Chapter Text
You receive your words on your seventeenth birthday. The skin on your arm is a blank slate one day, smooth and blessedly empty, and then the next there’s writing scrawled across it like some ghost in the night thought it was a scrap piece of paper. The words vary – it could be the first thing you uttered to each other, a familiar phrase, a sentence that hasn’t yet been said, or a greeting with a person you’ve yet to meet. But it’s said that you'll know. That whether it’s a conversation you’ve already had or one that’s destined for the future, you’ll know. There’s no mistaking that the words on your arm are something your soulmate has already said to you, or something they will say eventually. Fate has determined that’s the person you’re meant to be bound to.
Fuck fate.
Katsuki had never bought into all that to begin with, unlike seemingly every other extra on the planet. He really didn’t care what showed up on his skin; it wasn’t something he was looking forward to and the total lack of anticipation meant he probably wouldn’t even stay up the night before his birthday so he could read the words whenever they finally showed up. The hell did it matter anyway? There was no way his supposed soulmate was someone he already knew. There wasn’t a single person in his life he could imagine being stuck with forever, so he figured whatever dumbass sentence scrawled itself onto his skin, it’d likely be something that hadn’t been said yet. Some unknown rando in the future was probably who he was going to end up with, and maybe by then he’d even give a shit about it.
He kind of doubted it, though.
It was hard to imagine caring about much of anything beyond becoming number one. He couldn’t really even fathom a future that involved dating and marriage and crap like that. Sometimes…sometimes, when he saw his classmates going on dates, starting to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend and all that garbage, he wondered if one day some sort of switch was going to flip inside of him that would make him do a 180 from “fuck that noise” to “alright, let’s get some”.
Frankly, it seemed like too much of a hassle. It wasn’t like he was totally unaware of, like, urges and shit – even his eyes lingered sometimes in the locker room – but it was all just a distraction.
There were more important things, and honestly, the assumption that some stupid words on his arm were irrevocably going to tie him to one single person forever was bullshit. If ever he decided it was worth it, he’d date whoever he fucking wanted to, thank you very much.
It wasn’t unheard of. The world was huge and not everyone was lucky enough to cross paths with their soulmate, so people did end up in relationships with someone they weren’t “matched” with.
Those people were usually considered kind of…unfortunate, even when they were perfectly happy. It was a sad but unavoidable social stigma. Even rarer were couples who knew they were meant for each other but somehow managed to live life separately, or stay with someone else.
It was all really fucking stupid and Katsuki did not give a shit, so he ignored his phone blowing up with texts from every person under the sun, from his parents to his grandmother to his cousins he hadn’t spoken to in months, and went to bed at his usual time and didn’t give it another second of thought.
Unfortunately, he lived with a bunch of nosy assholes and four of them started banging on his door the following morning before the sun was even up.
“Bakugooouu!”
“Dude, let us in! It’s the big day!!”
“C’mon, Baku, we wanna see what your words are!”
Katsuki wrenched the door open and his idiot squad tumbled halfway through, all bright-eyed with wide grins despite the early hour. “For fuck’s sake, could you assholes be any louder?” he complained, scuffing a hand through his hair. “The hell do you want?”
“Happy birthday, Kacchan~!” Kaminari sang, shoving past Katsuki before he could try to slam the door in their faces and lock them out. He spun around once he made it to the middle of the room and propped his hands on his hips. “So?? Is it good news or bad news?”
“Do you know who it is?” Sero asked, before Kaminari spoke up again to add, “Is it someone cute?”
Katsuki was seriously about two seconds away from exploding all of their faces.
“Guys,” Kirishima said. “We said we wouldn’t annoy him about it.”
…Alright, so maybe he would explode everyone but Kirishima.
That was the only reason he stepped back, he told himself, a silent invitation to the others that he was allowing them into his room. Because Kirishima wasn’t actually that infuriating and he was attempting to be considerate and Katsuki, despite all his huffing and puffing, didn’t actually mind putting up with him. Kirishima smiled and clapped him on the shoulder as he walked past. Sero gave him a thumbs up and Mina bounced along after him looking like she was barely refraining from squealing out loud.
“Happy birthday, Baku!” she cried, throwing her arms around him the second the door was shut. He was still feeling halfway charitable since it was his birthday, so he even managed to allow that for as long as it took him to exhale a vaguely annoyed breath, and then he pushed her off. …Gently.
“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyes. It was still too early for this shit, even for him, so it was only when he lowered his hand again that he noticed all four of his friends staring fixedly at his arm.
Oh, right.
“So…” Kirishima shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and Katsuki rolled his eyes. He was so fucking obvious. All of them were. He didn’t know if it was because he was the first one in their group to get his words or what, but he really, truly didn’t get all the excitement. It was just going to be some random sentence that held no meaning for any of them.
“I haven’t looked yet,” he said, and immediately they all looked completely gobsmacked. And stupid. Katsuki could see it out of the corner of his eye now, though – the scrawl across the inside of his right forearm. Gross, he just had to live with that forever now apparently. Soulmates were the worst.
“How haven’t you looked yet?!” Mina wailed, and Katsuki promptly scowled at her.
“I just woke up! I was sleeping until you idiots barged in here.”
Sero pressed his hands to his face. “Oh my god,” he muttered, and Kaminari, arms now folded across the top of his head, let out the most disparaging, pathetic sound Katsuki had ever heard in his life.
“How,” he demanded. “How did you not stay up until they came? Holy shit, dude, I’m not going to bed on my birthday until every freaking letter is legible. How are you not dying to look at your arm right now?!”
“Denki…” Kirishima tried, but Kaminari just waved wildly at Katsuki.
“He’s still not even looking!”
“Because it’s fucking dumb,” Katsuki finally said. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants still not having read whatever was written on his arm, but admittedly at that point he was mostly doing that just to watch Kaminari flail like a dumbass about it.
“Okay, but seriously,” Kirishima said. “You’re not even a little curious?”
Mina inched toward him like she really thought Katsuki wasn’t going to notice. “You have to look sometime.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Katsuki grumbled. “It’s not gonna mean a damn thing, it’s not like I’ve actually met my fucking – ugh.” He rolled his eyes. “My soulmate or whatever.”
“You don’t know that!” Kaminari said instantly. “You have no idea, it could be anyone!”
“Doubt it.”
Sero sighed. “This is actually torture. Like, I actually kind of want to strangle you with my tape right now.”
Katsuki let out an irritated sound. “If I look, will you all get off my damn back about it?”
It was lucky Kirishima was the only dorm neighbor he had, because the volume at which they all shouted affirmatives back at him was loud enough to shatter eardrums. Katsuki heaved the most put-upon, aggravated sigh he could manage and pulled his right arm back out of his pocket. He wasn’t sure what to expect, really. He definitely didn’t think it was going to be anything profound or noteworthy. Hell, his dad had gotten stuck with his mom’s very first greeting to him, which meant the phrase tattooed on his arm forever was: hey nerd
So he honestly had pretty low expectations here.
He was so completely unconcerned with whatever was written on his skin that it was really kind of a punch to the gut when he finally saw it, because not only did he recognize the words but they were painfully familiar – to the point that he could hear the grating, wobbly voice saying them in his ear. They were specific in a damning way, but at the same time vague enough that it could be someone else who said them. Someone he still had to meet in a situation that hadn’t yet occurred.
Maybe.
…Okay, so that was a bunch of bullshit and he wasn’t pathetic enough to cling to desperate hope like that for too long. But – but maybe.
Right??
Because there was no way. There was just absolutely no fucking way.
you looked like you needed saving
Son of a bitch.