Work Text:
Ink and skin.
First words, doodles, tattoos, quotes, and names.
Sanji pulled himself out of bed, looking over his arms, his legs, his torso, checking his skin in the mirror for anything that would have appeared in the night. Everyone had told him that sometimes soulmate connections didn’t reveal themselves until he was older, but they always appeared by a person’s 20th birthday.
His 21st birthday was yesterday.
Maybe his connection had been lost to time, his soulmate died before their meeting. But he would have known if that was the case, or so he was told. Sanji had spent 19 years of his life without knowing who his soulmate was, not having any way of finding them through his skin or words. He had gotten so desperate at one point that he had scribbled nonsense on his arms, his legs, his chest, begging for a response.
Private identifiers.
Timers counting up and down, colors, emotions, and numbers.
Sanji had spent the first 18 years of his life enjoying the concept of love and kissing, experimenting with other people who hadn’t found their soulmate either. Practice, they called it, for when they did find them. But the past three years had been filled with existential dread. Still no sign of a soulmate, and time was running out.
Exactly a year ago he spent a day on his own, screaming and crying and angry at the universe for not delivering on its promise.
And then he met his friends. None of them had soulmates either, but they didn’t seem to care. It took him a few months to accept that maybe he wouldn’t have one, and there was always a voice in the back of his head saying he was a bad person for not having a soulmate. Unloveable. Unwanted.
Unconscious.
Dreams, agelessness, and habits.
Not even his habits or little tics seemed to be influenced by an outside force. His father had told him not to worry about it, that he had never had a soulmate either. You have to move on with your life at some point, stop worrying about having a soulmate and just make the most of the life you were given.
Sanji always saw his father as a one in a million case. Having adopted him after being thrown out of his home at a young age, Sanji had loved his father and spending time with him. Until he started school, he didn’t even realize that soulmates were everywhere. He thought they were just something that sometimes happens to people but was very uncommon.
His classmates bragged about having signs of a soulmate at age 9.
Superpowers.
Opposites and nullification.
Soulmates permeated every facet of society, even when he tried to avoid them. When Sanji finally came to terms with the fact that he probably wouldn’t have a soulmate, he tried to avoid talking about them altogether. This only lasted so long, as after years of training in martial arts with his father, and finally surpassing him, he discovered that while doing certain techniques, he could light himself on fire and not feel burned.
The other dojo students started speculating on his soulmate’s power.
In his friend group, however, many of them had various powers or abilities that were trained beyond a normal person’s capacity. Luffy, the boy who invited Sanji into the group a few years ago, could stretch himself like rubber, but never showed signs of having or wanting a soulmate. And Robin, a woman who could make various body parts appear from anywhere, shared the same sentiment.
That was common in the group. Nobody felt like they needed a soulmate, and the topic was generally not discussed by them when they went out.
In synch.
Heartbeats.
But with the combined influence of his father and his friends, Sanji realized that maybe he didn’t need to have a soulmate to be happy. Everyone around him still tried to insist that he was broken without one, and some days he felt they were right. Almost everyone around him was still trying to figure it out, find their soulmates, and he even saw some people break down when they thought they were alone forever.
He would comfort them as best as he could, try to tell them about his friends, and how they were doing fine without soulmates. Some listened and even wanted to meet them, but others pushed him away still, in disbelief and disgust.
“I need a soulmate! Don’t you see? I’ll be alone forever without one!”
But they didn’t. Sanji wished he could scream it from the rooftops, stand in the street like one of those people handing out pamphlets about different ways to identify a soulmate, except instead of promoting that harmful mindset, he’d say it was okay.
It was okay to not have a soulmate. It was okay to be by yourself or center your life around friends and work and hobbies and anything else that wasn’t one single person. That you would be okay if you adopted a kid and raised them yourself, like how he had spent his youth. That even if you didn’t feel anything towards anyone, your life was still worth living.
Sanji wanted to scream at the society he lived in.
“ Fuck soulmates! ”