Work Text:
As far as Luigi could remember, he’s always been hot. (Not, not hot like that, he would butt in and stutter whenever his brother inevitably used those poor choice of words. Mario swears up and down he never means to say it like that, but Luigi knows him well enough that the small quirk of his lips and a teasing raise in his eyebrows says otherwise). No, not hot as in attractive, not hot as in charming, but hot as in the temperature. Hot as in warm, hot as in practically burning alive. No matter where he was, whether it was jumping into snow or swimming in the middle of the ocean, Luigi always felt hot.
Not that he could do anything about it, anyway. As a baby he couldn’t stand it, sweating and crying and screaming through every sleepless night, his bed drenched in both sweat and tears. It was only when burns popped up all over his body, raw blisters dotting his arms and chest and back like stars in the night sky did his parents realize the issue.
His childhood was filled with ice baths and packs of frozen peas and arms always, always wrapped in bloody bandages. His parents withheld anything mildly warm from him for a long time; he was almost never allowed in the kitchen when a stove was on, and one of his first memories involved his mother frantically throwing out one of his favorite shirts because it was black and thus judged too hot to wear, even in the dead of winter (Mario managed to save it before it hit the dumpster, but Luigi knew better than to wear it again. When their mother eventually found it in Mario’s closet a few months later, she cooed over it, believing it to be Mario’s baby clothes. Luigi had bitterly thrown it out that night).
They even refused to put candles on his ice cream cakes on his birthdays. It took him years and years of begging and pleading, from both him and his brother, until their parents finally caved on his 10th birthday and delicately placed a single candle atop the cake.
“One candle for one decade,” his father said softly. At the time Luigi was too ecstatic at the sight of the small flame to notice anything else, but now whenever he went back and combed through that deeply beloved memory did he see how his father looked at him. He looked scared, caution reflecting in his eyes the way they flit back and forth between Luigi and the candle, but above all Luigi could never remember him looking so happy. Whether it was because of Luigi’s own happiness or the satisfaction of having won the argument against his mother, Luigi would never know.
Their small apartment, as per usual, was packed to the gills with family members young and old, so singing happy birthday was always cacophonic, but that year everyone’s energy had been tenfold. The older relatives were glad to finally see Luigi blow out a candle for his birthday, while everyone too young to know the amount of drama behind the single flame was simply fascinated by its alluring flickers. As the song died out with a final grand (and off-tune) note, Luigi took a deep breath in and blew out a birthday candle for the first time, despite him turning ten.
Whenever he had seen Mario blow out his birthday candles, his eyes were always shut, as if relishing in the moment. Luigi, however, as tempted as he was to copy his brother, kept his eyes wide open to watch the flame go out. After all, if he truly wanted to relish the moment, wouldn’t he want to see it, to drink in as much of it as possible?
He watched a thin tendril of smoke take the place of the bright flame, curling and twisting up to the ceiling in a way reminiscent of the dance of the fire it had replaced. Luigi took another breath in, reveling in the smell of smoke. His mind stuttered to a stop as it tried to describe it, tried to put words to its distinct scent. Smoky was the first word that came to mind, which he internally rolled his eyes at, yes brain clearly, but as he mulled it over he couldn’t really think of anything else. The smell of fire was smoky like a burst of black pepper on his tongue, or smoky like the dirty gray of a cloud ready to pour rain. Smoky like the coughing of a car’s exhaust pipe, or smoky like his uncle’s scratchy mustache as its jet black slowly turned grayer and grayer. The smoke smelled like Brooklyn, like his family. Luigi continued to breathe it in, filling his lungs with the scent. It smelled like home.
●・○・●・○・●
The worst of the burns stopped soon after that. Mario always joked it was because puberty hit, which Luigi always objected to. In reality, though, Luigi couldn’t really think of any other explanation. Sure, his soulmate simply could’ve moved on from whatever hellhole they’d been living in, but although the burns lessened his temperature never did. Bloody bandages were slowly replaced with skin slathered in sunscreen and aloe vera, but the cold showers and sweaty everything remained constants.
“His body is likely getting accustomed to his counterpart’s environment,” the Mario family doctor figured when Luigi’s mother took him to get a consultation on the lessening and eventual lack of burns (“This is the first time someone’s come in complaining about a lack of injuries!” Their doctor had joked).
