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I.
The first thing Kenma regrets is deciding to listen to this stranger on the side of the road.
“What’s your name?” he asks, shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. “Mine’s Hinata Shouyou!”
Time doesn’t necessarily stop, but more so moves at an inhuman speed. Everything passes by Kenma’s eyes within a flurry of pixelated points in his life—being teased in primary school (because you have to actually talk to your soulmate and he never enjoyed opening his mouth unnecessarily), having a crush on his best friend in middle school all while knowing it was pointless (because Kuroo’s destined off to somebody else), to right now, feeling the itch blazing beneath his skin, that unnatural light bursting out from his wrist.
The stranger—Shouyou, he thinks—stares at the mark with a gaping mouth.
“That’s like, the third time this has happened to me!” he says, eyes stretched in surprise.
The second thing Kenma regrets is opening his mouth after the words etched into his skin glow a honeybee gold—because the boy opposite of him has multiple words, tattooed all over his skin, and Kenma already knows what that means.
Stories and rumors whispered in school hallways about people like this have coursed through the long history of soulmates. They’re typically considered to be myths, but Shouyou standing in front of him with various soul marks proves to Kenma that there are a few select people, entirely random, who have multiple soulmates.
Whether that’s a blessing or a curse is a coin toss and Kenma doesn’t feel like betting on heads or tails. He feels like running away. He probably should run away.
“Kenma,” he says, flicking his eyes up to meet Shouyou’s curious gaze.
The twin golden glow comes from Shouyou’s wrist the second he says his name, and Shouyou actually laughs at the sensation rather than flinching away from it. Well, he had said this is the third time he’s met a soulmate. He’s probably used to it by now.
“It’s still such a cool feeling!” Shouyou exclaims, trailing his fingertips along the mark.
Kenma offers a hum and shifts his focus back to his phone, uneasiness rolling around at the bottom of his stomach.
“Can I get your number?”
Kenma wants to say no. He seriously wants to say no, but nods instead like the absolute moron he is and opens up his contacts.
II.
A week of texting until the early hours of the morning passes by before they finally find time to hang out in person.
“You’re seriously okay with just hanging out here?” Shouyou’s slipping off his shoes at the door and giving Kenma a curious look. His other soulmates must enjoy going out, doing actual things.
“Yeah,” Kenma says, “as long as you don’t care.”
“As long as I get to hang out with you, I’m fine!”
Against the anxious pull in his heart, the quiet questioning of whether or not this is really happening, Kenma smiles at Shouyou and directs him towards his room.
The second they’re in his bedroom, Shouyou lights up and starts running around. He examines the perfectly placed figurines on Kenma’s dresser with an electric look (“There are limited edition? Where did you find them?), then dashes over to the organized stack of games next to the flatscreen (“You have so many games!).
They settle onto Kenma’s bed, knees bumping, with controllers in hand.
“I’m really good at Mario Kart, just so you know,” Shouyou says, leaning into Kenma. He grins up at Kenma, who rolls his eyes.
“Don’t get upset when you lose, then.”
Shouyou does end up losing the race, all three of them, actually, and falls back onto Kenma’s bed, whining like a kid.
“You’re like a master!” he says.
“I have a lot of practice.”
“Can you teach me how to get better?”
Kenma shrugs. “I guess.”
Shouyou comes over again that weekend and they play Mario Kart long past midnight. Kenma doesn’t know when they fall asleep, really, but he does know that they wake up next to each other, Shouyou’s arm slung around his waist.
With the sunlight arching over Shouyou’s face at the perfect angle, highlighting his cheekbones with a dangerously precious glow, it’s difficult for Kenma to ignore the way his heart twists.
Oh no, he thinks. This is bad.
III.
Shouyou starts to come over almost every weekend to play games, to sit around and talk. Kenma’s never been fond of hanging out with other people, besides his best friend, or even letting people spend the night, but Shouyou comes over and he doesn’t complain.
There’s only a simple answer and as much as Kenma wants to ignore it, he can’t.
Kenma’s falling in love. He’s falling in love hard, and whether it’s because of the stars aligning in his life or because there’s a genuine connection between him and Shouyou doesn’t really matter. Because he’s in love and things are working out.
For once in his life, things are actually working out.
IV.
The thunderstorm rumbling outside the cafe should’ve been the first thing off. Shouyou had asked Kenma to meet him at the cafe earlier that morning because he has an affinity for this specific cafe’s hot chocolate, and who is Kenma to turn downtime with Shouyou? The skies had been a gray-ish blue when Kenma arrived, but now there’s nothing but hard-hitting rain and the whipping cracks of lightning.
