Work Text:
when jimin wakes up on a friday, rudely shaken awake by his alarm clock, nothing in particular stands out to him.
there’s nothing to suggest this friday is going to be different from other fridays, or that it’s going to be different from any other work day. there’s no weird feeling in his stomach, no nerves, no fluttery feeling. nothing. it’s just an ordinary day.
he stares at his ceiling for a few minutes like he does every morning, trying to wake up and mentally prepare himself for another day at the office. eventually, when he can no longer delay the inevitable, he gets up.
he gets ready. he stands in his kitchen, trying to decide if he can go without breakfast. he heads out, walks toward the metro station, descends the stairs, catches the metro. he gets back out at the right stop, ascends the stairs, walks out and lets his feet take him to his office building.
he greets namjoon on his way to the elevator and they stand shoulder to shoulder, too tired to say anything as they wait for the elevator to come. they ride the elevator up together and leave it together, too.
they let themselves into their office, and split up only to sit at their respective desks. they work. they get up for coffee. they work some more. they have a meeting here, a meeting there…
when lunch time comes around, jimin struts over to namjoon’s desk and raps his knuckles on the surface to catch namjoon’s attention. “lunch?” he suggests, when namjoon looks up with a tired smile.
namjoon hums. he stretches his arms above his head, yawns unapologetically and gathers his stuff.
they go down together, wander into the café at ground level and walk up to the queue for the counter together. by the time it’s their turn, one of the owners, yoongi, greets them with his usual smile.
“seokjin not around?” namjoon asks, lifting his brows. it’s not exactly lunch rush yet, but it’s strange to see only one of them when there’s a queue.
“in the back,” yoongi murmurs, jutting his chin out to gesture over his shoulder. “will that be all?”
jimin pays this time, and namjoon thanks him by throwing him an obnoxious air kiss. they find a table and sit down, only for namjoon to immediately duck and attempt to hide behind jimin’s quite a lot smaller frame.
“is he behind us?” jimin asks, unimpressed. he takes a sip of his water, before leaning over with a giant grin to pet namjoon’s hair. “oh, you nervous little fool…”
namjoon only blushes heavily. he glances over jimin’s shoulder to catch another glimpse of hoseok’s beautiful side profile. the dancer, whose dance studio is in the building next to theirs, doesn’t seem to notice him, but he’s still careful, deathly afraid of being looked at by his crush of many months.
jimin snorts. he shakes his head fondly and, while discreetly looking over his shoulder, ends up smiling and nodding politely at a guy a few tables over. jimin vaguely knows jungkook, since he works in the office right next to theirs, but he’s never seen the guy he’s with before. he acknowledges jungkook’s friend with a nod, before turning back to his lunch.
once lunch is over, jimin and namjoon make their way back to their desks. they finish work. they bid each other goodbye and go home again.
at home, jimin is relieved to be able to wind down with the knowledge that he won’t have to get up early the next day. there’s a reason saturday is his favourite day of the week, after all.
the next morning, jimin’s alarm wakes him once more. he feels around his nightstand for his phone, hits the screen in vain, hoping he’ll get lucky and accidentally tap the snooze button. once he’s successful, he turns back around and immediately falls back asleep.
he snoozes a second time. and a third and a fourth, until he realises he’s going to be late for work and immediately shoots upright. “fuck!”
jimin nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to get out of bed. he somehow makes it to his bathroom, washes up, gets dressed, realises he’s so late he won’t even have to ponder whether he has time to get breakfast and rushes out of his apartment. he can always pick up some food at yoongi and seokjin’s café should he get hungry; it’ll be fine.
it’s only once he’s made it to the metro station with a few minutes to spare, waiting impatiently to get to work, that he thinks to pull his phone out to mindlessly scroll for a bit. he gets as far as looking down at his screen, at staring at the time and noticing the date. he doesn’t know at first what’s so wrong about what he’s seeing, but he knows something is very wrong.
