The Soulmate System

7. Compatibility is Addressed Differently for Each Soulmate

"You look nice today," Bryce told Dylan flatly, his hands folded in his lap and his eyes staring at the paperwork before him the following Monday night.

A pause filled the air as Stevenson, arms crossed, stood by the door of the conference room, waiting for a similar type of reply from Dylan. "Matthews..." Stevenson prompted impatiently.

He sighed. "That shirt doesn't look terrible on you."

"Matthews."

The man in question sighed again. "Your work ethic is not completely – "

"Matthews," Stevenson repeated, this time firmer. "Honest to God," he muttered.

He groaned this time, this one more elongated. "You look nice today, too," Dylan whispered, dejected.

"Thank you," their supervisor whispered, who felt like he was scolding his own children, who were now grown up. "Now doesn't that feel nice? Behaving like adults and tolerating each other instead of squabbling like children?" Both Bryce and Dylan grumbled their responses. "That was rhetorical. I'm on the other side of the wall if you need anything. Don't need anything. You're grown men." With that, he left.

Neither man spoke; Bryce and Dylan didn't dare look at each other, either. Dylan had been reluctant in doing this at all; he only really accepted because of the overtime pay.

Bryce had accepted both for the overtime pay and to spend time with Dylan. 'He might be a pain in the arse, but this is the first time we've actually spent time together alone,' he reminded himself. 'This could be good.' But Bryce struggled in finding the proper words, which manifested itself in the form of him tapping his fingers loudly against the table's edge.

"Can you stop that? I'm actually working," asked Dylan about a minute later. He was tapping his fingers loudly against his laptop's keyboard.

Bryce lifted his hand from the table before it floated over to the paperwork beside him. "S-sorry." He dropped his gaze to the tabletop before finally whispering, "Thanks for lending me one of your shirts." He watched his dim Glow through his fabric, grimacing at how tight the Glow-Inhibitor was.

"You ordered yours, right?"

Bryce nodded. "Yeah. Thanks for referring me. I got a discount."

Dylan's eyes momentarily met his Soulmate's before he glanced back down into his laptop's screen. "Now whenever I'm around, it just looks like a Potential is near." Finally looked at Bryce, he frowned. "Now you'll know how I feel, with a Glow that feels defective."

The other man bit his tongue, mind flooded with retorts. 'Dud' was the simplest, but that seemed to jar him more than normal. Shaking his head, Bryce then grimaced. "What do you want me to do? It's been two weeks."

"I don't care. No one insults other people's Glows," Dylan told him, clicking aggressively on his laptop's touchpad.

Bryce sighed, turned back to the papers, and began mumbling something to himself as he read. "I wish you were a Potential."

"Hm," he grunted, flipping over Stevenson's notes he'd received the previous Thursday. Dylan smirked before sticking his finger into his Soulmate's dim yellow Glow. "Oh, wait. According to this, I am one."

Bryce was unnerved. 'I'm not sure if that was funny or dark,' he told himself, but shook away the thought and glanced back at his papers. "I wish you were a Potential," he repeated.