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I
Suna Rintarou wakes up on a perfectly normal day feeling perfectly normal except for the fact that his wrist is itchy as hell. Like, itchy as hell. Like, so itchy he’s vaguely aware he’s about to scratch the skin off.
He lifts the sleeve of his sweatshirt to investigate, and does about thirty double-takes.
Suna Rintarou is pretty confident that he did not have a tattoo before he went to sleep last night, and he’s even more confident that he did not have a tattoo of his best friend’s name. But no matter how many times Suna blinks at the ink that reads Miya Osamu in neat print on the inside of his wrist, it doesn’t disappear.
He scrubs at it in the shower, and then in the sink, and then in the kitchen sink for good measure, but it doesn’t go anywhere, so he tugs his sleeve over his wrist and goes to practice.
When he arrives, Miya Osamu looks as vexed as his bored face could possibly allow, and Suna immediately knows he’s not the only one who woke up this morning with a new tattoo. Suna makes a beeline.
“Show me your wrist,” he says.
Osamu’s eyes widen as he holds his arm out to Suna. Suna pushes the sleeve of Osamu’s sweatshirt up, and sure enough. Suna Rintarou.
“You’re not pranking me, right?” Suna asks, dropping Osamu’s arm. “Because that’s kind of lame.”
“Why the hell would I prank you by writing your name on my arm?”
“Because this,” Suna says and thrusts his wrist into Osamu’s face.
“Yeah,” Osamu says slowly, squinting at the neat ink on Suna’s wrist. “That is a pretty lame prank.”
“Okay,” Suna says, and shoves his sleeve back over the mark. “So we’ve established that this isn’t a prank.”
“Then what is it?” Osamu asks.
Suna shrugs. “We’re both having the same weird dream,” he suggests.
“Sure,” Osamu says. The edge of Suna’s name peeks out from his sleeve. “Sure.”
I (½)
When practice breaks and Atsumu finally stops asking him about the tattoos for five fucking mintues, Suna opens Google.
tattoo appears overnight
name tattoo not there before
why the fuck did i wake up with my best friends name tattooed on my wrist that definitely wasn’t there the night before
Google diagnoses him with 1) getting a tattoo while he was drunk and not remembering it in the morning, 2) fanfiction, and 3) “No results found for why the fuck did i wake up with my best friends name tattooed on my wrist that definitely wasn’t there the night before”.
II
Suna wakes up the next day, and his wrist is itchy. He’s almost afraid to look, but he does anyways, and yeah. There’s a tattoo there that he definitely didn’t have before.
But it’s different.
You new here?
“You new here?” Suna reads off to Osamu at practice. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
“That’s, uh,” Osamu says, sounding almost embarrassed. “That’s the first thing I ever said to ya.”
“Huh,” Suna says. “Show me yours.”
Osamu pushes up his sleeve. Which one are you again?
Suna laughs. “How did you even remember that?”
Osamu pushes his sleeve back down with a glare. “Because I was pissed. I was just tryin’ to be nice to ya, and you were a bitch to me.”
Suna sighs. “And you never tried to be nice to me ever again.”
“I’m plenty nice to you, asshole,” Osamu scoffs.
“Sure, asshole .” Suna grins. “We really need to stop having shared hallucinations. These tattoos are itchy as hell.”
“You don’t seem worried about this,” Osamu says.
“What am I supposed to do?” Suna shoves his shoulder into Osamu’s. “I already googled the hell out of it.”
Osamu rolls his eyes. “Well if Google doesn’t know, then I guess we’re screwed.”
“Which one are you again?” Suna asks, grinning when Osamu shoves him back.
III
Suna wakes up feeling perfectly normal. His wrist is not itchy, and he checks nearly every inch of his body for mysterious ink, with no results. Hell yeah.
But when he comes into the kitchen, his mom blinks at him a few times before asking, “Are you wearing contacts?”
“I don’t even want to know why you asked me that,” Suna says, and promptly leaves for practice.
Osamu is staring at him with panicked eyes when he walks into the gym, and he’s staring at him with two different colored eyes.
“I have two different colored eyes,” Suna says. “Don’t I?’
Osamu nods.
“What is happening?” Suna asks.
“We’re fuckin’ cursed is what’s happening,” Osamu says.
His mom texts him, asks if he thinks he should go to a doctor, something about a disease called Horner’s Syndrome that makes eyes change colors or whatever. There’s a lot of things Suna would rather do than explain this to a doctor, so he shoots back some bullshit about the fluorescence in the kitchen and leaves her on read when she asks if that’s a Twilight reference. Because obviously it’s a Twilight reference, and also Suna Rintarou is losing his mind.
“I’m losing my mind,” he says.
“Are you guys wearing contacts?” Gin asks.
“It’s the fluorescence,” Suna says and walks away.
X
It doesn’t stop. Suna wakes up one day with a timer above his head that reaches zero as soon as he gets to practice and gets some dumb American song from like 2012 stuck in his head on another day because Osamu won’t stop fucking singing it.
