Chapter Text
From your 10th birthday, you pretty much knew that you were sharing your soulmate. No, it was more the fact that you had two of them, two very… energetic people, one might say. Their story was beautiful. Two boys who shared a passion for becoming pro heroes, each of them unique on their own, and you were honestly surprised just how well their seemingly opposite personalities matched. You laughed when you remembered the first time the two of them interacted, a little goodie two shoes like you was so stressed over the insults that were appearing on your hands, and you had almost cried one time to your mom when she accused you of being mean to your soulmate, pleading that it was not you who had written such horrible things on your arms. Luckily, your mother understood very quickly and laughed at you.
You were about to write something back, you really had just mustered the courage for it when suddenly a bold line crossed out the bad words. “That's really mean dude!” a definitely different handwriting popped up under the crossed-out insults. That was the first time you had realized that your fate was somewhat broken and, in your small developing brain, you had somehow convinced yourself that you shouldn’t be involved in all of this. After all, everywhere you looked and everyone you kmew had never once mentioned having more than one soulmate. So you decided to not intrude and to let the boys be happy together.
There were nights when you found it hard to keep yourself away from them. Especially as you grew older and things in your life started changing, it was excruciating not having someone you could talk to and rely on, but their relationship brought you peace staying the way it was. It was a constant in your life that was never changing, which you never knew how thankful you could be for. On those nights you traced over the left good night messages on your hands, wondering what it would be like if you weren’t broken, if you weren’t intruding.
The two boys were a year older than you and had already found themselves at the time you had entered UA general courses. It was exciting to you when they realized that they were in the same class and suddenly the messages became more entertaining as they were now talking more and more about their classes and gossiping about this and that during lectures. It was a ton of fun for you to decode what the two of them were writing about when they talked about people in their class. It truly was your secret little source of entertainment during boring school days.
And you wanted to keep this little peace you were blessed with for yourself, but the UA general studies had vastly other plans for you. While the school focused so much on the best hero course in the entire country, you had come to realize that general studies and pretty much every other course were a bit of a law of the jungle, especially when it came to bullying. It was strange to think how, in a world where people had unique quirks, discrimination was at an all-time high, especially on school grounds. And in a world where you had to fight so much harder to stand out, lack of confidence could kill you.
You hadn’t wanted this to happen. It wasn’t long after you had entered school with all your other classmates when shit started to hit the fan. The opening ceremony was quick but pretty amazing, and you were surprised to see a lot of people who had a lot of potential to become heroes, but you were sure that not everyone wanted to work in the field. Heck, you particularly wanted nothing to do with that world, so it came as much of a surprise when, one day, you were asked to be moved to the hero course due to your strong quirk. Of course, you refused, but the interaction surely didn’t go unnoticed.
Yukiyo Towa had broken the Poki she held in her hand as she had overheard the teacher offer you, the one thing that she had wanted the most. The white-haired girl wanted to be a hero, so so badly, but unfortunately her time freezing quirk was not very helpful when it came to the entrance exam especially since she hadn't thought she needed to improve her physical strenght, and so she was stuck in the general course, working her behind off to get good grades and gaining the favors of all her teachers, seemingly and obviously in vain. The girl had learned one way or another that there were people that transferred from the general course to the hero one in the past, but those were reportedly very rare occasions. She knew that one of her seniors had managed to do just that, and she decided she was going to follow in his footsteps and do just that. That was, of course, until she had learned that the teachers were seemingly not even considering her. Yukiyo decided she had to do something and, well, she couldn’t be seen doing anything remotely bad or else her chances were reduced to zero… but she maybe could ‘convince’ you to give up and move schools, so that’s what she did.
