Chapter Text
The rain poured down onto rooftops around you as you ducked from building to building avoiding the deluge. You hugged your textbooks to your chest to protect them from the water and made one last dash across an open courtyard and towards an open doorway. You squealed slightly as your hair started to get wet and let out a breath of relief when you made it through the doorway - before crashing into something hard. You fell to the ground, books slipping out of your grasp. You rubbed the sore spot on your back where you had fallen, then looked to see your textbooks - in a puddle.
“AH!!! NOOO!!! My textbooks! I’ll never sell them now dammit!” you suddenly noticed the other person standing near you, reaching down to pick up the books, and realised you must have run into them before and caused this collision. “Oh no, I’m so sorry for running into you! Are you okay?”
The man standing before you was quite tall - though considering you were still on the floor your perception could be a bit skewed - with slightly shaggy black hair and dark eyes. He had thick eyebrows and a calm expression. The look he gave you in response to your question seemed to say ‘you’re the one on the floor, not me’, but then it changed and his eyes widened. The man reached an arm down and helped you up, then quickly pushed the sleeve of his jumper up to his elbow. He thrust his arm out, grinning, to show you the words on his arm.
The words you just said.
Your face fell, but you managed to give him a gentle smile as you shook your head. “I’m sorry, but I think you’re mistaken. I don’t have a soulmate - I don’t have any words - so yours must still be out there.” You gave a sad, nervous little laugh. “This is probably just a freaky coincidence.”
Mitobe shook his head in response and tapped his throat, making a ‘no’ gesture. He shook his head again and smiled softly.
He can’t talk.
Your eyes widened. “B-but it’s impossible… I thought...” you pulled up your own sleeve and stared at the (s/c), blank arm as if expecting to suddenly see words there.
There were no words.
Because he can’t speak.
You were so absorbed in this revelation that you didn’t realise what you had done. Mitobe’s hand wrapped around your wrist gently and pulled it out towards him, pushing the sleeve back a bit more with the other hand.
“Ah, no I… don’t…” you tried to hide your arm again, but knew it was already too late.
Mitobe’s fingers hesitated over your arm, before resting on the smooth sections - avoiding the old thin scars and small, pocketed crescent marks. Places where you had tried to claw away at your own skin, cut away at the numb, empty space.
Mitobe said nothing. Of course.
You couldn’t look at him, but you couldn’t really look away from your arm either. “I just… it was hard sometimes, and I thought it meant that I’d always be alone… you know?”
There was silence for what seemed like forever as you waited for some kind of reaction. You opened your mouth to say something, but stopped when you felt dripping on your skin. You looked up to see him… crying. Tears were pouring down his face as he held your arm and he started making strange, forced sounds in the back of his throat. They weren’t so much sounds as harsh bursts of air, but you soon realised what he was attempting.
He was trying to talk, to force words out of his mouth as if it would change the fact that you had none on your arm. As if, if he could find a way to speak now it would erase all of the pain you had felt in the past.
Your heart beat loudly in your ears as you felt how much he cared for you, someone he barely knew, and how much he was trying to help you. You placed a hand over his and squeezed it gently. “Hey now, it’s okay. I mean, you’re here - you exist. This isn’t your fault or anything…”
He pulled away and looked into your eyes for a moment with a serious expression and you blinked at him, surprised in his sudden change of attitude. Keeping his hand on your arm, he reached down into his backpack which he had dropped to the floor earlier, pulling out a black marker. He uncapped it and gently pulled your arm around in front of him. You felt him writing there, but couldn’t see around his body to find out what it was. He stopped suddenly and looked around at you, then quickly added another thing and pulled away so you could see.
There, in carefully printed letters, were two sentences:
I am here now, and I swear I will never let you feel alone again. I want to protect you, if you let me?
As you finish reading it, he slides a hand into yours and intertwines your fingers. You look from his hands to his face as he smiled at you yet again. His face began to blur as tears engulfed your vision.
Mitobe took a small step back in surprise as you started crying, but you smiled through the tears and choked out a ‘thankyou’. As you reached up to wipe away your tears your arm was trapped against you as he pulled you into a hug and you laughed slightly, but leaned against him anyway.
Compared to the cold rain outside, he was very warm.