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Fushimi felt his counter stop the second he met the brash red-headed boy. A boy who had his counters exposed on his wrists. Tsk. A boy who wore his heart on his sleeves. Perfect.
“I’m Yata! Yata Misaki! Nice to meet you!” A quick glance at the outstretched hands told Fushimi what the one thing his father had taught him was indeed true, no one could love him. Even his soulmate’s counters hadn’t stopped at their meeting. He turned away from Yata, he didn’t see a point in encouraging this, since it would only bring him pain. “Hey, where are you going? At least tell me your name, asshole!”
“Tsk. Fushimo Saruhiko, since you asked so nicely,” he gave a quick look back and left. Much later he snuck into the bathroom in the middle of the night to check his counter. The proof was right there, emblazoned right on top of his heart in the middle of his chest. It confirmed what he had been afraid of, the gleaming red of a romantic soulmate. He grimaced. It was too much to ask that his only soulmate would have been platonic, especially if it had to be an unrequited one.
Somehow he let that idiot bully him into a friendship. (Not that hard considering how perfectly Yata’s soul was matched to his.) When the topic of counters came up, Fushimi just bared his empty wrists and said he didn’t have one. Not long after that he started wearing the knife harnesses so they were covered. (He pretended he didn’t hear Yata defending him to the other kids who whispered that he didn’t have a soulmate. Sure, other locations were rarer, but they still happened and just meant stronger connections.) Yata’s counters kept moving. Not that Fushimi admitted to himself that he kept checking them every time they interacted with a new person. Each time he sighed internally with relief to see the numbers still moving.
Until the day they met the King. Yata’s precious Mikoto. When the group of thugs, HOMRA, left the two of them to follow, Fushimi pretended not to notice Yata tugging his sleeve down over the counters and tried to ignore the sinking pit in his stomach. The very next day Yata started wearing a red counter-cover and stopped wearing part of his heart on his sleeve. Fushimi was grateful the HOMRA tattoo was high enough on his chest that his counter was still hidden. From listening around the bar Fushimi knew that Mikoto already found his soulmate, another King interestingly enough. It made it that much harder to watch Yata adore him knowing he was engaged in the same futile adoration as Fushimi. Fushimi didn’t need to see the color of Yata’s counters to know it was the truth. And of course it was just like brash, passionate Misaki to have multiple soulmates while all Fushimi had was Yata.
It was inevitable that Fushimi would leave them. The fact that he left to join Mikoto’s soulmate’s group made it a little bit sweeter for him. The attention he won back from Misaki was all that he had ever wanted. Undivided. Passionate. All a little monkey like him could hope for.
Waking up in a hospital bed, the last thing Fushimi expected to see was Misaki glaring at him. He was sure they had parted on rather friendly terms after that fight against Sukuna. As he leaned forward to put his glasses on, he realized he was shirtless and dotted with bandages. Tsk. He must have sustained more injuries than he thought. And then he realized his heart was exposed. His hand jerked up to cover what Misaki had clearly already seen.
“Traitor! You told me you didn’t have a soulmate!”
“Tsk. Well I didn’t see the point in telling you.” He pushed the glasses firmly in position and pulled off his best nonchalant look.
“Of course you should have told me! We were best friends, we shared that stuff. A-a-and you shouldn’t hide things from your soulmate, BASTARD!” Misaki leaned over the bed pulling his collar down. Fushimi blinked, their tattoos had disappeared when Mikoto died, why was he showing him where their HOMRA tattoos used to be? Then he saw the red counter on Misaki’s chest, much lower than the tattoo used to be. He blinked again.
“You never mentioned you had a hidden counter. Your other two were so brazenly displayed you can hardly blame me for assuming you didn’t have another. Neither of which stopped when I met you by the way.” Misaki pulled his wristband off and shook the bare wrist in front of Fushimi’s face.
“Feel better now, huh? You were jealous of Tatara and Anna, my friends.” Fushimi just blinked at the pale pink tattoos. One indeed showed Tatara’s name and the other just a stopped counter, presumably the time it had taken Misaki to meet Anna.
“…Makes sense that an idiot like you would have three soulmates. And not tell their romantic one what was going on,” was all Fushimi could come up with, not daring to look at Misaki.
“Not my fault I thought a soulmate wouldn’t be such a bastard at the first meeting!”
“Tsk. you really don’t know me, do you? And I thought I was your soulmate.”
“Jerk,” but he said it with a smile and he reached for Fushimi’s hand. And as they looked in each other’s eyes, Fushimi drifted off to sleep and allowed himself to think that maybe a soulmate could cause something other than pain.