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One day, every person finds an object that calls to them. It could be a car, a spoon, a hair pin, really anything inanimate, any object, and it calls to them, a warmth in their chest and a twitch in their fingers, something like home settling into the bones, the taste of something unknown and perfect on their tongue.
These objects are talismans. A call to their intended companion, to their soulmate, to the person who would best complete them in the world. Not every person finds their object, and some will do it when they're a toddler, chubby fists clinging to whatever has caught their heart, unknowing of the true meaning but so sure that this is theirs, and others will be in the middle of their career, their first grey hairs coming through, and will pause in their commute at the sight of something on the street, a newspaper page caught in the wind or a sample of wares on a stall.
Ojiro is simply walking back home one day, when he walks past a stationary shop and pauses. The display is different to last time he walked past. Without a thought, something like deja vu pushing at the corners of his awareness, something like safety sinking into his very marrow, he turns his head, gaze alighting instantly upon a single notebook. Or, rather, there is a small stack of them, but there is one, three down, and he can already see how there is a little wear on a single corner of it where it has snagged somewhere. Ojiro has to have it. He knows it.
There is barely any coherence at all to how he hurries into the shop, pulling the notebook out of the stack with enough haste to almost send the whole lot toppling, and then he has to stop and simply breathe for a time.
The heat in his chest is heady, almost sickening except it feels like a summer evening and an early autumn sunrise and sitting in front of a wood fire, wrapped up in blankets, all at once, even as he is wracked with shivers. This is his object. His talisman. He knows it with all that he is and has been and ever could be. He knows it with the part of himself that will one day be intertwined with another so wholly and purely that there is no room for doubting their connection, their love, their companionship.
This notebook is his talisman, his tie to his soulmate. Ojiro already adores them with all that he is.
(He knows that a soulmate is 'only' an ideal match, the person who would best suit him, who would complete his life in the best way, but Ojiro has always believed in more than that. No, there's nothing wrong with loving someone who isn't your soulmate, to his mind, or even to marrying and having children with them. It's not settling, he doesn't think, it's just giving yourself joy. But, still, the idea of a soulmate, a companion who is meant just for him, who would love every part of him no matter what, who would fill any gaps in his life and strengthen the positives already there and help him fight away the negatives... Call Ojiro a sap, or a hopeless romantic, but he wants that. Even if it meant waiting until he was sixty to meet the person who would be that for him, then that's a so-called price he's more than willing to pay.
Because his soulmate might not be the ultimate, perfect person. Their relationship may not be perfect, not all the time at least, because their opinions will surely not fully align, their hopes and fears and dreams will surely differ, and they will not immaculately get along with no hiccups or misunderstandings, but, well. It gives them a very good basis. A good foundation to build a true, deep relationship from.)
It doesn't take a single thought to go up to the till, placing the notebook down as delicately as he can, and he's probably babbling a little with how he rambles that he just saw it and he knew and how much is it, sorry? The man at the till just smiles at him, laughs a little but not unkindly so, and offers him a discount that Ojiro gratefully accepts, flustered though he may be.
He rushes home after that, clutching his bag, notebook carefully tucked away, close to his chest, completely unable to help the beaming grin that makes his cheeks ache.
Because Ojiro wants his soulmate. He wants them in his life, in his arms, in his thoughts. But, for now, at home, curled up in bed, he has to make do with only the lattermost, with the feeling of a soft notebook cover beneath his fingertips, with being able to gently smooth down the snagged corner. Sometimes, in the future, he will open the book as carefully as if it was a flower's petals, flicking delicately through the empty pages. They're very pretty, each of them framed with patterns like ivy and flowers and something that might be mandala symbols. It's a contrast to the very plain cover. Ojiro wonders what it may or may not say about his soulmate.
One day, as he applies for UA, and he's feeling perhaps the most insecure he has in a long time, Ojiro finds himself lying on his bed, his talisman in hand, and reaching out for a pen from his study notes.
It feels both so wrong and so right to put even a single dot of ink upon a page of this notebook. Like he's writing on the very soul of his other half, like he is etching his words upon their very being. But, equally, Ojiro needs and wants something, right now, some connection, some hope, some promise to himself that no matter what happens in his career, his soulmate will be somebody who should not judge him for that.