“that’s yesterday’s date,” jimin mumbles stupidly. he blinks slowly. he turns his screen off, and turns it back on. he rubs his eyes. “it’s saturday today. why am i up at this hour? i was supposed to sleep in.”
he looks down at his phone again to check the time once more. he checks again, and again, and again. each time, he hopes to find a different reality than the one he’s in, but he’s not that fortunate.
just to be sure, even though he knows what answer he’ll receive, he looks around and finds the most agreeable looking person at this time of day. he steps up to them and politely asks them what day it is, laughing sheepishly and explaining that he always gets his days mixed up and that his phone died.
of course, the answer is still the same. his phone hadn’t lied. his memory hadn’t lied, either; he really should have been sleeping in right now, but he isn’t, because it’s still friday, and he’s supposed to work on fridays.
once he begrudgingly accepts that yesterday is repeating, that today is repeating, he has to accept something else, too: he’s stuck in a soulmate loop.
yesterday, somewhere along the line, he’d been close enough to his soulmate to trigger a soulmate loop. the day will keep repeating until he meets his soulmate, until the two acknowledge the fact that they’re soulmates and accept their intertwined fates.
he tries to remain as calm as one possibly could after realising you’re stuck in a soulmate loop. desperately, he tries to recall the advice he’d been given by friends and family members—those that had been through their own soulmate meeting already—to make the meeting go smoother and end his suffering as soon as possible.
meeting your soulmate isn’t torture per se, but going through the same day over and over? jimin’s not terribly excited. the thought of having to sit through the same friday—never quite reaching the weekend, always stuck with that same longing for a day off, the thought of sleeping in just barely out of reach, so close he could almost taste it… ?
he’s not sure getting a soulmate is worth that pain.
as he breathes in and out steadily, he tries to remember what he’d been told. keep calm; remember where you’ve been and how long you’ve been there; recall the new faces you’ve met; explore any new areas you might have gone to; whatever else his father had explained to him about the radius of a soulmate loop that jimin has completely forgotten the finer details about.
what it all comes down to is this: retrace your steps, while being on the lookout for anyone that stands out. only your soulmate would realise they’re in a soulmate loop, after all, so they’d behave differently than the rest. they’d make themselves known by acting shifty, or by being as loud as possible about the fact that they’re in a soulmate loop.
once a soulmate loop settles, after all, and you’re finally able to move onto the next day, it’d be as if the loop had never happened. whatever happened on your first day would be the only day that’d actually happened.
whatever happens in your loop, stays in your loop, which means you get to do whatever the hell you want, without facing any consequences whatsoever.
jimin looks around once he’s made an attempt to center himself. he scans the platform he’s standing on, tries to study each person, each face he’s able to see. he doesn’t see anything or anyone that stands out, but he doesn’t despair just yet. this is only the beginning of his morning, after all; he has an entire day to meticulously comb through until he finds his soulmate.
he doesn’t find anyone in the metro that he slowly, and with great difficulty, walks through, nor does he see anything suspicious while he walks from the station to his work.
since the idea of being in a soulmate meeting is starting to freak him out little by little, not having expected that he’d find himself in this situation quite yet, he goes to work purely to sit at his desk and stare at his screen for hours on end. he tries to figure out what to do, but it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to wade through his slow thoughts.
eventually, when he realises he isn’t going to come up with a plan in this state, he gets up and wanders around. he leaves the office, passes through the many corridors of the building he’s in and weaves in and out of any space he’s able to enter.
with each step he takes, his panic grows larger and more vicious, until it feels like he’s about to throw up. one of his coworkers finds him at that point, approaching him with worry in her eyes, patting his shoulder and asking him if he’s alright, if she can do anything for him.
“i’m fine,” jimin mutters. he kind of wants to cry.
“go home for the day,” she tells him sternly, as she takes him by the arm and leads him back to the office.
since jimin can’t even find the words to explain to her what’s going on, even though it’s no shame to admit that you’re going through a soulmate loop, he doesn’t say anything and lets her pull him along. he thanks her as they reach his desk and begins packing his stuff slowly, feeling as though he’s drifting just above his body, looking down on himself going through the familiar motions of gathering his stuff.
he takes the metro back home and only realises once they’re already moving that he’s messing up the first day of his loop by doing this. he’s not going home at the normal time, which means he won’t be retracing his steps and possibly run into his soulmate. it means he’s wasting at least half a day’s work.
still, jimin doesn’t get off to circle back and try again at the appropriate time. he rides the metro back to his stop and trudges home, where he immediately hides in his bed with the intention of falling asleep and cutting the day short. perhaps, once the day resets, he’ll wake up with a much calmer mind.