Some days he wakes up thinking it’s over. He doesn’t have a weird tattoo or a different colored strand of hair, and he can’t taste what Osamu is eating for breakfast. Like today.
They’re walking home from practice, and everything is still normal. No fireworks, or surprise tattoos. It’s safe to assume whatever the hell was going on with them has stopped going on.
Until Atsumu has to open his big mouth.
“What’s on your face?” Atsumu asks.
Suna kicks a stray pebble into the back of Atumu’s ankle. “What’s on yours?”
Atsumu rolls his eyes. “You actually have somethin’ on your face, asshole.”
Suna stops walking, reaches a fist up to rub at his cheek. “Did I get it?”
Atsumu shakes his head.
“Let me try,” Osamu says. He grips Suna’s chin in one hand and rubs the mark on Suna’s cheek with the other. He lets go, and his eyes widen in panic.
“What?” Suna asks, pulling out his phone. He opens his camera, only to stare in disbelief at his own face. There’s flowery prints where Osamu’s fingers had touched his skin. Shit.
“Fuck this,” Suna says. “What the hell is going on?”
“You’re soulmates,” Atsumu says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. “Can we keep walkin’ again?”
“Sorry,” Suna says because what the hell . “Go back.”
“Go back to what?”
“Soulmates,” Osamu says, in a similar state of what the hell . “What the fuck are you talkin’ about.”
“You’re soulmates,” Atsumu says. “Names on the wrists, leavin’ a mark when you touch each other. That’s soulmate stuff.”
“There’s no such thing,” Osamu says.
“And how do you know this stuff?” Suna asks.
“You know,” Atsumu says.
Suna squints at him.
“You know ,” Atsumu repeats. “Besides, what else could it be?”
“A curse,” Suna says, and when Osamu punches him on the arm, it leaves a flowering mark.
X (½)
When Suna gets home, his mom is typing on her laptop at the kotatsu with one hand and holding a mug of something steaming in the other.
“What is on your face?” she asks when he approaches, sticking her thumb in her mouth before rubbing her spit-covered finger against his chek.
“Mom,” Suna groans.
“Did you get in a fight?”
“Mom.”
“Sorry,” she says, and releases him. She resumes her one-handed typing.
“Mom,” Suna starts.
She hums.
“Do you believe in soulmates?” he asks.
“Oh, I don’t know,” his mom sighs. “It’s a nice thought.”
“Hm,” Suna says.
His mom raises an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Just some shi- stuff Atsumu was yelling about.”
The raised eyebrow drops into a deadpan stare. “Watch your language,” she says.
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“Sure,” she sighs. She sets her mug on the kotatsu and fixes him with a look. “Rintarou, I think if soulmates are real, the universe should come up with a better way of letting us know.”
“You’re telling me,” Suna says and makes a break for it before his mom can try to rub at his new face tattoos anymore.
XIV
When Suna wakes up and everything is black and white, he should freak out, but at this point, whatever.
The sky is gray, and the grass is gray, and the sun shines gray rays of light. The gym doors are gray, and the gym floor is gray until he looks up and locks eyes with Osamu, and suddenly everything is bright with color.
“What the hell,” Osamu says.
“Not even the weirdest thing to happen this week,” Suna grumbles and drops into a stretch.
XXI
Everything is normal when Suna wakes up, and everything is normal as Suna walks to practice, and everything is normal when he first sees Osamu, so Suna thinks the curse is broken.
And thank God for that. Yesterday, Suna got busted for cheating because the notes Osamu wrote on his hand appeared on Suna’s hand too, and Suna is still pretty pissed about that one.
“Are you having a regular day?” Suna asks.
“I think so,” Osamu says.
They bump fists, and nothing weird happens. They stretch, Atsumu starts practice, and life resumes as normal. Hell yeah. Curse broken.
They’re having a practice match. Osamu is setting for their makeshift team, and they are obviously beating the shit out of Atsumu’s team. Suna’s feeling good. No more curse, they’re beating Atsumu, Osamu is setting to him— it’s good.
It’s Riseki’s serve. Gin sends it up to Osamu, Osamu sends it up nicely for Suna.
He’s on the approach when it happens. He misses a step, and his ankle rolls with a sharp crack.
Suna hears the snap before he feels it, but he can’t hear anything after the twin sound of Osamu hitting the ground right next to him.
XXI (½)
Miya Osamu wakes up feeling kind of groggy, but mostly feeling like his ankle fucking hurts. He’s also on the floor of the gym, which is strange, since he is pretty sure he should be at the fuckin’ hospital.
“You good?” Atsumu asks above him.
“My ankle,” Osamu says with a grimace.
Gin and Atsumu blink down at him.
“Suna broke his ankle,” Gin says after a moment. “But you’re completely fine.”
“Nothin’s wrong with it?” Osamu asks. “It hurts like a bitch.”