At first there were little things, like tripping you up or giving you nasty looks, but when that didn’t seem to have any effect on you, the bullying started to turn into something harsher. Threats and notes of insults were left in your lockers and while they did annoy you, you didn’t really care for them. Not only that, by now you were so used to insults that it didn't even registed as something bad due to one potty mouth in your life. Even when the notes demanded you leave UA, you stood your ground. No one could intervene between you and your dreams of becoming a nurse. Surprisingly, even if the general course wasn’t as popular as the hero course, it still bred a bunch of talented students that would end up becoming great lawyers and doctors, not to mention the staff was well-connected, so it was easier to get an internship etc. as a student of UA. So no, you weren’t just going to up and leave such a great opportunity.
In retrospect, maybe you should have, considering that being ignored was one of Yukiyo’s biggest pet peeves, which resulted in confrontations that you were definitely not ready for. Getting shoved in lockers, yelled at behind school and things like throwing water at you while you were in a bathroom stall were pretty common after the first month you started your high school journey. And man was she good at keeping it under rafts, as you were sure no one aside from her minions really knew what happened. It’s not like it was hard for her and her quirk.
You realized it after the first or second time you were shoved into the bathroom and getting yelled at. When, inevitably, Yukiyo got her hit, it would have seemed like time had barely passed. Only then did you realize that she was using her quirk on you. You deducted that she could freeze time everywhere aside from the bubble that she created. Even if you started to despise her with all your heart, you couldn’t deny that her quirk was impressive, but it was not something you could really fight with, or be flashy in, and you soon realized that even if her quirk was powerful, there was little chance of getting through the entrance exam like that, which was a shame, she would make such a great rescue hero.
A hair pull snapped you out of the train of thought and you realized you had spaced out while Yukiyo and her minions were having their, seemingly daily nowadays, bullying session. Today she somehow seemed more irritated than she normally was. You didn’t know why, but you knew that it would be a long day for you. Expecting the usual torture and whatsoever, you were surprised and horrified when suddenly she pulled out a permanent marker.
“You know my little nuisance, somehow I was never able to crack into you no matter what I did… but maybe a little trouble in paradise wouldn’t hurt”. Finally, your eyes widened and Yukiyo knew she had found the thing she was looking for this entire time. A sickly grin formed across her face as she watched you squirm away from the stinky marker. You would have protested further if it weren’t for one of her minions silencing you with her quirk and pinning you to the ground. The marker got closer to your jaw, and you did the best you could to fight her off.
“It would be a shame to wake up with some colorful words on your face, would it not?” she said as she struggled to write but had a hard time since you were thrashing around so much. In the end, she only managed to draw a couple of incoherent scribbles and left it at it, getting impatient with you and leaving, but you figured this wouldn’t be an isolated incident. Time around you came back to normal, and you rushed towards the bathroom as the group left. With a washcloth and a lot of scrubbing, you managed to make the marks a bit less prominent, but they were still pretty visible. Additionally, the side of your neck was pretty red from all the scrubbing. Panic spread and all you could do was hope that your soulmates were somehow having an off day or something of the sort or that they would simply not look in the mirror that day and no one would mention anything to them. You knew this was wishful thinking since the two of them went to UA and, as far as you knew, there were no off days today.
—
“What the hell Eijirou Kirishima”, Katsuki yelled as he banged at his soulmate's door like a wild animal, not caring that he was waking up the whole hall. Behind the door there was a little shuffling, before a half-asleep Kirishima opened the door to find his angry boyfriend glaring at him, multiple marker stains on his face.
“Oh dude, what happened to you?” the redhead said, giving his lover a goofy smile and inviting the boy in.
“Why the hell are you scribbling on your face early in the morning, idiot?” Katsuki continued in his normal tone as he looked around the slightly messy room. The room had stayed the same over the time they had moved into the dorms with only a couple of trinkets that the more explosive boy had given Kirishima over the time they were dating. Katsuki’s eyes moved towards the boy's bed as he looked for something specific.
“What do you mean… I just woke up!” on cue Eijirou yawned and crossed his arms. Even he looked around his bed as to see if he had accidentally slept on a marker or anything of the sort, but his school supplies were either neatly placed on the desk, mind you, by Bakugou the night before, or in his backpack, and it wasn’t like it was common for him to even have permanent markers. The blonde turned the pillows and the covers looking for the damn thing, but to no avail. There were little chances that said imaginary marker didn’t also stain the sheets if it managed to get all over his boyfriend's face.
