Chapter Text
You were only vaguely aware of being moved when the ground beneath you disappeared, the chill of bathroom tiles vanishing from your face. Heat blossomed across your numb skin and you swayed in the air like you were in some sort of purgatorial hammock. It’d be nice to drift back off, but a part of you that wasn’t totally shit-faced realized what kind of compromising situations you could be getting into. A susceptible, unconscious university-aged woman at night? God, no. Startled, you managed to wrench your eyes open. Squirming, you were just about to scream for help before you smelt it. It hit you in the face—cheap, piney deodorant and old sweat. The nausea turned in your stomach.
“Ushi…?” you slurred, blinking up. He looked down at you, familiar scowl at all.
“Yes,” he replied flatly, his voice rumbling through his chest wall to yours.
“Ah, fuck,” you groaned miserably, throat clogged with the aftermath of whatever you’d done to your poor body in the past couple of hours. He was the last person you wanted to see, but of course, he was here. “Sorry…”
“If you were really sorry, I wouldn’t keep getting these calls about you passed out in people’s houses.” He scoffed to himself, continuing forwards. It occurred to you that he was carrying you like a bride with no complaint. Strong arms kept you close to his body, your feet dangling uselessly. One was particularly cold… you’d lost a shoe somewhere.
“Why d’you keep answering if you’re so sick o’ me, then?” you retorted, too drunk or high to remember the delicate art of shutting up. Your head lolled back. Without a single care, Ushijima whacked your scalp against a doorframe, making you recoil into a ball with a haggard whine.
“Because we’re soulmates, and if I left you out here, you’d probably end up dead in a ditch. That’s all.”
Right. How could you forget, what with 牛島若利 in black on your forearm as a constant reminder? Tenderly cradling your angrily pulsating head with one hand, you clumsily smacked him in the chest with other and hooked a finger around his collar. With the weight of your arm you yanked down the athletic shirt. [Surname] [Name], snug under the right collarbone, right where it’d been all along.
“Let go.” He shook you agitatedly like a box of jellybeans, and obligingly, you rag-dolled. The night air was frigid on the exposed skin of your slutty outfit. You shivered reflexively, shrinking back into a ball. You didn’t want to (or maybe you did), but Ushijima was the closest thing to warmth you had, so you clung to him.
“You stole my car?” you accused when you saw the familiar vehicle parked poorly against the curb. Its engine was still running, sputtering. You hit Ushijima against the chest angrily, but your open palm bounced off pathetically. “What the fuck? I thought I said it was hands off!”
“Sorry, did you want me to leave you here?”
For a guy that’s got the emotional capacity of a peanut, he’s got good one-liners. You bit down on your lip and begrudgingly let him set you down. It was a rough deposit. Ushijima’s patience with you was very clearly up and he hopped into the driver’s seat, his ridiculously large frame barely fitting into the sedan. You grabbed onto the roof of your car, feeling the ground sink and twist and turn beneath you. You crumpled to the asphalt, closing your eyes woozily because they’re too heavy to stay open. The front of your already sore head clattered on the road, thudding emptily. Shit, shit, shit.
“Throw up.”
Ushijima’s back, and you’re not even sure if you passed out in between then and now. He’s got you leant over in the grass of the front lawn, one arm hugged around your waist, the other on your back. His body heat is so hot it burns. Bitter drool streamed out of your mouth. Numbly, you stared at a blade of grass. Your brain’s so, so fuzzy.
With an obvious sigh, Ushijima turns your head to him. For a second, he’s so close, and the angle—it’s like he wants to go in for a kiss. But then, without warning, he jabbed his index and middle finger down your throat. His nails clawed the roof of your soft palate. Immediately, you vomited, so sick it felt like your life was trying to leave you with each heave. You had never felt uglier in your life, Ushijima holding you up so that you didn’t drown in your own rainbow-coloured puke.
“Thank you,” he murmured sarcastically once you finished, hocking spit. He flicked his hand of fluid and wiped it on the ground disgustedly. “I have a game tomorrow.”
You moaned wearily in response, something that was an attempt at fuck you. The message probably got across. He was used to it by now.
Ushijima hauled you back up, your toes dragging on the ground. Without another word he tossed you into the passenger’s seat. You felt him reach over you, buckling you in. The sudden gentleness was so strange you cracked an eye open, looking at the way the car’s shoddy light refracted in his gold irises. His hair brushed against your cheek. Maybe. The gossamer touch was so fragile it was all you could think about until you blacked out.
It hadn’t always been like this.
Soulmates got each other’s names tattooed on them. Some were unfortunate, getting unbearably common names that made the search impossible. Some were foreign, meaning the soulmate was off in an entirely different continent. Some tattoos were just in unfortunate places, like the face.
Yours was pretty unique and gave you a solid chance. Ushijima Wakatoshi, neat on your left forearm. You’d searched all your life, asking everybody you met if their name was Wakatoshi before they could introduce themselves to you. You googled him endlessly—and, some time in elementary, you got your first ping of a junior high volleyball player at Shiratorizawa Academy.
Sendai, Miyagi was very far from Oita.
You’d like to say that you had forgotten about him and moved on, but you couldn’t. How could you? This star volleyball player was your soulmate. Made for each other, destined for each other, all for the purpose of knowing the highest level of love. He was so close, but so far.
As you grew up, you always wondered if you should’ve found the bravery to write him from Kyushu. You weren’t as flashy as he was, so if he was looking, he wouldn’t find you. A part of you was too shy. What if you were mistaken, and he was just some other Ushijima Wakatoshi with some other person’s name on his body? He was 21 when he played for Team Japan at the Rio Olympics. You were 16, just finishing your first year of high school. Watching him on TV, you wondered if he ever thought about you the way you thought about him. He was an Olympian, and what about you?
You were just some kid.
And yet, in desperation, you endlessly searched about Ushijima Wakatoshi’s soulmate tattoo. It became a ritual, you staying up until ungodly hours of night on your phone beneath the covers. There was just never any information. He kept it to himself, and no matter how many pictures you scoured, you couldn’t see it.
So, you never moved on, but you decided to let go.
You got through high school. You made friends and lost friends. You graduated. You dated other people who didn’t believe in the soulmate thing, but those fizzled out pretty quick. You went to university, pursuing your major, and pulled yourself through the drudgery of day-to-day life and young adulthood.
It’d been a random day when you’d saw the name “WAKATOSHI USHIJIMA” in the corner of your eye on an Oita Weekly paper in some vendor’s display. Your neck nearly snapped when you turned to get a better look. You just about lost your mind—he looked the exact same as he did when you first found him in junior high, grimacing in his picture like he’d never learnt to smile in his life.
You were 18; he was 24. You forced yourself into a meet and greet line up at one of Shweiden Adler’s games and showed him your forearm, face flushed red, breathless with anticipation.
And, like the idiot meathead he was, he just signed his name over his own name.
“Go shower,” he commanded, kicking off his shoes next to your face. The sound was earth shattering. You watched him weakly, looking around with the strength of your eyeballs alone. His apartment was as neat as ever, empty bareness punctuated only by the presence of your own things, scattered throughout.
“Thanks for nothing, Soulmate,” you rasped past stomach acid and cheap vodka and burnt weed and heartbreak.
He slammed the door so hard you felt it jolt up the bones of your jaw. Then—silence.
Closing your eyes, you finally let the tears pool. So much for true love.