jimin isn’t freaking out because he doesn’t want a soulmate; it’s not that at all. it’s mostly that he hasn’t really considered the fact that he, too, like ninety nine percent of the population, would have a soulmate. he doesn’t feel ready, is all. he hasn’t yet accustomed himself to the idea that his soulmate is out there, very close, only moments away from running into him.
tomorrow he’ll start over. tomorrow he’ll go at things in a much better, much calmer way. he’ll settle his soulmate loop as soon as possible; he knows he will.
contrary to what he’d told himself, jimin sits through loop after loop after loop without getting anywhere. there’s no sight of his soulmate anywhere, and it’s starting to drive him insane.
he’s long since shirked his responsibilities at work, and doesn’t even think to go there at first, since he should know everyone in the building, right? he knows it couldn’t be anyone in the office at least, but he doubts it’d be anyone else in the building. it’s always the same office workers, the same delivery men... the people going in and out of the office building are all people he’s been close to a number of times.
right?
he knows it’s flawed reasoning. he knows someone new could easily show up or, hell, even casually pass by the building while he were close enough.
still, he doesn’t think to go back there for several loops, because focusing on too many locations at once is way too overwhelming. instead, he zeroes in on his commute to and fro work. in particular, the metro, since that’s where he runs into the biggest amount of people at once. lots of soulmate meetings happen in metro stations, or any type of public transport, for that exact reason.
he inspects everything meticulously. he studies anyone who stands out, anything that happens differently than it had the first time around… and finds nothing.
it takes a few loops for him to realise he’s wasting his time, that he should be going back to his office building and concentrating all his energy on that spot. he can still inspect the metro in the morning and the afternoon, but he’ll no longer exhaust his energy there.
he figures his best bet will be to stake out in the lobby, since most will pass through there on their way up. those that come in through the parking garage below the building aren’t particularly interesting to him; only regulars would use that place, since it’s employee-only.
in one of his loops down in the lobby, his ninth, he sees namjoon pass through the lobby. jimin waves, smiles and heaves a sigh of relief at the sight of such a familiar and comforting face, but namjoon doesn’t notice him.
namjoon looks mildly distressed, but jimin makes the conscious decision not to go up to him and attempt to help him. it’s difficult not to get up, but he knows it’d be useless; namjoon’s not his soulmate, he’s not in jimin’s soulmate loop, therefore anything that jimin does won’t take any effect. tomorrow, jimin would wake up and have to try to help namjoon all over again, which means it’d be useless.
he goes home on his ninth loop feeling horrible that he’d let namjoon pass by like that, that he hadn’t been able to do anything. the general theme of his loop has been helplessness, so he should be used to it by now, but that doesn’t mean it sucks any less.
jimin feels dejected and annoyed, on top of horrible, as he makes it back to the safety of his home. he’s on his ninth loop, and he’s still come up empty-handed. it seems… excessive.
he knows it can be a bit of a search sometimes, that it’s normal to go through several cycles until the loop settles, but nine cycles?
still, he goes to bed only with a childish grumble, ready to repeat the day all over again. he doesn’t have any other choice, after all; once you’re in a soulmate loop, you’re stuck there until you figure it out.
on the night of that ninth loop, jimin makes the decision to live out the next cycle like he had that first day. he’s not ashamed to admit it’s only vaguely about properly retracing his steps. it’s mostly because he’s bone tired, and running on automated pilot for a whole cycle seems like the best option to wind down for a day without throwing the whole day away.
maybe it’ll be good for him. maybe he’ll see something that can help him in his search. maybe he won’t. who knows?
jimin doesn’t really care anymore; he just wants sleep. he just wants some rest. he just wants his saturday to finally come around.
jimin’s alarm goes off. it’s friday. he’s in his tenth cycle.
he lies on his back for a few minutes, staring up at his ceiling and taking slow and steady breaths while he tries to prepare for yet another repeat of the same dreadful day.
it takes a bit, but after a few sluggish attempts, jimin manages to get into the flow of a normal friday. he pushes the fact that he’s in a soulmate loop to the back of his mind for a bit and decides to treat the day like any other.