“Nothin’s wrong,” Gin says with a shrug. “Just feelin’ Suna’s pain, I guess.”
“Soulmates!” Atsumu exclaims, like he’s been waiting for hours to let everyone know exactly what he thinks about the situation. “Suna broke his ankle, and you feel it too.”
“Soulmates aren’t fuckin’ real, dumbass,” Osamu groans.
“Well, neither are curses,” Atsumu says.
Osamu rolls his eyes. “Where’s Suna?”
“Hospital,” Atsumu says. “Did ya miss the part where we said he broke his ankle?”
“Surgery?” Osamu asks.
Atsumu shrugs. “If he was in surgery, you’d probably feel it too.”
Osamu sighs, tries not to focus on the throbbing of his not-broken ankle, and heaves himself up.
“Where are you goin’?” Gin asks.
The pain doesn’t change at all when he puts weight onto his foot, so, yeah, not broken. Osamu takes a few cautious steps towards the door. “The hospital.”
XXII
Suna wakes up in a bed with a red string tied to his pointer finger and knows immediately where it leads. When he brings his hand up to rub at his sleep-crusted eyes, it pulls on the end tied to Osamu, slumped in a desk chair next to his bed.
Suna pulls at it harder, watches Osamu’s pointer finger twitch with the movement. The rest of Osamu doesn’t budge, and Suna’s ankle still throbs with pain, so he goes back to sleep.
The next time he wakes up, Osamu is looping the string into loose knots. Suna pulls at it again. Osamu looks up.
“Red string of fate,” he says, pulling a knot tight. “That’s a soulmate thing, ya know.”
“Yeah,” Suna sighs. “‘M tired.”
Osamu nods. “You’re still kinda drugged, I think.”
Suna nods, watches Osamu loop the string in silence.
“It scared me when you fell yesterday,” Osamu mumbles after a while. “And not just cause my ankle felt broken too.”
Suna hums. Osamu releases the string, and it falls slack between them.
“Weird how I thought I broke my ankle,” Osamu says. “But all I could think about was if you were okay.”
“Weird,” Suna agrees, and promptly falls back asleep.
XXIII
Suna leaves the hospital later that day. He has a fitful night of sleep in his own bed. His body wakes him up when he should usually be leaving for practice, so he spends the morning wallowing in self-pity until Osamu comes back to visit him.
“How’s it feel?” Osamu asks.
“Fine,” Suna tries to say, but it comes out as, “It hurts.”
He blinks once, tries to say, “but it’s not that bad”, and instead says, “I could barely sleep last night because it hurt so bad.” He blinks again.
“Why are you blinking so much?” Osamu asks.
“Fuck you, that’s why,” Suna tries to say.
“Because I am not meaning to say the stuff I’m saying,” Suna actually says.
Osamu’s eyes widen. “Is this a curse thing?”
“What else would it be?” Suna asks. “Try to lie to me.”
“What?’
“Try to lie to me. Tell me you want to play volleyball after high school,” Suna says.
“I don’t want to keep playing volleyball after high school, but I’m afraid to tell my brother,” Osamu says. “What the fuck.”
“You still haven’t told Atsumu?” Suna asks. “Why?”
“Trust me, you'd know if I’d told Atsumu,” Osamu says, and he grimaces. “I don’t think we should ask each other questions.”
“Yeah,” Suna sighs. “I wonder when this shit is gonna stop. Who did we piss off anyways?”
“Y’know, I’ve been startin’ to think Atsumu might be right,” Osamu says and immediately smacks his palm over his mouth.
Suna blinks. “What?”
“The soulmates thing,” Osamu says, muffled under his palm.
“What?” Suna repeats. “You think we’re soulmates?”
Osamu drags his hand down his face, looks at Suna with a resigned expression. “You don’t? After all this?”
“Of course I don’t,” Suna means to say, but instead, he says, “Maybe I do.”
They blink at each other.
Suna opens his mouth to speak.
“Maybe we should talk about this when we’re not sayin’ things we don’t wanna,” Osamu says before Suna can make a sound.
Suna nods. “I like that idea.”
They blink at each other some more.
“I’m still tired,” Suna says. “I didn’t sleep very good last night.”
“That’s fine,” Osamu says.
“I think I’m going to go back to sleep,” Suna says.
Osamu nods. “Yeah, sure.”
“I think you should go back to sleep too,” Suna says. “With me.”
“Like, in your bed?” Osamu asks.
“No, like, on my floor,” Suna scoffs. “ Yes , in my bed. We’re fucking soulmates.”
“We’re fucking soulmates,” Osamu repeats, almost dreamily, as he crawls into Suna’s bed.
XXIII (½)
Suna Rintarou wakes up a few hours later feeling perfectly normal. Except his arm is asleep from where Osamu has been laying on it and the edge of his t-shirt is damp from where Osamu has been drooling on it.
There’s no tattoos, no timer above his head. Only Osamu and Osamu’s snores right in Suna’s ear. Hell yeah.