sleep, missing her like a lost limb, he understood it. She didn’t want him. No one wanted him.

The grief turned to anger, which was easier to bear. He hid his hurt behind it, wrapped himself up in it, and pretended that it didn’t ache when people looked away when he met their eyes, or when they turned to walk on the other side of the road whenever they saw him coming.

The good thing was that the bullies stopped hurting him, physically, once he got angry enough – and strong enough – to fight back. It didn’t make much of a difference in the end, though, because he was still plenty hurt at home. But at least in school, he didn’t have to look over his shoulder when walking down the hallway. He just had to walk straight ahead with his head held high, and the crowd would part for him. He wore his words on display, didn’t care enough to cover them up with skin-colored tape like people his age had already started doing. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did. Everyone already knew.

(One night, with a pack of stolen cigarettes, he’d decided that he’d just get rid of the words entirely. So he pressed the lit end of the cigarette to the words, grimacing and hissing when his skin seared with the heat. He managed to do it four times, before he was crying and couldn’t make himself continue. The only word he’d managed to blur – not even fully erase – with red-hot marks was ‘here’.)

(The marks eventually healed into round, white scars on his skin. The text was still readable through them, but if one only glanced at them, now it kind of looked like they said ”Get the fuck out, no one wants you” – like, at all – and it was so poignant that Billy left them like that. He didn’t try to get rid of them again, after that.)

His father eventually remarried (a mousy woman without words on her skin), which brought an annoying little step-sister into Billy’s life. Her words – or word, singular – was a reddish-brown ‘Hello’ on her wrist; just about the blandest first word a soulmate could ever say to you. He laughed until he cried when he first saw it, but then she demanded to see his words, whatever they were, and the laughter died in his throat.

He started covering them up with tape, after that. But someone must have told her, because she kept her distance from then and on.

When Neil announced that they’d move halfway across the country, Billy raged against it. Not because he had much to miss in California, but because he wasn’t given a choice. He paid for that rage, of course, and in the end it was for nothing. A few weeks later he had to leave the sun and the ocean behind to travel to fucking Hawkins, Indiana.

He wasn’t dumb, though. He knew that this was a chance to start over. Mostly everyone covered up their words in high school anyway, as to not make it too easy to fake a connection. And no one in this town would know about his words, or what they meant. The fact that he was the new kid, had a nice car and came all the way from California immediately cemented him as one of the cool kids, and he quickly rose to the top of the high school food chain. But he’d grown up abrasive. Grown up scared, and grown up angry. He didn’t know of another way to be, and he was constantly afraid that someone would find out what his words said about him; that they would discover that whatever they seemed to like about him was fake, and that not even his soulmate wanted him.

So he kept his distance. Enjoyed the crowd at parties and at school, and let them admire him, but never really got close to anyone. Because he knew, deep down, that if someone got close enough to scratch the surface, they’d find out that there was nothing underneath. And then he’d be cast out here, too.

~~~

He might be in a new town, but he was still afraid, and still hurt, and still hiding all that under a layer of convenient anger. So when his step-sister snuck out on his watch and his dad smacked him around and sent him out to find her, he leaned on the anger like a crutch. Because it was what he knew.

When he got to that weird house on the edge of town and found King Steve – the object of a persistent and embarrassing crush that Billy had done everything he could to squash – with Maxine and a bunch of boys hiding behind him, he’d let the anger bloom. Pushed the guy down and stepped over him to barge into the house, fully intent on grabbing his step-sister by the arm and dragging her out of there.

And then Harrington – Steve fucking Harrington, with his perfect hair and his perfect skin and his perfect smile that was never aimed at Billy – had punched him in the face, and then pushed him away with two fingers on his chest and said those words. Billy’s words.

”Get the fuck out, no one wants you here.”

Billy had spent most of his life trying to avoid thinking of this moment. Because every time he tried, he could only imagine someone looking at him with disgust, or annoyance at the very least. Even still, the steely hatred in Harrington’s eyes took his breath away, as if he’d been sucker-punched.

He realized with a start that this was the moment. If Billy put his hands on Harrington’s skin and said something – anything – then Harrington would know. Would find out. Billy had seen the tape on Harrington’s chest in the showers, at basketball; on the left side, right over his heart. Whatever Billy decided to say would be the words etched on his skin under that tape.

He glanced down at Harrington’s chest for a second, as if he could see through his shirt and through the tape. See what was written there.

The ball was entirely in Billy’s court. He could decide how this went from here, and moreover – he could decide what words Harrington would have grown up with. The words that must have shaped him, the way Billy’s words had shaped him.  

The thought brought tears to his eyes, and he blinked rapidly to get rid of them. Thought of how his words had defined him from an early age. Thought of his mother leaving, his father hating him, his peers pushing him around or avoiding him. Thought of the look on Harrington’s face just now, determined and firm, standing like a shield between the brat pack and the perceived threat – Billy. The way he looked at Billy just now. Like he was a cobra, waiting to strike. Or simply dirt under his shoe.

Billy could get payback for all of it. Could grab Harrington by the throat and hiss out all the vitriol that had built up since he was a child and learned how to read the harsh words on his own skin. He could make sure that the words on Harrington’s skin would match his own; could ensure in this very moment that someone else would have grown up feeling as worthless and unloved as Billy had.

Or he could … not.

His hand shot out and he grabbed Harrington’s wrist, hard. Ignored the gasps from the kids standing behind him, ignored the way Harrington pulled at his grip. He looked into Harrington’s dark eyes and forced him to look back. Took a deep breath.

This was it.

“You are brave,” he said, voice wavering, “and strong, and the most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

Harrington’s eyes widened, and he stopped fighting against Billy’s grip. Went slack. Billy blinked again, against the way the world had suddenly gone blurry, and sniffled. Dropped Harrington’s hand as if it burned him. Took a step back, and spat, “You’re fucking welcome.”