it’s a friday. one more day, and he’ll get to enjoy a well-earned weekend. he’ll get to sleep in the next morning; it’ll be great; jimin is doing fine. it’s just a normal day. a normal fucking day.
it helps that he knows without a doubt that he won’t see anything different. his day will repeat as it has for the past nine days, so he won’t have to think about his actions. all he has to do is react accordingly and hope he does a good job of acting out the first day.
as he gets to work, he doesn’t even spy around for anything that stands out. he’s too tired, and he knows he won’t find anything, anyway. he gets to the office looking down at his feet, tired and yawning.
namjoon’s not there when he walks to the elevator, but jimin’s not too worried. he may be a little earlier or later than the first day. it’s fine.
he’s not there when jimin gets to his desk, either, but jimin’s still not concerned. it’s not like namjoon could be his soulmate, because there hadn’t been a soulmate meeting when they’d first met. whatever the reason for namjoon’s absence, it’s probably due to jimin’s timing. it’s fine.
it’s fine.
there’s no way namjoon could be his soulmate.
the firm reminder causes a pang in his chest. for a reason he doesn’t want to decipher, it kind of stings to know that namjoon’s not his soulmate. the horrible feeling lasts for a little while, before he resolutely pushes it aside and decides to ignore it. he can’t focus on stuff like that while he’s trying to find perhaps the most important person in his life.
he works until lunch and goes down automatically, sitting down at the same table they had before, while he waits for namjoon to show up. even when they don’t explicitly agree to have lunch together, they always find each other; it’s a given they have lunch together. it just is.
he realises only after waiting for about ten minutes that he hasn’t actually seen namjoon around at all. not even a glimpse; not once.
it’s not that strange for them not to see each other as much during a work day, but to not see each other at all? when their desks are so close to one another? it’s strange.
while looking around the café, hoping for a glimpse of namjoon, anything to prove to him that he’s being paranoid, he’s lucky enough to get a flash of him just outside of the establishment, just up ahead in the lobby. he walks past without looking in once, clearly not on his way to lunch.
quickly, jimin gets up and speeds after him. he calls out to him once, in an attempt to catch his attention and make him stop, but namjoon either doesn’t hear him or completely ignores him.
he watches namjoon’s back disappear around a corner, moving into a corridor that jimin knows leads to the stairwell. he hesitates for a moment, before following after him.
jimin walks down the corridor he’d seen namjoon disappear into. he expects to run into him there, but is dismayed to find it completely empty.
he doubts himself for a second, wonders if he’s just imagined it all. since he’d already been thinking about namjoon, perhaps his mind had helpfully conjured him up? what if he’s just seeing things?
before jimin can convince himself that it was all in his head, however, he hears namjoon’s voice up ahead, around yet another corner. he guesses it’s coming from the stairwell, both from the echoing and the fact that there’s not much else there.
he starts walking again, almost at the point where he has to round the corner, when he abruptly stops in his track once he hears namjoon say the word soulmate.
jimin strains his ears, leans his shoulder against the wall so that he’s still out of sight. he can make out two additional voices, although he’s not sure who they belong to—he’s fairly certain the voices don’t belong to any of their coworkers—nor what they’re saying. they’re talking in quiet whispers, as though they’re afraid of being eavesdropped on.
since he won’t learn anything new while hiding around the corner, jimin sucks in a deep breath, lifts his chin and rolls his shoulders back, before stepping around the corner. he tries to look as confident as possible, in hopes that namjoon and the strangers won’t realise how erratically his heart is beating, how nervous he feels; namjoon isn’t supposed to be here, after all, which means…
which means…
jimin hadn’t done anything to influence namjoon in this cycle, which means namjoon changed his day on his own. it means namjoon is in jimin’s soulmate cycle, fully aware of what’s happening.
it makes no sense, and yet jimin can’t think of another explanation. namjoon should be helpless in this loop, doing the same thing over and over until jimin figures it out, but he’s not. namjoon still has a will of his own.
namjoon’s propped up against the open door leading to the stairwell, while the other two he’s with are sat on the stairs. it’s when jimin gets close enough that he realises who the other two people are. yoongi and seokjin, the couple that owns the café jimin and namjoon go to every day.
jimin startles the three of them when he approaches and quickly apologises. when no one says anything, he opens his mouth once more. “did someone mention soulmates?” he asks carefully. his gaze finally lands on namjoon, whose jaw has dropped. if jimin weren’t so nervous, he’d probably laugh at him.
when still no one responds, jimin speaks again: “hyung?” he tries. he looks toward yoongi and seokjin and frowns. “please?”