Something’s not right.
But Shouyou’s been acting the same, gulping down his hot chocolate and gushing about volleyball practice and how excited he is for their practice match next week.
“We’re definitely gonna beat you guys!”
Kenma shrugs, “If you say so.”
“Everything okay?” Kenma asks when Shouyou falls quiet.
“I need to talk to you about something, I think,” he says, staring down at the empty mug in his hands.
Oh.
That’s not good. That’s never good. Especially not when Shouyou can’t even look him in the eyes. He’s always big on eye contact, and Kenma’s gotten a little too used to it despite the way looking directly at someone leaves a frayed knot in the pit of his stomach. He’s stopped hating it for Shouyou because Shouyou’s been the one looking at him.
“You have feelings for me, don’t you?” Shouyou asks quietly.
Kenma’s heart pounds so loud the other patrons in the cafe can probably hear it over their headphones, over their chatter, over everything.
He does. He definitely has feelings for Shouyou. Undeniable feelings that he’s considered bringing up, if the right time ever presented itself, but that time hasn’t come yet. Shouyou’s ripped the clock off the wall, anyway, has turned the hands to his own preferred hour and is forcing it out of Kenma.
But he doesn’t want to admit to anything.
“I don’t know.”
Shouyou finally looks up at him, but not in the ways he has been since they met. This time Shouyou’s wearing a frown and Kenma wants to rip it off his face. He wants Shouyou to smile, to say that he has feelings, to say that he wants to be together.
“I don’t want to lead you on or anything, Kenma, because I care about you! I really, really care about you, but I’m kind of… with one of my soulmates already and… and it’s different with him. Really different. I’m sorry.”
A nagging voice in the back of Kenma’s head screams to get up, to run right out of the cafe and into the rain, and act as if Shouyou hasn’t even said anything.
Maybe his brain is making some valid points. No, that voice is definitely making valid points and Kenma decides to listen. He pushes himself out of the seat and practically runs right out of the cafe.
He doesn’t feel the same. He doesn’t feel the same. He has so many other soulmates, I don’t know why I’d even think for a second that I’m the special one.
Kenma stands beneath the awning, wishing he would’ve brought a jacket. He didn’t because it wasn’t supposed to rain, the sun had been out and the sky had been clear. His hands tremble and he stuffs them into the front pockets of his sweats.
He needs to get to the bus stop. He needs to go home. He needs to never talk to Shouyou again, even though that’s inevitable, and curl up in his bed and decompose beneath the sheets.
The cafe door jingles as its opened and Kenma can tell without looking up that Shouyou’s followed him out.
“Kenma, please—“
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he mutters.
“But I want to talk about it.”
“I don’t.”
“Listen,” Shouyou says, moving to stand in front of him. He bends down a little to try and get under Kenma’s gaze, but Kenma immediately looks somewhere else.“Soulmates can be platonic, y’know? And I think that’s how we are! Kinda like best friends!”
Kenma’s heart drops way beyond his stomach, beyond the floor. It falls deep into a pit of nothingness, low within the cracks of the earth beneath him. All the air is sucked out of his lungs, as if a vacuum attached itself to the inner walls of his chest and stayed on for hours.
He’s momentarily dragged back in time, back to when he confessed to Kuroo.
“I’m sorry,” Kuroo had said with downcast eyes, “but you’re my best friend. I hope that’s enough.”
They had been thirteen and Kenma had been an idiot. Nobody falls in love at thirteen, nobody, but he had been positive what he felt for Kuroo at the time was along the lines of being in love. He was wrong, clearly.
He should’ve known that housing feelings for someone other than your soulmate is like gambling your life away in a game of Russian Roulette where every hole is filled with bullets and you’re the one pulling the trigger, and maybe he did, deep down, but ignored it. Kenma had ignored everything wrong about the situation and shot himself right in the chest, but this is entirely different. Now he’s not the one with a finger on the trigger. For some reason, though, he’s always the target.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Kuroo had told him, “I really don’t.”
But he hadn’t wanted to keep Kenma around in the ways he wanted, the ways he thought he wanted. And now Shouyou’s telling him the same thing.
