100 Marvel One Shots✔️

Too Late >> Yondu Udonta X Reader

Title: Too Late

Paring: Yondu Udonta X Reader

Warnings: fluff, angst, soulmates, modern setting, age difference in paring.

Request: by a user on AO3

Spoilers: nope

_____________________________________________________________________________

Upon his wrist, since he was born, was the date he would meet his soulmate. It was common knowledge that everyone was born with eight digits tattooed to their skin, even the people who grew up to not want love, or were thought to be destined to be alone for life. Yondu Udonta had his date on the side of his wrist, and by calculations by his parents, it would appear to be one of the later dates than anyone ever seen. His worried single mother took him to the experts, took him to psychics, took him anyplace that could remedy their child finding their soulmate so late. But even when the ink was drained from his skin, the next day it would appear, the date as fixed as ever.

Yondu Udonta would find his soulmate when he was forty years old. And not a day before, no matter how much money and hope were poured into science and mumbo-jumbo.

He worked it out later in life, why his Mom had been so worried for him. It wasn't a new phenomenon when people's soulmates would appear to them already married, perhaps to be on the brink of death, or already in the ground. It wasn't like he had anything to lose until his fortieth year of life – so Yondu did all he could to live, love and loose what he could between then, and where he was.

The day you were born, you had a date written upon your skin, just like all the other people in this word. Except...it wasn't in the same colour as everyone else. While they had neat black ink, as per the profession of a tattooist's usual use, upon your skin, the date you would meet your soulmate was written in blue ink. Perhaps it was a glitch that happened, but none of your teachers had heard of it. A joke. Yes, that was it; you were a part of a joke made by the universe, a joke that had no punchline yet. But according to your calculations, you would meet your match made in the womb six months after your twenty-seventh birthday.

"You'll be twenty-seven?" your old play friend Drax asked, amazed. "I'll be fifteen." He counted on his fingers, as a seven-year-old child would do when they had troubles with addition in their mind. "I have eight years to go!"

You smirked. "Yeah, and I have twenty, I got more years to get ready for them!"

Drax's eyes widened even more. "I'm worried now!"

He cut all his hair off except for a strip in the centre. Moved to a new house every four or so years. Dated every so often, had flings even more. Worked as a taxi driver for some years, a mechanic, odd jobs – for ten years, he even was a hunter for a lodge out in the middle of nowhere. He adopted a kid, Kraglin, and then adopted another, Peter. He moved them around state to state, read them to sleep at night until they were old enough to tell him to piss off, and when his boys were old enough, they left to live their lives elsewhere. But Yondu decided to finally settle down, put roots into a desert town in Nevada, and worked as a handyman.

Oh, but time was ticking. Every year, Yondu sat down where he was, and went under the needle to ink his skin, covering bit by bit of his body with art and reminders of his life that year, distracting from the digits he inherited upon his wrist. To hide its prominence with designs of talking skulls and block designs.