“Of course, there’s a few other possibilities; your counterpart could have moved to a new environment that’s just as hot but less dangerous, or their body is the one acclimating and not yours, but I doubt it’s the latter.” The doctor continued while examining one of the last of Luigi’s burns. “If the burns really had been from your counterpart’s body, they wouldn’t have transferred so clearly onto yours.” Luigi, wincing at the memory of some of his worst burns, had to agree with him.
One of the first lessons Luigi and his brother got in Health class was the difference between injuries on your own body and injuries given to you by your soulmate. Pain shared between soulmates always looked and felt faded to the other person. No matter how fresh the wound was, it would always look as if it was months old. Even if it was bleeding for the person on the other side, the only thing their soulmate would notice were muted pain and a rough, ghostly scar growing on their body.
Luigi had a few of these, the most prominent ones being three jagged gashes circling both his thin biceps like ghastly armbands. He could still remember when they first marched into view, and the way he could only watch in muted horror as they dug deeper into his skin. He only moved when Mario came into their shared room and saw the slashes grow with a horrified expression mirroring Luigi.
Unlike Luigi, his immediate reaction was to get up and drag Luigi off their bed and towards their family, voice cracking as he begged them for help. Whenever he looked back at the memory, Luigi hardly remembered the pain of the scratches themselves and instead the terror in the faces of his family. The way they gasped and choked back tears, fingers ghosting over the dreadful lines now etched into Luigi’s skin. The way they all hugged him tight and kissed his arms, as though their love could rub the injuries away. Luigi assumed that they had the deep and guttural instinct he had as well that the pale ravines gouged into his skin were inflicted not by another or by accident, but by his soulmate in a painfully intentional manner.
That night Luigi hugged himself to sleep, hoping that at least some of the love he felt could be transferred to his soulmate as easily as their pain transferred to Luigi.
●・○・●・○・●
After that Luigi didn’t think about his soulmate as much. Of course, he thought about it now and again, but as he grew older he thankfully didn’t have to worry about his soulmate’s health and wellbeing every night. The injuries he got quickly became few and far between, though the injuries Luigi transferred onto them definitely grew. Now a young adult, Mario had big dreams and even bigger plans on how to reach them, and, naturally, all those plans involved Luigi. As they hopped, skipped, and jumped their way through Brooklyn’s fire escapes and sewage system (Luigi doesn’t even know why they take that shortcut all the time, he’s pretty sure it actually wastes more time than saves any), Luigi’s body soon got littered with various bruises from barreling headfirst into obstacles, whether they were sign posts, fellow pedestrians, or, most commonly, Mario himself.
There were even those few weeks where Luigi constantly had a black eye from Mario trying to teach him how to fight (“Not everyone has balls, Mario, that strategy won’t work with everyone,” Luigi had pointed out on the first of the very few lessons. “Well, you shouldn’t be fighting any girls anyway! C’mon, Lu, pay attention,” Mario had retorted, which Luigi had rolled his eyes at. He continued to not pay attention until he got the first black eye a few minutes later).
The only times he really thought about his soulmate were when Mario brought the topic up, which had become with annoying frequency. Mario, now an adult with a lot more freedom and reign on his life, was determined to find his soulmate based on the scant information he had on her (For whatever reason, Mario was so sure that his soulmate was a girl. Though, Luigi supposed, it would be weird for a straight guy’s soulmate to. Not be a girl. Every time he thought about it, Luigi would just shrug to himself. His soulmate would be a regular old human, and that’s as much as he cared about).
When they had been kids, Mario always tiptoed around the idea of soulmates, especially around Luigi. He knew the reason behind Luigi’s constant burns even before Luigi knew himself, and, though he could do nothing to stop the burns, he did everything he could to protect Luigi from everything else. Whether it was bullies, nightmares, or any family member armed with a condescending comment about soulmates shot in Luigi’s general direction, his older brother had always been there to fend it off.
Luigi loved him for it, of course. Even if Mario got the occasional scrape and bruise from the more physical altercations, he always wore them with pride, because they were one of the few injuries he sustained in their entire childhood. Unlike Luigi’s, Mario’s soulmate clearly lived a luxurious and pampered life. Sure, Mario took care of himself, especially his well coiffed mustache and hair, but never enough to justify how perfectly crystal-clear his skin always had been.
