p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;"emSoulmates: a term that everyone had learned to understand and cherish. There was a very special bond between two people designed to be together; due to a biological and genetic similarity of the skin of the two—or sometimes three, in very rare cases—people, anything that one soulmate acquired on their skin would show up on the skin of the other. If it was a temporary thing, i.e. bruises, cuts, doodles, or written things, they would fade at the same rate for both soulmates. If it were something permanent, like a tattoo or a scar, it would be permanent for the one who had gotten it whereas it faded away completely from the other soulmate's skin within a year. These soulmate connections, often referred to as Links, vary in strength, and can be strengthened or weakened over time. The weaker ones only transmit intentional, self-applied things from one soulmate to the other, while the stronger Links are able to transmit things like brief flashes of pain from injuries or, in rare cases, very strong emotions. Direct information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and oftentimes gender, cannot be transmitted through the Links directly; one soulmate has to guess. Because of this, many people don't bother trying to find their soulmates until they're older, though some people do choose to ignore the things that show up on their skin entirely. A very few percentage of the population can see the Links, and to those people they take the appearance of a red string tied between the soulmate's ring fingers. These people can also break the Links, by cutting or burning or otherwise splitting the strings. The Links are treasured, and to intentionally break one—whether your own or someone else's—is highly frowned upon, though not technically illegal./em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;" /p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"em /emAkaashi had never thought that things would turn out the way they did. For the first six years of his life, he hadn't left the house because he was so sickly. At least, that's the excuse his mother had given him, though Akaashi didn't believe it looking back. He had learned to read and write at a young age, so by the time the words on his arms had started to show up, Akaashi already knew exactly what they were and he could respond to them easily. His parents didn't approve, but even then Akaashi had been a master at hiding things from other people./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" /p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"The thing was, he couldn't be homeschooled forever. Their library, though extensive, could only teach Akaashi so much, and by the time his seventh birthday rolled around, he was restless to the point that his parents hated dealing with him when he was in one of his "moods" where he just wanted to emgo outside./em Akaashi thought that other children got scolded for wanting to socialize, too, so he didn't ever complain, but he was so much happier when he was finally sent to a public school./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi quickly found out, however, that school wasn't at all what he had hoped. Children were cruel, and Akaashi, who had never had any experience with other people his age, was an easy target because he didn't realize it was wrong. By the time he was ten, he hated going to school, but he never let his parents return to homeschooling him. The crushing loneliness of his parents' 'teaching' was far worse than the cruel words of the kids at school./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Looking back, Akaashi knew that Bokuto was really the only reason that he made it through middle school alive. Between his over controlling parents who were loudly disappointed in him if he got less than a ninety percent and the cruelty of his peers and the stress of volleyball, once he picked that up in hopes of some stress relief, Akaashi found it hard to keep himself going some days. It was hard to find the motivation to give a shit, really, when he had spent his whole life being told that no matter what he did, he was wrong. Sometimes Akaashi couldn't even bother to find the will to get himself out of bed and he'd spend hours watching the ceiling fan spin. When that happened, Akaashi's arms would end up covered in sweet, loving messages and cute little owl doodles that were very obviously Bokuto's. It was sweet how much he cared./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Incidentally, that was the reason that Akaashi had never actually attempted to take his own life. He had heard stories of people who's soulmates had died and, apparently, it was painful. No matter how strong the bond was, supposedly one soulmate could feel everything that the other experienced during the five minutes leading up to death. Akaashi couldn't bear to do that to Bokuto. He didn't deserve that. Of course, Bokuto didn't deserve his neglectful parents and his OCD and his anxiety, either, but Akaashi couldn't do anything about that. At least he could keep himself from causing Bokuto more pain than he was already in./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi was thirteen the first time he picked up a guitar. It was part of music class, and Akaashi was reluctant at first because he had never even thought about playing an instrument. With the help of his teacher, a kindly old man who was blinder than a bat but incredibly talented on the piano, Akaashi quickly realized that he had a natural talent for the instrument and that it calmed him down surprisingly quickly. The thrum of the vibrations through the wood grounded him, made him feel safe, even in the middle of a class that usually was straight up dreadful./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"From that point on, Akaashi would head to the music room during lunch on a daily basis. On his better days, just brushing his fingers along the neck of the guitar would make Akaashi feel better. On the worse days, he would sit down and play it until the bell rang or his fingers were numb, whichever came first. It helped, though; he was much calmer and level-headed. If