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It was a few months after Kaminari’s eighteenth birthday when a message appeared on his forearm in chunky red letters, the first words he had ever received from his soulmate.
It was short, friendly and to the point, simply stating that now they were eighteen they wanted to reach out and have a conversation and maybe get to know each other, but only if he was interested. They’d obviously been waiting for a while to make a move and were still pretty eager.
Before Kaminari could even get the chance to reply an angry black scrawl scribbled over the top of the message. ‘Fuck off.’ Was this the same person? Maybe they’d got nervous and decided it was too soon to have contact.
As questions and doubts began to stumble through his mind the red writing appeared again, higher up his arm and messier this time.
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. Maybe in a few years then?’ Hopeful and disappointed. Definitely not the same tone as the black writing beforehand but this couldn’t be two different people could it? He’d never heard of that happening before.
Quickly he dug through the mess on his desk and found a neon yellow highlighter, that’d have to do.
‘Hi? Are you pretending to be two people or something? I’m getting confused.’ He wrote quickly across his clean arm. First message to his soul mate and it was already obvious that he was an idiot and gets muddled up easily. Great.
‘What the fuck. Are you fucking joking right now?’
‘There’s three of us?’
Two different answers in different places and colours. Uh oh.
‘Write your numbers and I’ll make a group chat that’ll be easier for us to talk.’
Yep. Technology would help. He also didn’t really want to be covered from head to toe in swearwords. That would be a nightmare.
He pulled out his phone and added the red number scribbled across his wrist to his contacts under ‘Soulmate 1’. After firing off a quick text to them he looked back down to his arm to see his other soulmate had replied. By the amount of insults and cursing covering his forearm, he guessed they didn’t want to give him their number.
Before he had a chance to think of a reply, his phone buzzed and an unknown number showed up on the screen.
‘Hi Kaminari! I’m Kirishima Eijirou – the red soulmate. Looks like our other one doesn’t want to talk rn but I’m sure they’ll come around. I can’t wait to get to know you :)’
Kirishima…it felt nice to put a name to the enigma that had been his soulmate(s) and he was kind of glad that the other person didn’t want to get involved at the moment. Too many things happening at once when he was already overwhelmed was never a good thing.
He and Kirishima decided to scrub off their writing, their other soulmate quickly following suit, and instead texted sporadically over the next few weeks. They played every ice breaker game under the sun peppered with casual anecdotes from their daily lives and soon dissolved into normal, friendly conversation.
When he told Jirou about having two soulmates she scoffed and laughed, as usual, but also found a few sources which talked about multiple soulmates. Apparently it wasn’t unheard of to have two soulmates but all three (or however many someone had) being connected to each other was extremely rare. It was said that in these cases the soulmate bond was extremely strong, and would undoubtedly become the most important thing in each of their lives.
Knowing the relationship himself and Kirishima had with their mystery soulmate and not feeling any cosmic changes or new life goals involving the pair, Kaminari assumed it was utter bullshit.
***
Time went on and his relationship with Kirishima only grew. Occasionally they would try to reach out to their other soulmate but to no avail. All they knew about them was that they had a foul mouth and a seemingly unending vocabulary when it came to insults.
For the first time in his life he also had to cope with his soulmate bonds being used against him. Little pranks and crude drawings would appear from time to time supposedly to make someone laugh. ‘The dick incident’, as it would be known for years to come, was particularly notable for the fact that Kaminari was in public, unaware and skin exposed for the summer, when bright pink penises began to appear all over his body. If the mortification from that wasn’t enough, the next day so much belligerent, orange lettering covered his skin that from a distance he looked like he had a patchy fake tan and had to call in sick to avoid further embarrassment.
Kirishima had later apologised and claimed that one of his friends had thought the best way to coax Blasty (their new nickname for their soulmate derived from their explosive temper) out of their shell was to mess around and prank them.
After holding a grudge for a day or two, Kaminari had given in to his apologies and laughed as they tried to imagine how Blasty had reacted.
‘How would they of all people not be angry after that?’ Kaminari asked, waiting a minute then adding that he would like a warning the next time Kirishima’s friends persuaded him to start covering his skin in obscenity.
With the pranks also came little notes of encouragement and positivity hidden away for bad days, along with various colourful responses which could be seen as very aggressive caring if you looked at it from a certain angle. Sometimes there was just a smiley face (more often than not accompanied by a speech bubble saying ‘fuck’) doodled on the inside of his wrist, but that was enough.
***
A few months later, it was a lazy Saturday afternoon and Kaminari was talking to Kirishima on the phone when neat, black writing began to appear across his forearm.
