Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Egon has never really believed in soulmates. He has never had a mark, save for a cluster of freckles on the back of his right shoulder, and, despite all his research on it, there just isn't enough science. He's watched countless people pretend to find their "soulmates" over and over, despite all of them being frankly terrible actors. He doesn't allow the idea of having a soulmate occupy his already busy, extremely chaotic brain.

Even when Peter is going on and on about the girl of the day he's going out with and how she might be his soulmate, he's barely listening. Soulmates are stupid; he has more important things to do.

When he walks into Weaver Hall and sees Ray standing there waiting for him and Peter, Egon finally pushes the thought of soulmates and their idiocy out of his mind. He moves across the room, standing next to Ray and saying, "Good afternoon, Raymond." He knows there's no need for formality, but he prefers to treat people with respect and dignity rather than let his stoic face fall away. He would save that for when they weren't teaching.

"So uptight, Spengler," Peter teases, sidling up beside him. Egon sends him a pointed look, catching his smirk out of the corner of his vision. Ray glances over at him and gives him a big, dopey grin, and he throws him a rare smile back, ignoring the somewhat giddy, melted feeling in his gut.

Students start to file into the room, and without even a second thought, Egon is sitting next to Ray, and Peter is on the very end on his left side. Ray starts speaking, and all of his attention is on him as he stands up and speaks to the class. He doesn't even listen to what he's saying, just takes in how he looks when his hands move around while he's talking and how his hair bounces a little when he moves around and how pretty his eyes are when there's a spark of interest-

Wait.

Egon leans back, caught in his own turmoil for just a moment. He isn't in love with Ray, right? He lets the lesson go on, and he waits for the bell to ring.

-

"Shit, I'm in love with Ray."

Egon comes to the realization in the college's community shower at two in the morning. He's in the middle of shampooing his hair when he realizes how nice it would feel to have Ray run his hands through his hair, how nice it would be to kiss him.

And with that, he realizes just how in love he is. Holy shit, how did he not realize sooner?

Egon jumps about three inches off the tiled ground when he hears a familiar voice teasingly sneer, "It's about damn time, Spengler." His entire body is frozen; it can't be who he thinks it is. He rushes to finish his shower faster than he ever thought he would finish one.

Peter Venkman is leaning against the wall smiling lopsidedly at him when he gets out with a towel hurriedly tied around his waist. "How long did it take you, you idiot?" His eyebrow's raised, and Egon's gaping at him.

When he regains his composure, he takes a deep breath in and says, "Pardon me, Venkman, but I don't remember consulting you in this matter."

"Egon, please. I see the way you look at him. I see the way you take the seat next to him and stare at him during lectures. I'm a psychologist, remember?" Peter replies, like the smartass he is. Egon's absolutely and completely caught.

"I... may have feelings for Ray, yes. How long have you known?" he asks, and that smug bastard is smirking again, holding up three fingers. "You've known for three years? I didn't even know until tonight."

"Again, Spengs, I'm a psychologist. Please talk to him, I have been watching you both pine for each other for years and I actually cannot take it anymore, I'm going to spontaneously combust. And if you think it's not reciprocated you are actually an idiot." He starts to say that of course it isn't, but Peter cuts him off quickly. "I know you've never liked the idea of soulmates either, but you're kind of not the only one with that dumb-looking cluster of freckles."

Egon's looking at him like a deer in headlights, the words he had just said looping in his brain. "I... beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. He's got that same goofy-looking mark on his right shoulder that you do. Have you not noticed in the countless times that he's been doing shit with cars?" Peter sounds absolutely dumbfounded, and Egon wants to shrink into a puddle of embarrassment, shaking his head.

Peter sighs and says, "Holy shit, you are an actual idiot, Spengler. I'm going to go on my date now, even though I needed to take a piss. Thank me later!" With that, he walks out, leaving Egon absolutely floored (and confused as to how someone can go on a date at 2 AM).

His shock at finding out that the freckles on his back is a soulmark is drowned out by the absolute terror that, apparently, Ray has them too, He shakes his head, and after pulling pajamas on, he crawls into bed, trying to ignore the thoughts swirling around in his brain.

-

When Egon wakes up the next morning, Ray is wiping his forehead and holding a wrench. "Bye, Egie, gotta work on some cars!" He turns around, and, remembering his conversation with Peter in the early hours of the morning, his eyes automatically drift down to his right shoulder. He recognizes the spots immediately, and his chest fills with some sort of lead-like substance, but it's happy and heavy and warm. Ray is his soulmate.