On the nights neither of them could sleep, Luigi always loved to trace shapes onto Mario’s soft skin, placing the rough pads of his fingers against Mario’s arm, which was as soft as the day they were born. According to Mario, it was because his soulmate always used peach-scented lotion. He insisted that she and him were so connected that he could smell what she smelled, and, hoping that she could smell what he smelled too, he often spent hours in their family's big kitchen, taking in deep breaths of homemade Italian food to share their culture with his soulmate. Luigi was always skeptical of the logistics of the sharing of smell on top of injuries, but any time he brought up his skepticism, Mario would tease back about his burns, which, fair. There was no scientific basis for Mario’s shared sense of smell, but considering his burns weren’t exactly commonplace either, Luigi didn’t have much grounds for arguing.
“Us Mario brothers are just built different,” Mario had joked once, knocking shoulders with Luigi, who rolled his eyes good-naturedly. It took months for Mario to catch on and realize that Luigi couldn’t care less about the whole soulmate business, in a complete contrast to Mario’s infatuation with his (“I don’t care if I haven’t met her. Technically, I’ve known her my whole life!”). Their conversations about soulmates had quickly switched from Mario fawning over his soulmate while Luigi half-listened to the brothers ribbing each other for their soulmates’ quirks.
“Or our soulmates are from another universe entirely and we’re the lame ones,” Luigi had shot back with a grin. “You really think some white guys from Brooklyn got anything special about them?” Mario had choked on his coffee from laughing so hard.
●・○・●・○・●
Speaking of another universe, Luigi thought bitterly a few weeks later when he found himself in a literal hellscape. Though he was terrified out of his mind, relief washed over a small part of his brain, the one telling him that, for the first time in his life, his surroundings were finally matching how he felt. He hovered a hand over a bubbling pit of lava and found the wildest sense of comfort from the scalding hot air. It terrified him, sure, but it was almost thrilling in a way.
What if your soulmate is here, that small part of his brain continued, what if this is where you’re truly meant to be, what if this is your home?
Luigi took a breath in. The air was surprisingly fresh, a faint scent of spring coming from a long way off somewhere. Though that was mostly washed out by a strong breeze smelling of ash and dying things. He wrinkled his nose. No, he told that part of his brain, his home wouldn’t have such a weird smell. The temperature was right, yes, but this place wasn’t right for him. He wasn’t sure how he knew that. Somewhere in his heart, he just did.
And with that slightly concerning train of thought swiftly cut off, Luigi set off to explore this new world he’d been quite literally sucked into. He felt like he should be freaking out, panicking, curling into a ball and crying, or a fun combination of all three like he normally would, but the distracting comfort of the hot atmosphere blew all the worries out of his mind. And, knowing his brother, Mario would be completely fine wherever he was spat out. Especially now that he didn’t have his anxiety-ridden little brother dragging him down, his brain whispered. Luigi told his brain to shut up and focus.
For once in his life, Luigi no longer saw the point in comparing himself to his brother. His brother with his perfect, unscarred, unburnt skin, and his endless energy, and his eager-to-please, can-do attitude. Ever since they were children, Mario was always there to insert himself into every situation, whether he was needed or desperately not wanted, and always there to annoy Luigi with his snarky comments.
Luigi scoffed as he hopped over a dying log and purposefully avoided the ashen lump he desperately hoped was not a dead body. For once in his life he was free from Mario’s constant jabbering and hovering. Now he finally had no one to tell him what to do, or to look at him when they thought he wasn’t looking with a pitying, forlorn expression. There was no one around to hold his hand, or encourage him with a stupid joke about mushrooms, or someone to follow when he had absolutely no clue what he was doing.
Luigi stopped short. He looked around. At the cartoonish bones littering the dusty ground, up at the ash in the air, down at the bubbling lava pits around him. Damn, Luigi thought. I really miss my brother.