his parents noticed the change in behavior, they didn't say anything, and Akaashi didn't go out of his way to point it out. They had disapproved when he had started volleyball—which had been dropped within months, with as excessively stressful as it was—and Akaashi could only imagine their reactions if he told them that he wanted a guitar of his own, or lessons./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Eventually, Akaashi began to sing as he played. He'd start off soft, but then his voice would get louder and more confident when he began to lose himself in the music. A couple weeks into his audience-less recitals, a small boy about Akaashi's age with dyed-blonde hair and obvious black roots slid into the room and sat in a corner, watching Akaashi play with sharp golden eyes. Akaashi paused for a moment before resuming his playing; if the other wanted to watch, so be it./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Eventually, another boy with a bad case of bedhead started accompanying the blond. Akaashi was a bit nervous about playing in front of people, since it was so new to him, but neither boy commented or even so much as grinned if Akaashi fumbled over a note. They just watched, Bedhead's arm slung over Pudding Head's shoulders./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"When Akaashi asked Bokuto what he should do about them, Bokuto was surprisingly serious. emDo you feel safe with them in the room? /em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi was surprised to find that he didn't have to think about the answer. emYeah. They don't seem as bad as the rest./em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"emThen maybe you should talk to them. You could be friends! As long as you're comfortable with it, it should be fine./em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi took Bokuto's words to heart and did eventually end up becoming friends with them. Kenma, the blond one, was refreshingly quiet, and Kuroo, the king of bedhead, was hyper but didn't seem to be overbearing or rude. By the time that Kuroo was ready to graduate—he was a year older than Kenma and Akaashi—they were fairly close. Not as close as Akaashi was to Bokuto, of course, but closer than Akaashi had been to anyone in public for his entire life./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"As a going-away gift of sorts, Kuroo left a new guitar in the music room. Akaashi didn't find it until the last day of school, but he nearly cried when he did. The idea that Kuroo—and Kenma, since it had most likely been his idea in the first place—had gone out of their way to get Akaashi a gift that they knew he would love made his chest feel oddly tight. It was kindest thing that anyone had done for him personally./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"The next year, things went straight back to shit. Kuroo had gone on to high school and Kenma had transferred schools, so Akaashi was alone again, but he had his guitar and he could practice his music at home. Since he preferred acoustic music to anything else and he absolutely refused to sing with family within earshot, he didn't have to really worry about pissing his parents off with volume, and he was left mostly to his own devices. Akaashi didn't mind; he had Bokuto and his music, so he'd be fine./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"When he met Bokuto, Akaashi didn't even care that his coffee had been spilled and his legs went numb while Bokuto slept on them because it was Bokuto and had been emso close /emto Akaashi the entire time. Bokuto's house was maybe four miles from Akaashi's./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Two years later, Akaashi was kicked out of his parents' house and told not to return until he came to his senses. He didn't see why his decision to go to a prestigious arts school was so much worse than going to the equally prestigious law school that his parents wanted him to go to, but if Akaashi was honest with himself, he had seen it coming a long way away. He had never been quite good enough for his parents, so really, he had expected to be abandoned a long time ago. Thankfully, they had waited until he was nearly eighteen and, though they didn't know it, he had someplace to go./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"It took Akaashi nearly two hours to walk to Bokuto's house, and he spent another two hours convincing Bokuto that emyes, /emhe was fine and emno, you don't need to go beat my parents into the ground stop pacing you're driving me insane. /emCurled up against Bokuto as they slept was the safest and the calmest that Akaashi could ever remember feeling./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Things didn't get better for a while, but they didn't get worse, either. Akaashi had left his meds at home, and he didn't dare go back, so he was stuck without them until he turned eighteen, so he spent about a month and a half feeling worse than he had in almost six years. Bokuto did his best to help, and Akaashi knew it, but sometimes it wasn't enough to get Akaashi out of bed. On those days, though, instead of spending the day alone and staring aimlessly into space, he curled into Bokuto's side and slept the numbness away./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Bokuto worried Akaashi, though; he always had but college had made it worse. Somehow, seeing the aftermath of Bokuto's OCD had tamed it down. The burns didn't come close to how heartbreaking Bokuto's increasingly frustrated attempts to be perfect were to watch. Luckily, Akaashi spent most of the day at home since he took online classes, so he was able to stop Bokuto before he got so far into his compulsions that he hurt himself for the most part. That got better when Bokuto's parents came home, too. At first things were awkward; Akaashi had never had a high opinion of Bokuto's parents because of their habit of completely neglecting their only child, but they seemed so honestly regretful that it was hard for Akaashi to hate them for long./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Therapy helped, too. Really, they were joint sessions, because Akaashi and Bokuto were so