For the rest of his Saturday, Egon studies his steadily thriving fungi, taking minimal notes. His mind is in a completely different place, stuck on Ray's shoulder. He has a soulmate. He never thought he would so blindly throw away science, but he's doing it now, hoping that it's real, despite how little proof there is of actual soulmates.

When Ray comes home drenched in sweat and grease is all over his face, Egon barely looks up, unable to contain all of the things he feels.

"You should have seen these sweet babies! They were gorgeous. One of them was a '57 Buick Roadmaster, convertible and everything. Red and white, and absolutely lovely to- is something wrong, Spengs?" Ray's voice is noticeably softer at the end, concern twisted into it, and Egon doesn't even know how to respond.

With a painful little ache in his chest, he shakes his head, saying, "Just a bit tired." His voice comes out more emotionally raw than he expected, but he clears his throat and hopes Ray doesn't notice.

He either doesn't pick up on it, or he's suspicious but leaves it alone, because, after a pause, he says, "Hey, do you want to go to a party tonight? I heard it's just down the hall."

Egon shakes his head stiffly. "I'm not very interested in parties," he replies, but when he looks over, Ray is giving him stupid puppy dog eyes. After a moment, he sighs. "Fine. I will only be there so you don't get injured or far too intoxicated."

Ray's face breaks into a smile, and Egon wants to go to a million parties with him just to see him smile like that again. He leaves his fungi on the kitchen table, yelling for Peter. They go down the hall towards the blaring music.

-

Egon ends up not only being there to make sure Ray's okay. He's too polite to say no to alcohol, so after an hour, he's had three cans of lightweight beer, and he's absolutely drunk. He stumbles over to Ray, yelling, "Raymond!" The entire world is blurry, and his eyes are crossed a little.

"Oh, Jesus," he faintly hears Ray mutter, and then he's being dragged to the bathroom. Ray is standing in front of him, his face waving in and out. Egon is more emotional than he's ever been, and all his senses are so extremely heightened, so he bursts into tears.

"Holy shit, Egie, why are you crying?" Ray says in disbelief, hugging him. He can't even resist it, and he can't hold back anything, because words start spilling out of his mouth before he can choke them back down with the beer in his stomach. "Raymond, I'm absolutely horribly in love with you and you're my soulmate."

"Wow, okay, that's kind of intense," Ray says, but it's more of a breathy surprised voice than anything. Egon breathes, and his chest feels like it just exploded. The floor is spinning, oh my god, the floor is spinning, he's absolutely shitfaced.

"What... mark? I've never had any soulmark. How can you be my soulmate if I don't have a soulmark?" Ray asks, but his voice is heavy with some sense of melancholy, and even in his drunk state, Egon wants to tell him that he's going to be okay.

WIthout even thinking, he takes off his shirt and turns around, hears the gasp from behind him, feels Ray's fingers dance across the dots splattered on his shoulder. "This... was a soulmark?"

Egon nods, and with a hiccup, he says, "Yes, I was confused when I found out. Venkman told me, told me you had this one too, and..."

He's swaying, and his stomach hurts, and his vision's going dark, and he passes out without warning.

-

Egon wakes up with a pounding headache, groaning when he tries to sit up. "Nope, you are staying in bed today," Ray whispers from next to him, and everything from last night comes flooding back.

"Oh my god, Raymond. I'm so sorry. Um, I..." For once, Egon's words are failing him, so he stops talking for a moment, collects his thoughts, and says, "Well. I can't take back anything I said last night, so there is no point in trying to deny it. Everything I said was honesty, but I do seem to deal with heightened emotions when intoxicated, which-"

Egon is absolutely cut off by Ray pressing a kiss to his lips, and he's stunned into silence. Ray grins and says, "I love you too, Spengs. I didn't even know that I had a soulmate, but now that I know it's you it makes so much sense."

His entire body fills with that lead-like substance again - honey, his brain distantly supplies - and he reaches out for him. Ray happily jumps into his arms, and they sit there, cuddling, and Egon's already falling asleep again. He places a kiss on Ray's forehead and murmurs, "Does this make us..."

"Boyfriends," Ray answers confidently, and Egon smiled softly. He couldn't argue with the sound of that. He's falling into dreamless sleep again, warmth pressed against him, and then-

"Finally!" Peter yells, and Egon groans as his head pounds, but Ray is laughing, and he can't find a reason to complain.

Chapter Text

2021, years later.

Ray is leaning over a desk, waiting for the next customer to walk through the door, even though no one ever does, when the phone rings for the first time in a long time.