“you’re in a soulmate loop?” he asks, when he still doesn’t get an answer. “are you?”
finally, it’s seokjin who sighs. his entire body slumps back against the stairs and he briefly closes his eyes. “that means there’s another person. we’re not four… we’re five.”
as if on cue, yoongi and namjoon start laughing hysterically. the former leans heavily against seokjin’s shoulder, while the latter doubles over to lean his hands on his knees.
jimin looks between them in bewilderment, unsure of what’s so funny, or what seokjin had meant, until he realises he understands exactly what seokjin had said: if he’s in a loop with the three of them, there has to be another soulmate they haven’t met yet. it means jimin has four soulmates.
“i have four soulmates?” jimin asks weakly. his knees buckle and he ends up grabbing the door handle for support. eventually, he goes to sit in the middle of the door opening and dumbly stares between the three, hoping one of them will start laughing and tell him they’re pulling his leg.
namjoon follows jimin’s lead and sits down next to him. he sighs heavily and hangs his head. he doesn’t say anything, which is understandable; jimin doesn’t really know what to say, either.
“you can have more than one soulmate?” jimin asks.
“apparently,” yoongi says. he presses his lips into a thin line and frowns deeply.
“who could the last person be?” jimin wonders out loud.
“who the fuck knows…” yoongi sighs. he rests his forehead on seokjin’s shoulder. “i’m exhausted,” he mutters.
the others all agree with weary nods.
they sit in more silence for some time, staring at their feet, or down into their laps, until jimin climbs to his feet with some difficulty and lets out another sigh. he knows he should be elated that he’s found at least three soulmates, that namjoon is one of them, but his brain seems unable to process any of it.
his brain hasn’t really processed anything these last ten cycles, if he’s honest.
“i’m gonna go home,” he says. “i’m tired; i need a nap. sorry to… leave you to it, but i need… to process. five is...” he looks down at his hand and spreads his fingers. “so much.”
yoongi and seokjin snort at the same time and nod understandingly. they look like they’ve already done a lot of processing of their own, although jimin can tell that they’re mentally exhausted. namjoon doesn’t look much better.
“can i come with?” namjoon asks, looking up and pouting slightly.
jimin nods. he holds out his hand to namjoon, who takes it and climbs to his feet. once they’re standing side by side, shoulders pressed together, jimin looks at the couple still sat on the stairs, slumped into each other.
“yeah, we’ll go home as well,” seokjin says. he rubs yoongi’s thigh. “regroup tomorrow? you know where to find us.”
namjoon and jimin nod, before jimin slips his hand into namjoon’s again and pulls him along. “let’s go, hyung.”
jimin and namjoon are quiet on the way to jimin’s place. on the one hand, they’re deep in thought, but on the other they simply feel too awkward around each other to attempt to break the silence.
once inside, they curl up on his couch like they have countless times before and stay enveloped in quiet some more. they’re too tired to talk, too speechless to try to figure out what to say to each other.
they only speak when they figure out what to order in for lunch, and then they take another break from speaking until their food arrives and they’ve consumed it all.
“we’re soulmates,” jimin says. he pokes namjoon’s thigh with his foot and smiles lightly. it feels strange to say it out loud, but at the same time it makes so much sense that he can hardly believe that he hadn’t realised until now.
namjoon smiles back and nods quietly.
“kinda weird,” jimin says.
“kind of,” namjoon agrees. he catches jimin’s foot and pulls it into his lap, curling his fingers around jimin’s ankle.