●・○・●・○・●
“Mamma mia,” Luigi breathed as he was dragged into the most formidable structure he’s ever seen in his life. With the columns of lava falling from its many towers to the ominous black jagged stone and brick that made up the entire fortress, Luigi was thoroughly impressed with himself that he wasn’t shitting his pants. And that’s not even mentioning the red creatures that had caught and chained him, with their pitch black soulless eyes and incomprehensible muttering.
Luigi pinched himself again for the thousandth time. He was pretty sure he wasn’t dreaming at this point (Luigi’s imagination was never the most vivid, or, well. Imaginative), but pinching himself kept him somewhat grounded. He’d begun to feel a little lightheaded as they stepped into the grand halls of the castle, which he wasn’t sure was because of the intense heat or his more intense hyperventilating. If he had to guess, it was the hyperventilating. Despite being in gloves and denim overalls, the hot air had only grown more comforting the more time he spent in this place, with the only reason he’d broken out in a sweat was when he’d been running from skeleton turtles and various other beasts (Not that the running had saved him at all, any way).
Huh, Luigi thought. His doctor’s theory from all those years ago really was right.
Halls lined with plush red carpeting and portraits of menacing dragon-like characters (turtles, maybe?) quickly turned into a long cavern, blanketed with walls of lava and chains hanging from the ceiling ominously. Spurred forward by the unblinking red creatures down a dusty suspended platform, Luigi gulped as he was slowly forced toward a massive throne. And on that throne, like Luigi feared, was a beast like the ones he’d seen in the portraits from before. A beast with fiery red hair, spikes circling his arms and covering his massive back of a shell, and a wide, leering grin as he peered down at Luigi from his great height.
A beast that laughed at Luigi’s terrified expression and laughed even harder when he tripped over his own chains. A beast, however, that was laughing until Luigi hit the ground with a soft “Ow!”
At that moment, the beast’s laughter cut off and was replaced with a growl of discontentment. “Damn soulmate,” Luigi half-heard him mutter to someone standing beside his throne. “Always fallin’ an’ gettin’ into all sorts of situations. They’re such a klutz.”
The other person spoke up, whiny and high-pitched. “Well, your Royal Soullessness, I’m sure they’re just a damsel in distress! Eagerly awaiting for your heroic saving of them from their downright dreary situation!”
The beast grumbled again. “Princess Peach sure as hell ain’t this clumsy.”
Still a little dazed, Luigi pulled himself back up and, feeling something warm on his cheek, brushed his hand against it. Looking at his glove, he was surprised to see blood on it. He touched his cheek again and brushed off the gravel he felt on it. Oh. He must’ve scratched himself on the shrapnel, Luigi guessed. He didn’t understand why the plush red carpets from the previous hallways couldn’t have been applied here as well.
As Luigi tried to wipe all the dirt and blood off his cheek, the person with the annoying voice spoke again with a gasp. “Your Majestic Malice! Your face has been injured!”
Luigi looked up at that, and was surprised to see the beast’s cheek now also covered in scratches, though they were clearly transferred from the king’s soulmate, evident by the pale and faded look of them. He gingerly touched three sharp claws to his cheek, a gentle gesture that heavily contrasted the rest of the beast’s appearance (Three sharp claws, his brain whispered. Luigi had the strongest urge to rub his upper arms, where three pale slashes had remained since the day he first saw them come into existence). He examined the being on the ominous throne. Despite his practiced air of arrogance and loud bravado he had heard echoing through the halls, the throne still looked small for him. Three sharp claws on each hand as well as a clawed thumb. And, Luigi thought as he scratched his own cheek, the beast’s soulmate got hurt on the same cheek Luigi had fallen on. What an odd coinci–
“Mamma mia!” Luigi blurted out, before slapping his hands over his mouth in fear and embarrassment. The beast immediately turned his attention back on him, a menacing snarl replacing the almost absentminded look he had had while scratching his cheek.
“What’s up with ya, pipsqueak?” He roared. Luigi was frozen in place, too scared and shocked to even breathe. He was more scared of his realization, however, the implications of the whole situation and the thoughts whirling through his mind, instead of the menacing creature leaning forward on his throne. Luigi couldn’t tell if knowing where the small pale scratches on the beast’s cheek came from made him more or less terrified.