“Hey, are you seeing this? Left arm,” he asked. Kirishima hummed in approval. “What does it say?”
“‘I’m sorry about my piece of shit son.’ Oh my god it’s another guy. That’s pretty gay. ‘He’s a grumpy little bitch but could do with some real friends and if fate trusts you then so do I. I heard him bitching about you asking for his number so here it is. Don’t be surprised if he blocks you at first, though.’” He read.
“What do we do now? Should I make a group chat?” Kaminari said, still trying to process this.
“Yeah make a group chat. I’ve already added him as Blasty McSplode into my phone. How dyou think his parent wrote on him like that? Maybe he’s asleep.”
“Probably. Or knocked out. I can imagine him getting into a lot of fights.”
Kirishima laughed the hearty laugh that made Kaminari’s heart flutter and he couldn’t help but worry that with Blasty in the mix, their relationship might change for the worse. If he had finally decided to join in then change was inevitable and that thought eroded a little pit in his stomach as soon as it came into his head. He would just have to hope that fate, and that crap about their bonds becoming the most important thing in their lives, was reliable.
“I’m kinda tempted to spam the group chat but I don’t think he’d like that. How long dyou think it’ll be til he sees? I’m nervous.”
Hearing the childish giddiness in Kirishima’s voice that he had surely felt all those months before when first contacting him, Kaminari couldn’t help but smile. They talked for another hour, the anticipation eating away at them until they decided it would be better to hang up and get on with their days while waiting for Blasty to reply. This left Kaminari alone, attempting to read while corrosive thoughts about how his current relationship could crumble wore away at the ever-growing pit of his stomach.
At 10:55pm his phone buzzed with a single message.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’
***
Blasty’s parent was right, immediately after sending a response he blocked both of them and didn’t initiate contact for three weeks, presumably until he saw them again and they nagged him into actually giving them a chance.
He unblocked Kirishima first which, while Kaminari was a little offended, they chose to interpret as Blasty favouring the soulmate who didn’t force him into a group chat straightaway. They talked for a few days, Kirishima giving Kaminari updates and finally revealing Blasty’s real name as Bakugou Katsuki, until, four days later, he decided to unblock Kaminari too.
He held himself tentatively at first, trying not to give any reason for Bakugou to ignore him again, but eventually got bored and decided to just be himself. They talked almost constantly in the group chat and he always kept a conversation going with Kirishima on the side. Very occasionally, Bakugou would text him and ask a few snappy questions before ignoring him in favour of the group chat again.
Both Kaminari getting blocked and Bakugou leaving the chat was a regular occurrence that they just learnt to cope with. Often the former happening first then Kaminari pushing him too far in the group chat until he left. Kirishima was a good mediator and often had to referee arguments and other, more childish, behaviour.
Without knowing either of their addresses, it was relatively hard work for Kaminari to prank them. However, various prank calls, silly anonymous texts and video call jokes terribly backfiring on him later (the most notable being when Kaminari accidentally cut off a chunk of his own hair instead of the hair extension he'd put in) he felt like he'd done his duty as the funny boyfriend. Bakugou and Kirishima worked together to get him back and Kaminari even managed to annoy Bakugou into admitting they were dating for the first time (through a threat that he would break up with him if he kept sending enough messages to overheat his phone but still!).
***
Years passed and no one even mentioned meeting. Not once. There was an unspoken sense of knowing that it would happen, eventually. Passing comments about when they were old and grey or living together or their future family that pricked at Kaminari’s senses.
He wanted it, desperately, but was too afraid to be the first to bring it up. That, he expected Kirishima to do, in the way he had first brought them together, then later warmed Bakugou up to their group before Kaminari had a chance. And in a way his expectations were right.
When Kirishima told them he had a new job and was looking for a place in the Shizuoka prefecture it was the first time any of them had talked about where they lived. Surprisingly Bakugou said he already lived in that prefecture and had no problem in sharing that fact. Somewhere along the way they had ended up looking for apartments together and moved in. Without Kaminari.
It was easier, he thought, not talking to them in person. Hiding insecurities and hurt behind a blank screen, filling it with text and plastering on a fake smile for the odd picture became second nature. He was fine. Third wheeling and spectating from a distance while the cavern in his stomach that hosted his anxieties only grew.
On a warm night when he was twenty-two, Kirishima sent him a text asking for his address ‘in case of an emergency’. He tried to ignore the warmth in his chest that spread all the way to his toes when he replied. He refused to get his hopes up but maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t be so left out after all.