“i’m glad it’s you,” jimin says. he tries to fight the heat that rises to his cheeks and thinks he does a pretty good job at keeping it at bay.
namjoon hums. he smiles a little wider and starts blushing. he opens his arms for jimin, beckons him closer.
jimin knows namjoon isn’t as touchy feely as he is, that he used to be even less open to physical touch, but that he’s learned to at least tolerate it because of jimin. he’s still not one to initiate it, though, which makes this moment all the more special.
he crawls into namjoon’s arms with a sigh, leaning his head on namjoon’s shoulder. “what have you been up to, these past few cycles?”
namjoon sits down with a pen and a sheet of paper as soon as he wakes up on the first day of the soulmate loop and he realises he’s repeating the previous day.
he’d always told himself he’d go about his loop as strategically as possible and had thought of a plan long ago: write down each location in order of arrival; check it off once thoroughly checked for his soulmate.
it’s an easy plan, it wouldn’t take a genius to come up with it, but it still feels like a gigantic task as soon as he sees the list that’s in front of him. he hasn’t been to many places, but the places he has been are big and see a lot of people at any given moment.
the problem with the fact that he’s so thorough, however, is that he spends more time at each location than he had during the first day. it means he messes up his entire schedule, which mildly stresses him out and causes him to lag behind significantly.
he keeps accidentally stretching out his stay at each location, until his search is no longer accurate, until he gives up for a bit on the fifth day and decides to go down and sit at yoongi and seokjin’s café for a while to think things through. he goes at a quiet hour, where most people will be behind their desks, so the café seems the best place to find some peace and quiet.
he sits with his coffee for a bit, not thinking about anything in particular, until he notices yoongi and seokjin out of the corner of his eye. they’re sat a table not far from him, hunched over and whispering to each other, gesturing in his direction every so often.
eventually, he looks up and catches their eye. he watches as they get up after some debate and approach him with caution.
“hey…” seokjin begins. he sits opposite of namjoon, folds his hands on the table in front of him and purses his lips, like he knows exactly what to say, but not how to say it. “you’re in our loop, aren’t you?”
the question makes namjoon’s brain short circuit for a long while, until he manages to snap out of it. “but we’ve talked to each other before,” he mumbles. “that doesn’t make any sense.”
yoongi hums. he nods slowly. “it means there’s a fourth soulmate.”
“ah…” namjoon nods along with seokjin and yoongi, who sigh in sync. he wonders very vaguely when he’ll start to freak out about what he’s just learned. “what?” he asks dumbly.
“having more than one soulmate is a lot to take in, isn’t it?” seokjin asks. he smiles sympathetically.
when namjoon studies his face, he gets the sense that the two have already done their fair share of freaking out. they would have woken up together on the first cycle of the loop, after all, which means they’ve known from the very beginning that there’d be more than one soulmate.
“at least i know now where to look for the fourth one,” namjoon muses. “i doubt we overlapped anywhere else. the fourth person must be in this building somewhere, right?”
just to be sure, they compare notes, only to come to the conclusion that they didn’t overlap anywhere else on that first day. the office building is what ties them together.
“could be the café,” namjoon says.
yoongi scrunches up his nose. “doesn’t have to be. i mean… how big is the radius again? does anyone know?”
“it covers the entire building,” namjoon says, sounding a lot more sure of himself than he actually is. he knows there’s a way to calculate the radius, but he also knows it can be kind of time consuming and not usually worth your time. pinpointing the building as the location of the meeting is already more than they could’ve hoped for.
seokjin sinks back in his chair with a sigh. “back to combing through the building?”
yoongi hums. “i think we should try the adjacent buildings as well, though. just to be sure. we’ve already covered a lot of this place.”
since it feels a little awkward to strike up a conversation now that they know the nature of their relationship, they agree to split up and meet up every so often to report any findings. they try their best, of course, since no one wants to drag it out any more than necessary, but they come back empty handed whenever they get together.
in fact, the three are just getting together in the stairwell to discuss a better way of going at their search, as well as to complain about how useless it all is, when jimin shows up to let them know how wrong they were to think they’d get away with only being a four-soulmate group.
jimin whistles once namjoon finishes recalling everything. “you guys have worked hard,” he says. he looks up, plants his chin on namjoon’s chest and smiles up at him.
namjoon snorts. “we got nowhere, though. we didn’t find anything. you found us.”