'To my soulmate. I can't wait to love you.' The words are a little bit shaky, slightly messy in a way that he would normally hate, doubly so when it's for something so important, but it's hard to begrudge himself that fact when this means so very much to him, when he just wants things to be okay, and for his soulmate to one day open this notebook themselves, to trace their fingertips where Ojiro has, to read these words and feel what he has.
He hopes that they're excited to love him too.
Izuku really isn't sure that his soulmate will love him. He knows how it's supposed to work, he knows how he wants it to work, but he also knows that so much of the world hates him, and he hopes to everything that his soulmate will see past his Quirklessness (and how annoying and creepy and stupid he is-) and adore him all the same.
That hope is never so much as a tangible warmth in his chest until the day that he finds the patch. He was walking along, or rather jogging because he knows that a few of Kacchan's not-friends were half-heartedly following him and he would very much like not to get beaten up today, really. His ribs still ache from the last one, and his wrist keeps clicking-popping-snapping out of place and back into it, aching and stiff for hours afterwards. So, really not wanting a repeat incident, Izuku was jogging.
He couldn't say why he veered off-path, really. It was a whim, a thoughtless thing, pivoting sharply on his heels to instead cut through an alley, slipping onto a parallel street but keeping up his same pace, huffing to himself just the once, even though it interrupts his steady breathing pace.
He's tired.
But Izuku has spent a long time being tired, and there isn't exactly anything to be done about that, so he just keeps jogging, crossing another street and then a third, even though it's a far wider loop to get back to his home than he should ever need or want to take, no matter how many bullies might follow him. It leaves him wondering quite why he decided to come so far over, except he isn't sure that he really decided at all. No, it was far more of an instinct, a decision never consciously registered let alone made, yet Izuku has followed it all the same. He doesn't really know this street well, although he's fairly sure that there's an arcade at the other end of it, back towards school. He and Kacchan came here once or twice with Auntie Mitsuki when they were little, and she decimated them both in everything.
Now, however, Izuku is alone (there is something rising in his blood, a chorus and a choir and a calling-) as he slows down to something closer to a walk, just a little bit hurried.
Across the way, on the opposite pavement, there is something red on the ground, a spot of muted colour abandoned beside a building. Izuku needs it. (He thinks it might need him too, in some way, and that's stupid because it's just something on the floor, he can't even tell what it is, but he still things that it's his, and he is its too, in some way, somehow-) He freezes in place, an abrupt plateau, painted in rosen tones of want-loneliness-wishing.
A car horn blares before Izuku can even process a single other thing, and he's running, faster than he can think, enough that he nearly stumbles with it halfway across the room that he started sprinting across before he could even try to figure out what the item he's fixating on might be. But he doesn't get hit, and he barely has to breathe until he's on the opposite pavement and crouching down, trembling fingertips reaching down for the little red shape, dirty and slightly scuffed though it may be, made of embroidered fabric, Izuku thinks.
Oh. It's a patch. A little embroidered patch, a cartoon fist maybe an inch around, stark black lines and dynamic shapes and Izuku thinks it's kind of cute in an odd sort of way. (His thoughts are surely twisted in the best sense, because there is a swelling of warmth against his breastbone, crashing and rumbling through his entire being relentlessly, oh-so sweetly, ivy growing with gentle leaves brushing upon his bones.)
It takes several seconds to register why he ran over here. Why he wanted this little patch, why it felt so much like his own and like something so much more all at once. This patch is his talisman, isn't it? It's his soulmate's except that makes it Izuku's too.
Maybe he really can afford to have hope, if holding this single little piece of fabric and thread and glue can fill him with such sheer contentment.
Ojiro is honestly excited for his first proper day at UA. Enough so that he has to keep on forcing his tail not to wag as he puts on his uniform, and carefully puts his notebook into his bag, inside the protective plastic casing that he bought for it years ago in case things get spilt in his bag or someone tries to take it out. He had a single close call six months after getting his talisman, and he refuses to risk it getting more damaged than it naturally was. Or, well, as it was when he got it.