That sickening summer day had been Kenma’s first introduction to the unknown and uncertain territory of unrequited feelings. He’s been lost in these fields before, open and rotten with thick gray clouds hovering in the air—but Kenma doesn’t own a tent nor does he know how to start a fire on his own. So, there’s no possible way for him to make a living out in this land. He’ll just have to sit on the damp ground, let the downpour roll across his skin, and endure.
“Okay,” Kenma says with a sigh. Okay.
It’s all he can manage, really, without embarrassingly bursting into tears, and he won’t do that here. He won’t do that in front of Shouyou, or in front of anyone, for that matter.
Kenma wonders if Shouyou can see the hurt flickering in his eyes, can pick out every ounce of anger and, for some reason, the stinging betrayal that festers in his glacier gaze. He turns his back on Shouyou at the thought of him feeling anything along the lines of pity for Kenma.
“Hey,” he feels Shouyou’s hand (trying to be reassuring) on his shoulder, “it’s nothing per—“
Yeah, he can most definitely see beyond Kenma’s faltering mask.
“I get it,” Kenma snaps, turning back, so sharply that his hair whips over his shoulder. Shouyou takes a few steps back, blinking at the sight of Kenma acting so drastically unlike his usual self.
In all honesty, Kenma doesn’t actually get it, and he doesn’t want to understand, because the entire situation is unfair. Fate, the world, destiny, whoever the hell is in charge of this soulmate mess— they’ve fucked up. They’ve done their job wrong and Kenma’s at the dead-end of their mistakes.
Soulmates are supposed to work out. They’re supposed to fall in love and spend the rest of their lives together, but Kenma doesn’t get to have that opportunity. Kenma gets to turn away from his destiny, gets to walk home in the pouring rain with no umbrella and let the water soak into his shoes.
With no apparent reason as to why, Kenma doesn’t get a happy ending.
And it’s not even Shouyou’s fault, he should’ve been well aware from the start of their friendship (relationship) that he would never be the one Shouyou wants to end up with, the one Shouyou has genuine feelings for. Kenma had seen all the soul marks. It was foolish to think for even a second that he would stand out in that sea of celestial printed ink.
When he makes it home, he peels his soaked clothes off and gets in the shower. He turns the water all the way up and welcomes the scorching droplets onto his skin. With one hand on the tile, Kenma leans forward and presses his head against the wall. He stands there, burning, and he cries.
They don’t text for the rest of the week.
Kenma hardly even looks at his phone.
Shouyou doesn’t do well with being ignored, though, because the night before their practice match, Kenma’s phone starts blowing up with messages.
received 1:40 am: hey are u ok???
received 1:42 am: ????
received 1:43 am: kenma :(( u seemed really out of it the last time we talked
Yeah, no shit.
received 1:45 am: you know that im sorry right?
received 1:47 am: are u mad at me?
sent 1:48 am: no.
received 1:49 am: ur not okay or ur not mad?
received 1:52 am: did you fall asleep? :(
received 1:55 am: im gonna try to sleep im still really sorry !! and ill see you tmrw
He’ll have to see Shouyou tomorrow, whether or not he’s ready to, but that doesn’t mean he can’t ignore his texts for the rest of the night, or maybe forever. Yeah, forever sounds nice.
Kenma locks his phone, shoves it beneath his pillow, and forces himself to sleep.
V.
It only takes three minutes of being in the same space as Kageyama Tobio to understand why Shouyou isn’t in love with him. Their stretching grins, their child-like laughter echoing throughout the gym, but more than anything, their bickering that already borders on the resemblance of an old married couple. It makes him want to throw up, seeing them joke around and act so happy. He turns away when Shouyou breaks his attention away from Kageyama and directs it to him.
“Kenma! Hey!”
He hears Shouyou call out his name, then his footsteps hitting the waxed gym floor. His eyes flutter close and he takes a deep breath. He can do this. He can be friends. Platonic is okay. It’s fine. His heart’s beating, no, throbbing, no, actually, pounding—breaking in his chest, but it’s alright. When the practice match is over, when the games are done and Kenma’s safe in the confinement of his own bedroom, he can pull out the old, tattered sewing kit from beneath his bed and sew his heart back together, stitch by unloved stitch. There’ll be patches and blood and bits of himself that he might never get back, but it’ll be fine, because at least he’ll still have Shouyou in some aspects.
Quick inhale, even quicker exhale—Kenma musters up all the courage he can (which isn’t much, to begin with) and turns around just as Shouyou’s reaching him, and smiles as best as he can—eyes crinkling at the pinched corners and head tilting slightly to the right.
“Hey, Shouyou.”