When he picks it up and says his standard greeting, a girl who sounds about 12 or 13 is speaking through the phone, her voice garbled, and she's talking about the world ending, and then she mentions him.

Ray's brows furrow, and there's a pit of longing in his stomach, aching for what was, but when he replies, he's angry and bitter, and he says, “Egon Spengler can rot in hell,” letting resentful venom bubble over and slip past his lips, lets the fury spill into the speaker of the phone. He doesn’t mean to say it, and he most certainly doesn’t mean it, because Spengler is probably doing another experiment in the house he ran off to in Oklahoma, the house that he left Ray behind for, and he knows that he’s pretending that he doesn’t even care-

The unfamiliar voice on the receiver hesitates, and then replies, “He… died last week.”

Ray’s world shatters right there, and he almost hangs the phone back up. His heart drops to the floor and breaks into a million tiny pieces. His body aches. He aches. He can barely breathe.

He manages to let out a soft, shaky exhale, and his voice is talking before he can even stop it, quiet and broken. “Oh, man… No kidding.” It’s all he can even bring himself to say.

“Weren’t you two friends?” The girl on the other end of the phone says, and then he’s pouring out his memories to her without a second thought. He’s tried to forget them so many times, forced himself to move on when he’s still stuck in the 1980s with Peter and Winston and Egon by his side.

What he wouldn’t give to go back to that. He wants Egon to be with him again, wants to share boxes of Cheez-Its with him on the couch, yearns to invade his personal space.

But he’s gone.

Suddenly, with an urgency coating her voice, the girl says, “Egon Spengler was my grandfather.” The line clicks, and the faint dial tone is the least of Ray’s worries. He drags himself out of the chair, pulls himself towards the wall of photographs.

Picture after picture after picture of him and his friends, but most of them are just him and Egon. Ray’s eyes trail over the photos, landing on a Polaroid picture of him and Egon. He remembers the moment it was taken, the second Peter had put the camera up to his face. Egon hadn’t realized it was happening until Ray had thrown a hand over his shoulder and pulled him into the frame.

Egon’s glare is temporary in the picture, but his death is permanent. Ray will never see him again, would never even get to tell him that he loved him, that he still loves him.

“Spengs, you idiot,” he murmurs into empty air, his voice laced with thick tears. He puts his head in his hands, and he cries, letting himself unravel after years and years of aching, painful memories welling in his mind and his limbs and his blood.

He’ll never get to see that stupid smile again. He will never get the chance to hug him tight after not seeing him for so long. He won’t ever get the chance to tell him that he’s sorry for not believing him.

He holds up a mirror to his back, looks at the faded spots sitting on his right shoulder, and wonders how long he would have known that Egon was gone if he had just had the courage to look at his back. It hurts him so much to know that he will never be able to tell him that he was sorry. He longs for the spots to brighten again, and, his hand shaking, he drops the mirror and watches it shatter.

Ray’s shoulders shake with days, weeks, months, years of sobs. His emotions finally pour over the top of his own brick wall of repression, pushing through the cracks and seeping through his pores and into his clothes. His hands are coated with sweat and grief.

And suddenly, Ray is screaming at Gozer again for the first time in years, his body filled with lead and his voice raw, and he wants to strangle that stupid being for taking the love of his life away. He doesn't; he sits by and helps Peter and Winston while they cross the streams.

When Gozer uncrosses them, he loses all hope. The only person who would have been able to fix this was Egon, and he himself failed. And he died, trying to protect the damn world, and Ray hadn't listened to him.

Ray's eyes water as he turns his proton pack back on, and he turns to the girl he'd heard over the phone - Phoebe - and he sees faint lines, faint blue, and he can't even think straight as Egon pulls himself into a physical form right in front of him. His jaw drops, and tears start to fall from his eyes, but he forces himself to focus on finally forcing Gozer into that damn trap.

When they finally do, Ray has to stop himself from running towards Egon, who comes to stand next to him, and they're both crying. He feels the spots on his back, he can feel them being stronger, and he says softly, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

Egon just smiles sadly, and Ray has never felt so much regret. It almost knocks him over with the sheer amount of emotional force that barrels into his chest. He can feel Egon's arms around him, a ghost of the past and the present, and he melts into him, sobbing and sobbing.

Then he's hugging his granddaughter, and when Callie looks at him and wraps her arms around him, he's floating into the sky, and Ray can barely even fathom losing him again. He gives him a little wave, and Egon smiles at him and gives him a wave back.

"So long, Spengs," he says, but Egon is already gone.