He gets to his desk, sits down, begins to put things away, and, without much more thought, looks around his new classroom, trying to get a feel for his classmates. There's a silent boy in one corner, two-toned hair and almost-blank eyes; a girl with a long ponytail is sitting with a book out, elegant in her posture but there's an edge of nerves to how she shifts occasionally, and in how she twists and tugs at her fringe every so often. (Ojiro has long-since learnt to be observant, to pick up on little cues and details and body language, trying to pick up tells of what move someone will make next, and it started out as a benefit and result of his spars, but now it's something he carries throughout life, trying to pick up on people's intentions, on their feelings, on their possible needs. It's good for people on the streets, and good for what he wants to be, what he's working towards. The very reason that he's here, and that he has fought so hard.
Ojiro is going to be a hero. He is.)
The door slides open again before Ojiro can really settle in, a rather short boy shuffling in, head ducked and hands tight around his bright yellow bag straps. He has a sweatband on one wrist, too, a simple black one. It's all that Ojiro has the time to process before the boy is walking further into the room, head still ducked until he's only half a dozen paces from the blond's desk, when he happens to glance up.
The boy is very pretty, Ojiro realises in all of a blink. It's in the dark, jagged halo of curls, in the eyes like sunlight through gossamer leaves, in the ways that the freckles are a deity's celestial kiss, scattered and kind and ichor-gold.
But a pretty boy isn't exactly the most important thing ever, not today of all days, so he just smiles and nods, reaching down to pull his bag into his lap, wanting to get a book out to read whilst he waits. Except pulling out his novel reveals his talisman, cover carefully kept safe and soft and unmarked in its plastic case, and the boy lurches a little in place, eyes widening slightly. (It is the blossoming of aurora, the unfurling of the sky's most stunning blooms-)
"Can I- Can I look at that notebook? It looks like one I really wanted when I was a kid but couldn't get. Obviously, uhm, you can totally say no! I don't want to be rude or anything! I just-"
"It's fine," Ojiro interrupts, smooth and without even really thinking it. This boy isn't the first person he's met who is so blatantly nervous, no, it reminds Ojiro a lot of one of Aiko's friends, a girl who his little sister is fiercely protective over. He doesn't blame her.
That alone, however, surely isn't enough for why he pulls his talisman carefully out of his bag, and presents it to this mystery boy with a faint shudder to his fingertips, breaths picking up, catching, racing-
"Oh."
Even though the awe in his tone very much matches how Ojiro feels, it isn't Ojiro who speaks. No, the boy has gasped out in something low and gut-twisted, heart speared upon a single exhalation of word, ragged enough that Ojiro barely thinks before he's on his feet and pulling them close, ever so careful not to crush his talisman and not to clutch them too tightly either but, Kami, this is his soulmate.
"I'm Ojiro Mashirou. Hi," he murmurs against his soulmate's curls (they smell like pomegranate, a little bitter, a little sweet, and are so soft pressed beneath his chin-) and there's the huff of a laugh from within his arms, ticklish in the best way against his collar.
"Midoriya Izuku. Hi."
They draw back a little then, heedless of anyone else in the room, uncaring, only able to pay attention to the press of warm breaths and skin and of staring into each other's eyes. Ojiro stares into that green gaze, and he thinks that he might just be seeing his future unfolding right before him, scars and stars and an enduring, kind presence.
He sees someone he could love with his entire being, and who could love him right back. Ojiro is just glad that their smile is as bright as his own.
(Things are not perfect. Of course they're not. But, oh, having that tether, that sanctuary, that reliance that this person is meant to be able to understand and support them... It's a grounding point that Izuku and Mashirou find themselves needing, in the coming months.
But it's more than that, too. It isn't just reliance and need and support. No, it's laughter, a spar that ends in them breathless upon the ground, bruised but grinning at each other, evenings spent eating food with each other's families and doing homework and gradually figuring out where their preferences in films overlap and differ and, once or twice, finding entirely new genres together or from each other.
Izuku sobs, deep and ugly and delighted, when he first traces fingertips over the shaky inscription upon Mashirou's talisman. Mashirou smiles, tremulous and flattered and oh-so sweet, when he first truly realises that Izuku has worn his talisman against his pulsepoint for three years already, and that he does not take it off even now that they have each other.
Through it all, with it all, they learn the map of each other, the ticklish spots and where flushes seep into skin and how they hit hardest. They whisper the stories of scars, the ragged edges of dreams, the promises for what they want to give to the other.
Mashirou and Izuku fall in love with each other day by day, year by year, and neither of them regret a single moment.)