"What? So if it wasn’t you then who the hell scribbled on our faces? Some third soulmate who happened to decide it's a good time to drench their face in marker paint after 7 years?”
“What if… tho…” the taller of the two asked, leaving his boyfriend speechless. No way, that was impossible! Well, technically, that was very much possible. It wasn’t very common, but there were more than a handful of cases across Japan where there were multiple people sharing a bond, and it wasn’t something that was unheard of or stigmatized even, but to both of them it seemed impossible that, for over 7 years, there had not been even one accidental scribble on their bodies. So that seemed out of the question, for now at least.
“Maybe Denki or so sneaked into my room this morning and decided to have a little prank…?” Kirishima concluded, and the two boys made their way to the common area to confront whoever was up and responsible. The boys got ready individually before going into the common area, ready to chew a certain blondie out, but to their dismay and expectedly to no one's surprise, the boy was still asleep in his dorm.
“Oh dude, what happened to your faces?” Sero asked, shoving a spoon full of cereal in his face. Katsuki was about to make a scene once more before Eijirouu stepped in and explained the situation, also asking the important question of whether he knew who could have done this or not. “Hey look man, like, most people brave enough to mess with you guys got back from a big internship mission last night… I don’t think it was any of us…”
“Me neither. I had a sleepover with the girls. We were all woken up by your ass screaming in the halls”, Mina mumbled tiredly as she put on her backpack lazily and headed out the door. People followed up, slowly exiting the dorm, one by one and wondering what was up with the marks on their faces rendering them useless. When Shinsou, the last person to be ready for school, finally showed up, the two of them finally gave up and followed suit.
“What if like, you guys have a third soulmate?” the tired boy asked, deciding to walk with the two even if mister explosion murder wasn’t really enthusiastic about it, but over the years, getting to know his classmates better and for his boyfriend’s sake, he decided to just let it happen. He couldn’t deny either that Shinsou was at least willing to rack their brains with them to come up with a solution.
“It wouldn’t make sense, in a whole 7 years of knowing each other, there wasn’t even a scribble that didn’t belong to either of us…”
Shinsou frowned, but ultimately nodded in skepticism. “Really?” the man asked, looking at the building in front of them that was less than 10 minutes away from their dorms. “What about a similar writing style or… what if they didn’t want to be involved with the two of you.” Kirishima frowned, no there was no way, Katsuki was probably the only person that managed to insult someone in a loving way, not to mention, he knew his boyfriend inside out and if he had happened to miss a text from him, he would have been chewed out the next day. As for the person not wanting to be involved with them, the optimistic boy couldn’t think that it was even possible not to love Katsuki, especially if their soulmate was reading the same things he was. Not only that, a soulmate bond wasn’t just a thing tying you to another person, but more so the world became brighter and more bearable. Even the colors seemed brighter when his boyfriend was around and Eijirou couldn’t imagine what it would be like to experience it with both of his soulmates… if that was even the case here.
“Stop projecting Raccoon Eyes, just because your soulmate hasn’t responded to you since the beginning of the year, doesn’t mean ours will be the same”, Katsuki exploded, a little bit literally. But the new addition to the hero course just shrugged with a smile. He was sure that his soulmate had their reasons, and he wasn’t one to push, but he had the feeling that these two were a bit more fired up than he was. Damn extroverts.
It wasn’t long until the three of them had taken their seats in the fresh second year classrooms they were somewhat familiar with by now. As the lessons began, Eijirou couldn’t concentrate even one bit. All he could think about was the marker stains on his face and, playing with his pen, he couldn’t help but wonder if he should write something in acknowledgment or if he should give the person some time to explain themselves. What if it wasn’t someone else at all and there was a different explanation for this mess? Before the redhead came to a conclusion though, five words appeared on his skin, unmissable on top of his hand.
“Hey extra, are you there?”