Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ichijou had decided long ago that he didn’t care who his soulmate was.

His mother had seen the phrase that appeared on his hand when he was thirteen, and seemed to assume he was distressed about it because of how common a sentence it was. She had given him options to enroll in support groups for people with common soulmate phrases, counseling for those who worried they would never find their true partner due to how often they would hear the words.

It was only a common myth, in movies and books, about people whose soulmate phrase was the first words they’d ever hear their soulmate speak. In reality, it was more common for the phrase to be the thing they’d say just before you realized the true depth of your feelings for them. Certainly, for some small number of people out there, those would be their soulmate’s first words to them. But for most people, they might know their soulmate for years before the phrase was uttered, and realization struck. Teenagers often worried about how they would know who their soulmate was, if the phrase was too common.

Ichijou knew that it didn’t matter what the words actually were, though. In truth, he was more distressed about the fact that he had gotten a phrase at all.

The soulmate phrase was low enough on his hand that it was nearly on his wrist, neatly framing the bottom of his right thumb. If he wore long sleeved shirts that were just a bit oversized, they tended to cover it entirely. He liked it better, that way.

At ten, when his father had died, he had seen firsthand how devastated his mother was, losing her soulmate. The words on her forearm looked more like a sickly bruise in the aftermath, and she often cradled the arm as if it had been broken by the incident. For years later, it would continue to look like a nasty bruise, before finally fading to nothing more than smudged ink.

Ichijou wanted nothing to do with soulmates, seeing how the loss of hers had laid his mother low, the strongest person he had ever known wracked with grief.

With that in mind, the words just below his thumb felt more like a threat.

Ichijou would be lying if he said he’d never sometimes wondered who his soulmate was. The fact that the words inscribed on your body weren’t the first they’d ever speak to you meant that anyone he already knew couldn’t be eliminated. He didn’t think about it often, but sometimes, late at night, it felt like a sword poised above him, waiting to strike.

And then, after the strangest few days of his life had culminated in watching a man transform into a bug-creature in a burning church, he’d be lying if he didn’t at least double check that the words on his hand hadn’t changed somehow into, “Watch my henshin.”

It certainly seemed like the most important words he would ever hear, and it was hard to imagine something so simple topping them. But, that was the overpowering nature of Godai. After meeting him, it was hard to imagine someone ever having a more significant pull on him. But, he supposed, that was probably how everyone felt after meeting Godai. He was a force of nature, a shining light that made it hard to focus on anything else.

So, perhaps it made sense that things only clicked together in his absence.

“Time of death was 7:44,” Tsubaki said over the phone, and Ichijou felt his world shrink down to a pinpoint as the darkness closed around his car. “There was nothing else we could do.”

Ichijou tried not to let his eyes fall to his hand. But he felt an icy stab in his heart as he realized that he and Godai hadn’t had a chance to speak to each other before Ichijou had found him injured, too wracked with pain to speak. The last thing Godai had said to him — would ever say to him — had been their short conversation over the phone.

He hadn’t given it a second thought when he’d called Godai earlier that day. It was the most natural thing in the world. There was a threat, and Godai responded to it in the same resolute, eager way he always did.

Suddenly, the world felt more hollow. More empty. Ichijou wasn’t just thinking about the danger of the Unidentified Lifeforms anymore. He wasn’t just thinking about the hopeless task that now fell to his squad, without the power of Kuuga on their side. He wasn’t even thinking about the dozens and dozens of people that loved Godai and would be gutted without him.

Instead, he wondered if maybe that feeling he associated with Godai — the overwhelming light that flowed out from him and made Ichijou almost forget that darkness even existed — wasn’t how everyone else felt about him.

“About his sister…” Tsubaki continued, and Ichijou was plunged back into reality, like a freezing blast of water to his face.

“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice together. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Please…”

Ichijou hung up the phone before Tsubaki could say anything more. No longer holding the phone, he could see the phrase on his hand clearly now, like a burning brand.

He flexed his hand, almost by instinct, into a thumbs up, and for the first time it struck him how the gesture made the phrase more prominent. It felt like salt in the wound.

Ichijou didn’t say anything when Godai came back. Part of him thought it wasn’t as important as everything else going on. Another part of him thought it was too important to rush, and he wasn’t sure how to make time for it.

Maybe it was lucky, then, that Godai made the first move. After Ichijou ushered him back to his apartment, to tend to him after a nasty fight, it was Godai that moved for him as soon as the door was closed. A hand cradling Ichijou’s face like something precious, something worth protecting. Boxing him in against the door like he might bolt if Godai moved too fast.

He was proud of making Godai yelp in surprise as he returned his first tentative kiss with twice as much fire.

It wasn’t until later, laying in bed, bodies entwined as they shared tired kisses, that Ichijou finally found Godai’s mark, sitting just so on his left shoulder.

“Unbelievable,” Ichijou said, trying to be indignant about it but failing. “You knew the whole time?”

Godai laughed as Ichijou traced the words with awe.

“Not the whole time,” he said. “Though, the first words you said to me would have been even funnier. Demanding to know who I am and what the hell I was trying to do.” He was still smiling as he traced the words just under Ichijou’s thumb. “Besides, I wasn’t sure if I was yours.”

“It couldn’t have been anyone else,” Ichijou said, hardly thinking about it.

And Godai smiled at him with the full force of the sun.

Only to follow it up with, “Ichijou-san, I honestly have no idea when I said this to you.”

After Godai left, in the aftermath of the fight with Number 0, Ichijou felt the ache of his absence. With every glimpse of blue sky, he felt the pang of longing for him. But whenever the loneliness became too much, the words just under his thumb reminded him that soon, Godai would return.