The annoying voice, which Luigi now saw came from a pair of thick goggles and a blue robe that engulfed the rest of the figure, spoke up again. “Why, my Exasperated Excellency, the little human has a scratch just like yours! It’s almost as if–” He cut himself off with a gasp, the realization hitting him just as hard as it had Luigi.
“What?” The man on the throne roared again. He looked between Luigi and the figure beside him, as if the answer lay in the air between them. “C’mon, Kamek, spit it out!”
“I believe,” Kamek (Luigi assumed was his name) slowly squeaked out. “That the pathetic green bean before your Baffled Exaltedness, is your. Um. Well, your.” He paused again, before taking in a deep breath and squealed out. “Your soulmate!”
The fearsome leader stared at Kamek, glanced at Luigi, then looked back at Kamek, before bursting out in raucous laughter.
“Oh, Kamek, c’mon!” He said between roars of laughter. “Look at the shrimp! You really think he’s my soulmate? The great Bowser, conqueror of kingdoms, has a soulmate like him?”
Luigi, once shocked by the revelation, now flushed red at the blatant insult. Luigi wanted to blurt out that he hadn’t really wanted a soulmate like Bowser, either, but instead he shouted, “I have the scars to prove it, you know!” in a very short burst of confidence.
Bowser stopped laughing, though the condescending grin on his face stayed. “Oh, is that so, string bean? Let’s see ‘em then,” he goaded, before making a gesture at Kamek. With a flick of his staff Luigi only now noticed, Luigi was shot out of the chains and into the air by a bright blue mist. He squawked as he was hurled directly towards the throne then stopped almost directly in front of Bowser.
“Hm.” The distance between the two having been cut drastically, Bowser took a moment to fully take in Luigi’s figure. Despite the heat, Luigi couldn’t help but shiver under the warlord’s intense gaze.
Bowser squinted, leaning closer to Luigi. “Well then pipsqueak, where’s this so-called proof, eh?”
“Un-under my sleeve,” Luigi stammered. “There’s some scars, that ah. Well, just look at them yourself.”
Bowser, again with an uncharacteristic gentleness, hooked a long claw under Luigi’s small shirt sleeve and rolled it onto his shoulder, revealing the three long gashes Luigi had had for nearly a decade by then. Sneaking a glance at the other man, Luigi watched Bowser’s expression shift from a confident smirk to something softer, a look that almost looked forlorn and far away. Luigi’s own face softened, because he recognized the expression on Bowser’s face. He looked lonely.
Bowser’s brow furrowed, before leaning back and dropping his hand, letting the sleeve roll back down to cover the scars. “When’d you get those?” He asked Luigi, the confident, teasing tone in his voice from before entirely gone.
Luigi cleared his throat. “Over ten years ago at this point. I saw them appear when I must’ve been twelve, thirteen or so.”
Bowser looked at Luigi again, really looked, as though Luigi was a work of art to be deciphered and figured out. Though Luigi felt himself blushing, part of him still embarrassed by the attention, he largely didn’t mind the way Bowser was looking at him. Like he wasn’t just sparing a glance, a small sliver of his attention on Luigi, but as if Luigi had captured his full attention, even if he was just standing (well, floating) there awkwardly. Bowser wasn’t just looking through him, eyes glazing over Luigi like he was another part of the background. He looked concentrated, as if trying to commit the entirety of Luigi to memory. Normally, Luigi hated being stared at, being so openly ogled, but when it was Bowser he oddly didn’t mind. He wasn’t sure why, but somewhere in his heart, it didn’t feel creepy or overbearing. It felt right.
“Well,” Bowser muttered after several moments.
“As far as soulmates go, I guess I coulda gotten a lot worse.” His wide, leering smirk returned, though this time it looked more playful, as if he was laughing with Luigi instead of at him.
At Bowser’s almost genuine smile, Luigi let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and he found himself smiling back. He still wasn’t quite sure where his brother was, much less how his life would look in the future with a giant spiky turtle as a soulmate who lived in a fortress covered in ash and lava, but in that moment, Luigi couldn’t care.
Bowser’s breath smelled smoky. Smoky like black pepper, or like graying hair. Smoky like the sky before it rained, or smoky like a freshly blown-out birthday candle. Luigi took another breath in.
With the hot air blanketed all around them and the smell of smoke filling the air, he knew what this grand palace smelled like. It smelled like home.