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He was fourteen when he got his nickname. It happened because the word "Shitty" was branded on the inside of his arm in smudged black Sharpie. Although he'd desperately tried to hide it with a sweater his friends had /still/ managed to spot it, and the nickname followed him throughout the years. It was now used even by people who hadn't seen his soulmate's present but had heard the story, and in all honesty, he preferred the crude nickname to his given name; even if they'd never met, the stranger he was "destined to be with" seemed to know him pretty well.
She thought soulmates were bullshit. What if the person that the universe marked as your "other half" was totally incompatible with you? What if you never met? What if you had multiple soulmates? What if you had none? The whole thing was ridiculous, and now that she was already in college with no sign of her perfect match, she couldn't care less about them. Most people didn’t, it seemed--she’d had no difficulty finding dates with others who had also given up on the search.
Shitty Knight hadn’t given up, though. He /couldn’t/ give up knowing that there was someone out their who scribbled song lyrics on their forearms in pastel markers, who got paint smeared on the inside of their fingers, who had faded scars on their wrists, and who was waiting for him, too. He just hadn't met them yet.
Larissa Duan had stopped waiting ages ago. Her soulmate stopped sending messages by the age of seventeen, with their final mark being the simple word “bread” in scrawly handwriting. She’d been dubbed “Lardo” by a friend since she was known to have complicated grocery lists written on her every other day, usually filled with lard-ridden goods. Maybe her soulmate switched to using sticky notes instead of their arms.
Buying groceries from the little supermarkets outside of the boarding schools he’d go to growing up had always been difficult because of how forgetful he’d always been. One of the easiest ways to ensure that he’d remember everything he needed was to simply scribble down his list on his palms as soon as he’d think of the items, then make a formal list of what he needed at the end of the day. It wasn’t until he was older that he realized that his soulmate must have seen all of the embarrassing things he needed to buy, but by that time he’d already stopped writing lists on his hands. He'd stopped doing a lot of things from that time.
Lardo had grown up seeing little inspirational messages from her soulmate. Things like "you can do it" and "I believe in you". It was reassuring, even when she didn't feel they were true. But when they stopped as she grew up, she kind of stopped believing that this whole thing was nonsense.
Shitty thought he'd been annoying. His soulmate only replied every so often in their familiar tiny writing, so he'd stopped. Maybe his messages were inconveniencing them, he thought. Maybe they were silly. Maybe he was silly.
Now that she had a feeling that she'd never meet her soulmate and that things would never work out, she didn't care about marking her arms. She'd always have paint splatters and doodles on her wrists. If they were a nuisance, so be it; her soulmate was a nuisance for disappearing without a trace.
He wore those marks on his arms like tattoos, donning tank tops and muscle tees to flaunt his soulmate's talents. Multiple people kept asking if he was an art major, really, are you sure though, because of the marks, but it was okay. He liked the attention. One day he could find the person with matching marks because of it. The only time they weren't on display was when he wore his hockey uniform.
Lardo wanted to find some way to use her free time, so when her friend on the hockey team said they were looking for a team manager, she volunteered. When she first met them all she'd been wearing an ink-splattered gray shirt and some sweats, since she'd been working on a project for a class and didn't want to ruin anything nice. It only occurred to her that she should have changed when she realized she had to actually have an interview of sorts.
Shitty recognized her instantly. Even without looking at her arms he would have known just by the way she stood: firm, confident. Sure of herself. There was no way it wasn't her.
Just as Eric was walking her in, some guy slammed directly into a goalpost, and she reconsidered whether this was a good idea after all. The poor guy was rushed off the ice, and as he passed he shouted, "I'm shitty, your soulmate!" Lardo wasn't sure if it was a forming concussion that affected his speech, but she definitely knew she had to speak to him more.
He realized that she wouldn't know that his nickname was Shitty as soon as it left his mouth. Thankfully, she'd rushed to his side at the benches after hearing him yell out to her.
"You're my soulmate?"
He rolled up my sleeves. Her eyes went wide at the familiar marks that matched her own. "My nickname's Shitty."
"... I'm guessing that's my fault."
"Yeah, but I like it."
"I'm Larissa. Lardo. You really like bread."
He'd laughed. "Oh God, I'm sorry about that."
She shrugged a shoulder and grinned. "Yeah, but I like it."
The way he guffawed at this statement made Lardo reconsider whether or not soulmates were, in fact, bullshit. Maybe they were shitty, but they couldn't be all bad.
He still couldn't believe that his first impression with the person the universe decided he was meant to be with involved him getting a concussion. But seeing her leaning over him, holding an icepack to his forehead, he knew things would work out fine.
As they talked more, Lardo noticed the things they had in common--senses of humor, amazing hair--and they things they didn't--hobbies, friends. No wonder it took so long to find him.
She’s glad she finally did.