hi i don’t know if you’ve seen this already but i saw it and immediately needed to show it to someone who would understand.
lowkey could possibly be warped into a soulmates tattoo au
look it too me a while to decide how to respond to this because I couldn't decide what joke I wanted to make but I eventually settled on making no jokes and writing this instead. and rest assured there were many jokes I wanted to make
The joke, Ushijima had come to learn, was relatively misogynistic. He had not been aware, when people had first laughed when they saw the messy, scribbling Miss Kitty faces over his wrists, that it was at the subject matter rather than the circumstances. He had apologized for the lack of professionalism, but in a world with shared skin, everyone was pretty forgiving of what someone might have drawn on. Especially someone who hadn't met his soulmate.
The rest of the team doesn't really try and explain it to him. Semi halfheartedly explains that seeing such a big guy covered in what is effectively a little girl's obsession is generally amusing to people - they're laughing at him for having to interact with the media at all. He, after all, is a big, strong man, and should not be around the cute little cartoon.
They make judgements on his soulmate. They call her Miss Kitty and make jabs about what kind of girl she is - she probably wears a lot of fluffy skirts, and cat-ear headbands, and pink and bows. He nods along with this, until he realizes that they are making fun of him - and his soulmate - again.
"Because it would be funny for someone like me to be with someone like that?" Ushijima tries, and Semi has to think about it for a moment before saying: "No, more like... it's cliche. A big, strong guy like you, volleyball superstar, falling for a cute little pastel chick in a short skirt? Well, it's just a little... you know."
The Miss Kitty obsession is weird, though. He tries to hide it not from shame or guilty - he can barely comprehend why it's funny in the first place - but because he wants to protect her. He thinks, maybe, if she is trying to connect with him over something that she likes, he does not want anyone mocking her for it. So he covers it up, as much as he can, when everyone else is around, just to be safe.
In the evenings, though, late at night, if he stays up that long, he can see it get rubbed off. It works quickly, the way they fade, so he can imagine the girl scrubbing at her arms until they're red, as if she's angry at them. He feels bad.
Maybe she is being made fun of. Maybe she is ashamed of her own interests - maybe she feels bad for him. He tries to make her feel better, by using a pen to carefully draw the cat's face on the inside of his wrist. What he gets back is a garbled, messy set of disconnected lines, and a question mark. That's what happens when someone tries to write words. Like a bad connection. But he knows what the poor girl is asking.
His care in disguising the marks are not infallible, however, and eventually they have to play on a live stage, he has to put on his volleyball uniform. He had tried to tell her - he'd drawn the little volleyball over and over on his wrist, drawing a little camera, trying to tell her that he would be visible to the whole world. He doesn't know how to tell her that they laugh at her, that they think she's stupid and immature and too feminine. That those are, apparently, bad qualities. It doesn't work, though. If anything, actually, they get even worse, almost as if she's daring the world to judge her.
He smiles at that - he cannot help it.
And he tries not to hear the whispers of his team. It's not so bad, actually - there are a handful of guys who haven't met their soulmates that have designs drawn up their arm, mostly hearts and other things - the four-leafed clover, a popular pictogram way of saying 'good luck' where words weren't allowed.
He knows the camera can pick up the weird little marks on his arm, he knows the announcers will be curious, and he knows, for sure, that there will be some kind of news article circulating in volleyball circuits about his cute little soulmate and her childish obsession. He hopes they are kind to her.
But staring or no, it doesn't affect his game. They manage to pull through with the win, and retreat to the locker room to cheer and celebrate and talk about going out for drinks. Ushijima agrees to go along, pulling on his street clothes and jacket and tucking the Miss Kitty marks safely away, but - there's a new one. He must not have noticed, in the heat of the game, that his soulmate had scrubbed clean a patch on her their skin, and replaced the Miss Kitty designs with a winking smiley face. That was new.
He hides it anyway, not wanting to deal with the gossip of his teammates, and hurries to follow them outside and take the short walk over to the bar that they liked.
It's a voice he's never heard before. He turns, frowning, as he lets his eyes take in the tall, lanky, rather odd looking young man, lips curled in a self satisfied sneer, eyes heavy. He is... weird, Ushijima decides. He does not hold himself like most people do.
"You are not an easy man to track down," he adds, before tugging up the sleeve of his own jacket, holding out his arm so that Ushijima could see the winking face on the inside of his wrist, the surrounding skin littered with fading Miss Kitty designs.
"You are not what people said you would be," Ushijima says, quickly, trying to reconcile the expectation that an obsession with Miss Kitty must surely equal a young, cute woman with a penchant for childish toys. This man was as tall as he was, and dressed down, rather lazily. Ushijima would not have guessed him to be his soulmate, based on that. "You're... you're the person who's obsessed with Miss Kitty? I assumed you'd be a woman."
"Ah," the man says, clicking his tongue. "Sorry about that one, yeah... How else was I supposed to find you? Everyone in the world is wandering around with hearts and clovers and pretty designs on their arms. I needed to make sure I could identify you, even from afar. And I like the stupid cat, sue me."
"I would not sue you over this," Ushijima replies, alarmed immediately.
"Wh-what? No! I just meant-" and his soulmate breaks into a cackling sort of laugh that Ushijima quite likes the sound of. He seems thoroughly caught off guard by his sincerity in the matter. He wanders closer still, and holds out his hand. "Tendou Satori," he says. "Thanks for giving me a warning about the volleyball game, wouldn't have thought to check sports coverage otherwise."
Ushijima reaches to take his hand. "Thank you for trying so hard to find me."
"Eh. Selfish reasons for doing that."
"I'm still grateful for it. I'm... on my way to meet up with my team, celebrate the victory... would you like to come? I have a feeling that they are all going to be very... very interested in meeting you."
"Oh? Well who am I to deny. Lead the way."
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