Wasting Your Love on Me(Sanegiyuu)

One

Eyes danced across the sky, hopping from star to star in hopes of finding a distraction from the familiar warm tingling of ink on skin.

Sanemi frowned, staring out his bedroom window and up at the moon, staring lazily at the large white sphere. The piles upon piles of school work and papers under him crinkled as he adjusted his position, laying his head on his arm.
He looked over to the other, his frown falling from his face as he saw the familiar thick lettering on the inside of his forearm.

'Did you have a good day?'

The words were the same as they always were, the writings of his soulmate. He watched on as he saw the dark blue ink spread on his skin, a small, terrible drawing of an owl appearing next to the words.

Sanemi almost laughed, but his amusement was overshadowed by confusion as his breath caught in his throat, the next few words that dance across his skin shaking him.

'I sometimes wonder if you're even real.'

Frowning again, Sanemi sighed. It'd been years since the ink had started appearing on his skin, everyday with new messages and questions, but he had never once responded.

Not once, in the years from his sixteenth birthday to now, he'd been silent.

He didn't believe in soulmates, he hadn't ever. After seeing his parents marriage crumble to dust, the scars littering his skin evidence of the fallout, he had decided soulmates weren't real.

He never did like to play by the book, and who was god or the universe to tell him who he was supposed to love anyway?

But as the years passed, and Sanemi grew from a boy to man, he found solace in the greetings and praise his soulmate would leave on his skin.

Every night, the words 'did you have a good day?' would appear on his forearm, and every night he would watch as his soulmate wrote about their day, or doodled some silly drawing.

He found comfort in the blue ink that littered his skin, his soulmate leaving him notes and mementos, like a lifeline.

And Sanemi felt like shit, because he chose not to write back, afraid that if he took that leap, he'd throw himself into a world he didn't understand.

Because fate said you were supposed to fall in love with your soulmate. Fate said they were your perfect match, a veiled sugary promise Sanemi had seen straight past.

It was empty, hollow. Fate got it wrong, because how the hell did fate know what was best for him?

But Sanemi feared that maybe, if he'd take that leap, he'd fall. If he took the plunge into the cold, dark water below, he'd sink straight to the bottom, letting it kill him slowly before he even had the time to realize what was happening.

No, he didn't want to respond. And it had been fine that he didn't. But tonight seemed to be different, his soulmate's little notes alarming Sanemi.

'Sometimes I wonder if I'm just writing on my skin for no one. Maybe I don't have a soulmate, and I'm just dumb. I'm like that sometimes, my friends say I'm a little dull.'

Sanemi might've laughed at that if the implication of his soulmates words weren't plaguing him.

It was his own fault, taking and taking for years. He was selfish, and as the doubts swam around in his head, his eyes subconsciously roamed over to the mug that sat at the corner of his desk. Inside were a few pencils, and a red ink pen.

He bit the inside of his cheek, trying to stop himself from reaching out.

He felt the familiar tingle again, and he turned to the new words.

'Maybe it's time I stop writing, what do you think?'

Stop writing? Sanemi couldn't even image the thought, but he knew he probably didn't have the right to ask them to stay now.

But despite his mind being made up, he still grabbed the red pen from his mug, popping open the cap. He stopped as he pressed the pen to his skin, his body stiff and still as a statue.

His hand shook lightly, and he gulped. His stomach swirled, the fear laying heavy in his heart.

With a determined frown, Sanemi took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let himself fall into the water, turning his arm over and swiping the pen across his scarred skin.

☁️☁️☁️

Giyu sighed as the blue ink from his pen irritated his skin, staring blankly at the words he'd wrote, willing a response.

But one never came, not once had he ever heard from the person who was supposed to be his soulmate.

Had he annoyed them already? Did they already have someone they liked? The possibilities were endless, and although he may never admit it, Giyu had always wanted to meet his soulmate.

The thought that he didn't have one had crossed his mind plenty of times. He'd heard of rare cases of people without soulmates, and he thought maybe he was one of those, and he'd been drawing on his arm for a number of years like a fool.

The words on his arm stared back at him, lifeless like how his friends always said his eyes looked. He knew he scared people away with his dull expression and tendency to say what he was thinking aloud, and he knew his friends always meant it as a joke, but he was afraid to drive them away like he'd done with others in the past.

So he confided in his soulmate, and, foolishly, hoped maybe there was a person on the other side to listen.

With a sigh, Giyu turned over to flick off his bedside lamp, reaching his arm up towards the light.
He felt his arm tingle, and as he looked towards his forearm, his eyes went wide at the sight of unfamiliar red ink decorating his arm.

His head felt light, his breathing picking up as he snatched his arm back to his chest, grabbing it and looking at the red ink.

Was his wish really coming true? Right when he was about to give up, had the universe smiled down at him and given him some sort of divine blessing?

The small letters were hard to read through his excited haze, and he smiled as he caught sight of the question above them.

'Maybe it's time I stop writing, what do you think?'

Giyu's smile widened as he looked down at the words on his skin, his heart beating wildly in his chest as he stared, unblinking in fear that maybe this was some kind of illusion.

His soulmate had really answered, and the hope that had long diminished in Giyu's heart ignited once more, a flame burning brightly in his ribcage.

The words were simple, but enough to make Giyu's stomach flutter, sending his head spinning.
'I think you should continue.'