Everyone knows how this works: you are born with a mark, a message written on your body. This message is the first words that your soulmate will say to you when you meet. There are many things that a person can say upon meeting another for the first time but there is no doubt that the words have been spoken by your soulmate because they will shimmer when spoken.

It's hard to imagine that for some people it could be something as simple as Hello or I'm sorry while others hear something related to what is happening in that instant. There are many things that a person could say when they first meet another, but Nico di Angelo has spent the majority of his time since the day he learned to read, staring down at his mark and reading it over and over. Sure most people do this, but Nico is not quite like most people, you see his mark reads I love you.

...

Nico was in his final year of high school and was one of the few in his group of friends that hadn't yet found their soulmate. Of course it can happen at any point in life, but with the majority of his friends already being paired up with theirs he felt a part from them, like he was somehow intruding on their time together. They had told him time and again that it wasn't anything like that and they had even tried to help him figure out the mystery behind the words on his inner wrist.

"Maybe they're a hopeless romantic that falls for you at first glance." Hazel had said one day trying to make him feel better after a particularly stressful day that had left him sitting huddled on the couch in their living room absently tracing the letters as he normally did. She had come into the living room and sat down next to him and had noticed his index finger following the lines of the letters of those three words.

"Maybe if they were drunk. What kind of an idiot just goes up to a person that they have never met or spoken to before and says I love you? What kind of situation would that even be? I swear I just had to have the dumbest thing as my mark." Nico said as he glared at the words scrawled there.

Hazel knew that those three words held a great deal of meaning to Nico, not just because of the mark but because of all that he has loved and lost in his life.

His mother had died when he was very young and she had been the one to teach him the meaning behind the words written on his skin. Then when he was ten their older sister Bianca had also died, the last thing that she had said to him had been those same three words. Furthermore their father since losing his wife and eldest daughter had cut himself off from his remaining children and became distant, neither of them expected to hear those words coming from him any time soon. Hazel herself understood how Nico felt about that simple phrase and did everything that she could to let him know that she still loved him without having to utter those words herself.

"You never know, there's still time left in the school year, what if it was something like reading lines for a play or something?" She wanted to be helpful, but even she knew that she was just scraping the bottom of the barrel now trying to come up with some kind of plausible situation for her brother.

"Thanks for trying; I don't really care right now. I think I'll just go to bed, I need to get up early for work tomorrow anyway." Nico leaned over and placed a kiss on Hazel's cheek before getting up from the couch. "Good night, and don't stay up too late talking to Frank okay?" He smirked at her knowing that she had a bad habit of spending most of the night on weekends talking to her boyfriend/soulmate over the phone. Nico liked Frank and was glad that his sister had such a sweet and caring guy to love her, though he did have fun teasing them both, but hey, what were brothers for?

Hazel laughed. "No promises, good night."

Nico shook his head as he headed for the stairs.