Notes: So this is an AU of my fic, baby, don't forget my name! The difference here is that soul marks are a thing. Possible spoilers if you haven't gotten like halfway through the fic. But it's all really vague.
Thanks to Adel Mortescryche (on AO3) for giving me the idea to do this AU of the fic! ;D
Curled around his bicep in a fanciful, elegant font is this:
"He's cute. And angry. Haha, he looks like he wants to fight the whole world. Same, though."
Similarly, printed on his inner thigh in a bold, confident scrawl is this:
"Oh, god. Look at this guy. Probably has a chip on his shoulder and a beef with anybody who looks at him funny. He's definitely gonna be a pain in the ass."
As far as soul marks go, they're pretty shitty. But that's par for the course in Shougo's life, so he shoves it to the back of his mind and doesn't think about it.
Everybody judges him with one look, and if he mistakenly might have hoped his soulmates would be different, well, it's just another disappointment in a long line of them, and he tells himself it doesn't matter.
And well, okay, two soul marks - and thus, two soulmates - might be pretty rare, and he might have been initially excited at the idea that he might be special... But then he turned ten, and the words finally became clear, and he realized that special was just another word for different. And different meant strange.
Strange never translated to good.
He took to actively covering up his marks with longer t-shirts and shorts, and everyone around him learned rather quickly and painfully not to ask about them.
It's rude in society to ask about them any-fucking-way, but kids are and always will be tactless dipshits. Adults are a lot better about skirting the issue and lecturing their children to do the same, meaning that for fucking once they're actually useful.
(No offense to his mom, who is awesome and defies all stereotypes and generalizations.
All offense to the other deadbeat fuck who shares his DNA.)
He mostly manages to forget about it, instead focusing all his energy into being a violent asshole for the majority of his school years. Starting when Kise fucking Ryouta effortlessly rises through the ranks and threatens his spot on the team and growing fucking worse when he's not-so-subtly encouraged to resign by Seijuro.
It comes to a head in high school, and well, none of it's pretty.
He fumes and sulks and rages for a while, and then... His mom collapses, scaring the shit out of Shougo, and he straightens out, gets his shit together. He quits basketball, goes through way too many part time jobs until one finally sticks, and once he graduates, he moves into a shitty apartment in a shitty neighborhood and works two more shitty jobs alongside the first one.
It's interspersed with trips home and lots of surprise visits from his brother to make sure Shougo hasn't managed to kill himself. He sends his mom any extra money after rent and take out, and life is good.
For a twenty two year old former delinquent, he's... content. Not happy, but not miserable. Just. Content.
Then, one day, he wakes up, and he's twelve years old again and inexplicably in the past.
Everything derails rather spectacularly, and unsurprisingly, it takes him a while to notice anything else is amiss with his body.
See, he hasn't fully uncovered his marks with the purpose of reading them in a long, long time. The words were burned into his head anyway, so it's not like there was a point. And it's not like he had any reason to suspect they would change.
But they did.
He finds out accidentally.
He's happier now. Happy with who he is and where he stands with his family and friends. Most of his major fears and insecurities have been dealt with in one way or another, a result of too nosy, compassionate friends, and so when his eyes catch on dark ink peeking out from beneath his shorts, the usual bitterness and hurt isn't quite so raw and overwhelming. It's tempered with all the pure, positive feelings he's been filled up with for weeks now.
The bitterness is still there, but his curiosity overpowers it for the moment. Enough to check, to see if the stocky, broad brush strokes are the same as he remembers. To see if the less than flattering impression will be quite so scalding this time.
(...He might be a bit of a masochist.)
He doesn't expect the words to be entirely different.
"There's the little brat. I can't believe he skipped to- Wait, is he crying? Who the hell made him cry? I'll kindly return the favor."
What? That's not what it's supposed to say! What the fuck? That... But no, that sounds like-? Wasn't he crying when he first saw-?
He shakes his head. There's... no way. No fucking way. But no matter how much he cranes his head or slumps closer or even if he covers it up and looks again, the words don't change back.
His heart is practically the only noise he can hear, it's thumping so loudly. He's definitely freaking the fuck out.
Wait. What about his other mark?
Almost fearfully, he pushes up the sleeve of his shirt and twists his head to read the neat, graceful strokes, and his chest feels at once too tight and too full at what he finds there.
"He's so happy. God, I want that. Ah, he turned this way! His smile is so pure and precious, wow. Even his glare is adorable! Haha, how interesting."
That... That is undeniably Ryouta. And the other... must be Nijimura. Right?
He sucks in a sharp breath. Okay, so he's definitely going to suppress this realization until forces beyond his control bring it to light. He's nowhere near stable enough to deal with this in any way. Plus, the age. Just- no. But as for the change...
Well, it's that, isn't it? It's because of the time travel. The words changed to match the new situation since technically those two incidents were the first times Ryouta and Nijimura had set eyes on this version of himself.
...Unless there's alternate reality/dimension stuff going on here. In which case, Shougo really, really doesn't want to know.
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. Wow. In light of this new information, there's really only one question to ask:
Why does the insane, impossible shit always happen to him?