Pink Paper Wristband
Fandom: Haikyuu!!
Pairing: Terushima/Reader
Warning: Mild swearing.
Soulmate au where significant words your soulmate says to you are tattooed on your body.
A bright pink paper wristband coddles your wrist. The line you’re in trails the sidewalks from outside the concert venue—the concert venue with its doors closed even when you all should’ve been in there forty minutes ago with your screams reaching up from the back of your throat and blending with everyone else’s. The line is colorful with all the neon clothes around you, and the line is like an exclamation point to tacked on at the end of the city’s name, the city that snaps awake at night and crashes in the morning with a vibrating hangover.
Just as you’re about to shift your weight from foot to foot again, just as your papery wristband is about to slide around on your wrist and let cursive letters peek out, the venue’s doors fling open.
The bar is in full panic mode. Debit and credit cards and whatever other kind of cards, all plastic, tap against the wooden bar as drinks fly to waiting hands that cradle them. Biting your lip, you peer above a row of heads between you and the bar. The colorful spectrum of drinks (some look like a pink evening sky, others clearer and straight to the point) are launched to waiting hands that cradle them.
Throbbing music from the DJ on stage slinks its way over to you and convulses through your body. Everything from the songs are lost but the rhythmic beat ricocheting off the walls. And swallowing you. It does that too.
“Hey!” His voice spears through the rows of people crowding the bar. Your eyes stay locked on the drinks skirting around. Could’ve been talking to anyone.
A finger hurriedly taps on your shoulder, and when you turn your head to glance at whoever’s doing it, eyebrows furrowed, your eyes are hit by a blinding orange jacket that makes you blink.
“Yeah?” Your shout must sprint and dodge the music trying to eat it up, because he smiles, dyed blond hair slicked back with a strand hanging down in front. His grin is the kind that splits his face. There’s a pink papery wristband hanging off his wrist.
Gotta be at least 21. Your eyes look at him, really, truly look at him, from his eyes bursting like fireworks to the silver piercing on his tongue that darts out every now and then. Cute. Maybe you shouldn’t be going there, or maybe your mind should definitely go there because the pulsating music as the opening singer comes out and the waves of cheers makes it easier for your mind to go there.
“Which one do you want?!”
Tempting. Flickering back over to the bar, it feels like each drink is calling your name and the blasting song bass is egging you on. “Sorry—” your tongue wishes you knew his name—“I’m driving after this. Can’t!”
He deflates a little but shrugs his shoulders. Just as he’s about to turn away and head to the mob swarming around, you call out, and he’s immediately reflated, grin widening. “But do you want to dance or something?! We can grab spots in the front row if we’re quick!”
Fingers lightly latching around your wrist, he tugs you to the front (your coordination being impeccable with how many stray ice cubes your feet have to hopscotch around). The space between swarming bodies is small, but with the right amount of pushing on his part and yelling a “sorry!” on your part, the front row barely makes room for you two. Your shoulders are touching. They’re touching and with how both of your hips bump against each other when dancing, you decide this is good. Very good.
Screams and shrieks and yells and every possible noise in-between hurl from all of your mouths when they take the stage, clad in clothing that shouldn’t work but does, mics in their hands and stage lights glaring down at them from above. He’s closer to you now, the blond with the orange jacket, and your bodies are packed together like, well, bodies pushed together at a concert. Pretty accurate. Maybe it’s the music’s heartbeat, maybe it’s the way the duo on stage banters back and forth and seem to carry the music on their shoulders and in their expressions, maybe it’s all of it wrapped up in a little impulsive package—but this is worth it. Definitely worth it. Positively absolutely worth it.
You tap his shoulder. “Hey!”
“Yeah?!” His voice effortlessly carries over the rest of the shrieks.
“What’s your name?" Your lungs are searing hot, maimed by the lyrics your belt out and the chorus that’s louder than an ambulance’s siren.
Flying by him, his ears don’t catch your question, so he leans over and down, with his ear right next to your mouth. “I said,” you start, plumes of bravery blooming in your chest (yes, definitely worth it), “what’s your name, pretty boy?”
His expression warms up in delight, and he’s barking out a laugh that’s almost swallowed by the crowd. Another second later, your nerves flaring and all, embarrassment starting to reach its hand up to and curl itself around your neck, he flashes you a grin that puts the others to shame. “Just keep calling me that!” he says. “Sounds great to me!”
Before the response can crawl out of your mouth, the one of the artist’s voices cuts in. “Anyone got change? We gotta flip heads or tails to. . .” The crowd eats up his sentence, and there’s a collective shuffling, a collective jumping with pennies, dimes, and the likes stapled between people’s fingers so that maybe, maybe he’d grab theirs.
But above all else, the blond next to you jumps with his debit or credit card locked between his fingers. “Here!” he shouts. “Here!”
Streams of laughter spill down your lips, and your incomprehensible response (other than playfully hitting his shoulder) is lost as the avalanche of laughter continues. “Are you serious? That’s—” it takes a second to get out “—that’s fuckin’ great!”
The blond laughs again, and when the artist plucks his card from his fingers, eyes combing it over on stage and saying, “I mean, I can flip it. Should I?” before ultimately giving it back, the blond files away the card somewhere.
Unzipping his orange jacket that’s easy to spot even in a room like this, a plain white shirt is revealed. Oh wait, your eyes focus in on the microscopic, lowercase lettering in the middle of his shirt that reads: nut. “Do I look like I’m serious?” he screams back.
“Nut! Where the hell did you get a shirt that said nut on it, pretty boy? I McFucking need that nut!”
Fading, the music becomes background noise when he rolls up the sleeve of his jacket. “What’d you just say?” he asks, pointing to letting scrawled on his arm.
“I said—” you start, eyes trailing down. The words hook themselves to your throat and refuse to come out when you see that exact phrase scrawled on his skin. I McFucking need that nut! is permanently etched in his skin. Oh, God.
You’re moving your papery wristband out of the way. His eyes widen, and an indescribable ring of fire blazes through them when they land on your own tattoo. Just keep calling me that! Sounds great to me! You hadn’t noticed. All this time. And it took him to realize everything when you screamed about nutting. Or wanting that nutting shirt. Both.
“So, how long are you here for? Going back soon?” he asks.
“I can stay long enough.” A smile curls your lips. “Are you gonna tell me your name now, soulmate?”
Humming, he pretends to think about it. He winks at you. “You’re gonna have to work for that, babe.”