joined at the hip that they refused to see the therapist separately. That and neither of them wanted to deal with the anxiety of doing it without their soulmate by their side. Bokuto relapsed, and Akaashi relapsed several times, but the recovery process was so much faster with the support and legitimate love of an actual family. Akaashi reconnected with Kenma and Kuroo; Kuroo was Bokuto's best man at the wedding less than six months later. Akaashi didn't make a ton of money with his music career but he didn't care because money had never been a high priority for him. There were more important things in life./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Despite his lonely childhood and his slew of emotional issues and Bokuto's rather unstable family, Akaashi had never dreamed of being happier and, given the opportunity, he wouldn't change a thing. His life was too perfect to mess up. /p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;" /p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst"em /emAkaashi had never thought that things would turn out the way they did. For the first six years of his life, he hadn't left the house because he was so sickly. At least, that's the excuse his mother had given him, though Akaashi didn't believe it looking back. He had learned to read and write at a young age, so by the time the words on his arms had started to show up, Akaashi already knew exactly what they were and he could respond to them easily. His parents didn't approve, but even then Akaashi had been a master at hiding things from other people./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" /p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"The thing was, he couldn't be homeschooled forever. Their library, though extensive, could only teach Akaashi so much, and by the time his seventh birthday rolled around, he was restless to the point that his parents hated dealing with him when he was in one of his "moods" where he just wanted to emgo outside./em Akaashi thought that other children got scolded for wanting to socialize, too, so he didn't ever complain, but he was so much happier when he was finally sent to a public school./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi quickly found out, however, that school wasn't at all what he had hoped. Children were cruel, and Akaashi, who had never had any experience with other people his age, was an easy target because he didn't realize it was wrong. By the time he was ten, he hated going to school, but he never let his parents return to homeschooling him. The crushing loneliness of his parents' 'teaching' was far worse than the cruel words of the kids at school./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Looking back, Akaashi knew that Bokuto was really the only reason that he made it through middle school alive. Between his over controlling parents who were loudly disappointed in him if he got less than a ninety percent and the cruelty of his peers and the stress of volleyball, once he picked that up in hopes of some stress relief, Akaashi found it hard to keep himself going some days. It was hard to find the motivation to give a shit, really, when he had spent his whole life being told that no matter what he did, he was wrong. Sometimes Akaashi couldn't even bother to find the will to get himself out of bed and he'd spend hours watching the ceiling fan spin. When that happened, Akaashi's arms would end up covered in sweet, loving messages and cute little owl doodles that were very obviously Bokuto's. It was sweet how much he cared./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Incidentally, that was the reason that Akaashi had never actually attempted to take his own life. He had heard stories of people who's soulmates had died and, apparently, it was painful. No matter how strong the bond was, supposedly one soulmate could feel everything that the other experienced during the five minutes leading up to death. Akaashi couldn't bear to do that to Bokuto. He didn't deserve that. Of course, Bokuto didn't deserve his neglectful parents and his OCD and his anxiety, either, but Akaashi couldn't do anything about that. At least he could keep himself from causing Bokuto more pain than he was already in./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi was thirteen the first time he picked up a guitar. It was part of music class, and Akaashi was reluctant at first because he had never even thought about playing an instrument. With the help of his teacher, a kindly old man who was blinder than a bat but incredibly talented on the piano, Akaashi quickly realized that he had a natural talent for the instrument and that it calmed him down surprisingly quickly. The thrum of the vibrations through the wood grounded him, made him feel safe, even in the middle of a class that usually was straight up dreadful./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"From that point on, Akaashi would head to the music room during lunch on a daily basis. On his better days, just brushing his fingers along the neck of the guitar would make Akaashi feel better. On the worse days, he would sit down and play it until the bell rang or his fingers were numb, whichever came first. It helped, though; he was much calmer and level-headed. If his parents noticed the change in behavior, they didn't say anything, and Akaashi didn't go out of his way to point it out. They had disapproved when he had started volleyball—which had been dropped within months, with as excessively stressful as it was—and Akaashi could only imagine their reactions if he told them that he wanted a guitar of his own, or lessons./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Eventually, Akaashi began to sing as he played. He'd start off soft, but then his voice would get louder and more confident when he began to lose himself in the music. A couple weeks into his audience-less recitals, a small boy about Akaashi's age with dyed-blonde hair and obvious black roots slid into the room and sat in a corner, watching Akaashi play with sharp golden eyes. Akaashi paused for a moment before resuming his playing; if the other wanted to watch, so be it./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Eventually, another boy with a bad case of bedhead started accompanying the blond. Akaashi was a bit nervous about playing in front of people, since it was so new to him, but neither boy commented or even so much as grinned if Akaashi fumbled over a note. They just watched, Bedhead's arm slung over Pudding Head's shoulders./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"When Akaashi asked Bokuto what he should do about them, Bokuto was surprisingly serious. emDo you feel safe with them in the room? /em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi was surprised to find that he didn't have to think about the answer. emYeah. They don't seem as bad as the rest./em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"emThen maybe you should talk to them. You could be friends! As long as you're comfortable with it, it should be fine./em/p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Akaashi took Bokuto's words to heart and did eventually end up becoming friends with them. Kenma, the blond one, was refreshingly quiet, and Kuroo, the king of bedhead, was hyper but didn't seem to be overbearing or rude. By the time that Kuroo was ready to graduate—he was a year older than Kenma and Akaashi—they were fairly close. Not as close as Akaashi was to Bokuto, of course, but closer than Akaashi had been to anyone in public for his entire life./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"As a going-away gift of sorts, Kuroo left a new guitar in the music room. Akaashi didn't find it until the last day of school, but he nearly cried when he did. The idea that Kuroo—and Kenma, since it had most likely been his idea in the first place—had gone out of their way to get Akaashi a gift that they knew he would love made his chest feel oddly tight. It was kindest thing that anyone had done for him personally./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"The next year, things went straight back to shit. Kuroo had gone on to high school and Kenma had transferred schools, so Akaashi was alone again, but he had his guitar and he could practice his music at home. Since he preferred acoustic music to anything else and he absolutely refused to sing with family within earshot, he didn't have to really worry about pissing his parents off with volume, and he was left mostly to his own devices. Akaashi didn't mind; he had Bokuto and his music, so he'd be fine./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"When he met Bokuto, Akaashi didn't even care that his coffee had been spilled and his legs went numb while Bokuto slept on them because it was Bokuto and had been emso close /emto Akaashi the entire time. Bokuto's house was maybe four miles from Akaashi's./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Two years later, Akaashi was kicked out of his parents' house and told not to return until he came to his senses. He didn't see why his decision to go to a prestigious arts school was so much worse than going to the equally prestigious law school that his parents wanted him to go to, but if Akaashi was honest with himself, he had seen it coming a long way away. He had never been quite good enough for his parents, so really, he had expected to be abandoned a long time ago. Thankfully, they had waited until he was nearly eighteen and, though they didn't know it, he had someplace to go./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"It took Akaashi nearly two hours to walk to Bokuto's house, and he spent another two hours convincing Bokuto that emyes, /emhe was fine and emno, you don't need to go beat my parents into the ground stop pacing you're driving me insane. /emCurled up against Bokuto as they slept was the safest and the calmest that Akaashi could ever remember feeling./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Things didn't get better for a while, but they didn't get worse, either. Akaashi had left his meds at home, and he didn't dare go back, so he was stuck without them until he turned eighteen, so he spent about a month and a half feeling worse than he had in almost six years. Bokuto did his best to help, and Akaashi knew it, but sometimes it wasn't enough to get Akaashi out of bed. On those days, though, instead of spending the day alone and staring aimlessly into space, he curled into Bokuto's side and slept the numbness away./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Bokuto worried Akaashi, though; he always had but college had made it worse. Somehow, seeing the aftermath of Bokuto's OCD had tamed it down. The burns didn't come close to how heartbreaking Bokuto's increasingly frustrated attempts to be perfect were to watch. Luckily, Akaashi spent most of the day at home since he took online classes, so he was able to stop Bokuto before he got so far into his compulsions that he hurt himself for the most part. That got better when Bokuto's parents came home, too. At first things were awkward; Akaashi had never had a high opinion of Bokuto's parents because of their habit of completely neglecting their only child, but they seemed so honestly regretful that it was hard for Akaashi to hate them for long./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Therapy helped, too. Really, they were joint sessions, because Akaashi and Bokuto were so joined at the hip that they refused to see the therapist separately. That and neither of them wanted to deal with the anxiety of doing it without their soulmate by their side. Bokuto relapsed, and Akaashi relapsed several times, but the recovery process was so much faster with the support and legitimate love of an actual family. Akaashi reconnected with Kenma and Kuroo; Kuroo was Bokuto's best man at the wedding less than six months later. Akaashi didn't make a ton of money with his music career but he didn't care because money had never been a high priority for him. There were more important things in life./p
p class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle"Despite his lonely childhood and his slew of emotional issues and Bokuto's rather unstable family, Akaashi had never dreamed of being happier and, given the opportunity, he wouldn't change a thing. His life was too perfect to mess up. /p