“that’s not true. you’ve searched a lot of places already. at least we’ll have an idea of where to investigate.” jimin reaches up and pets namjoon’s hair. “you did well.”
at the mention of more investigative work, namjoon groans loudly. “i’m tired,” he whines.
jimin only laughs softly and pets his head some more. they don’t speak again until one of them suggests ordering in for dinner, as well, since they’re both tired and getting kind of hungry again.
they watch a movie jimin doesn’t remember so much as a second of while they eat, and when it’s time for namjoon to go, jimin tugs on his sleeve and guides him to his bedroom. “you’ll magically end up in your own bed tomorrow, anyway. might as well stay.”
namjoon laughs at that, and lets jimin pull him along. they go through the motions of getting ready for bed together like it’s a normal thing to do, a thing they’re used to doing together. for once, the situation doesn’t feel weird in the slightest.
“i really am glad it’s you, you know,” jimin says, once they’ve settled down.
“and yoongi and seokjin,” namjoon adds dryly. they both snort. “i’m glad it’s you, too,” he adds softly.
jimin smiles.
they fall asleep holding onto each other.
the next morning, jimin shows up long enough at his desk to dump his stuff and find namjoon. they wait only long enough for the worst morning coffee rush to be over, before riding the elevator down together to meet up with yoongi and seokjin.
they find the couple in the almost empty café and the four sit down, ready to talk and draw up another plan of attack.
as they sit opposite him, jimin starts feeling a little shy. he’s spent so many mornings looking at them from afar, extremely aware of how hot and unavailable they are, not knowing he’d end up here, as their soulmate.
well. one of them, anyway.
“can i ask what’s going on with you two?” jimin starts, once he’s cleared his throat. “i thought you two were married, but you’re going through a soulmate loop only now? i don’t understand.”
yoongi and seokjin discreetly glance at each other, as though silently agreeing how much they’re willing to share, before turning back to jimin. it’s yoongi who smiles tiredly, and seokjin who opens his mouth.
“we never went through a soulmate meeting together. this is our first time. when we met each other… speaking for myself, i fell madly in love with yoongi. i decided to stop caring about soulmates as soon as i met him and it didn’t trigger a soulmate loop. it seemed unfair that it wasn’t him, so i figured a soulmate wouldn’t be worth it if it meant i couldn’t be with him. we got married despite the fact that we thought we weren’t soulmates.”
yoongi nods in agreement. he reaches for seokjin’s hand lying on the table and takes it in his. “i didn’t want to throw away the person i fell in love with at first sight for someone i hadn’t met yet. if hyung and i weren’t written in the stars, then the stars were simply lying or dead wrong.”
jimin thinks he can kind of understand where they’re coming from. in theory, the concept of a soulmate seems easy, it seems like a promise to find love and happiness without having to lift a finger, but jimin’s always found the prospect of finding the person he’s fated to be with very stifling. it’d always felt like his free will was being taken away.
he smiles softly. “turns out you were soulmates, after all. your feelings weren’t wrong.”
“your feelings are never wrong,” yoongi says firmly. “but, yeah… guess there was a reason our connection was so strong that we were ready to throw away the idea of a soulmate altogether.” he laughs softly, before turning toward seokjin. as soon as their eyes meet, they start blushing heavily, as though this is the very first time they’re meeting.
jimin turns to namjoon with wide eyes. “are you seeing this?” he asks in a whisper. “they’re so cute?”
namjoon just nods in response. he’s smiling lightly, like he’s already used to it. perhaps he is. he’s spent more time with them than jimin has, after all.
“how’d you spend your cycles before you ran into hyung?” jimin asks, once yoongi and seokjin are done blushing at each other.
the truth is, seokjin and yoongi don’t actually realise the previous day is repeating itself until they’ve made it all the way to work and they’ve served about ten customers.
the whole morning, there’d been a sense of dejá vu, but they haven’t been able to put their finger on it until they realise they’ve been serving orders that are identical to the day before.
sure, they get a lot of regulars who not only come at the same time, but also consistently order the same thing, but the exact order at which they’re coming in now, the fact that it’s the very same order they came in yesterday, is starting to get uncanny.
it gets so creepy that yoongi finally pulls his phone out and actually looks at the date. that way, they’ll be able to put their paranoia at rest and prove that they’re just being silly, that nothing’s wrong.
of course, the moment yoongi looks at the date, their worst fear becomes reality. he sees yesterday’s date, and knows instantly that he’s not seeing things. they’re repeating yesterday. the only explanation is that they’re in a soulmate loop.
he shows seokjin, whose face falls instantly.
they’re about to start freaking out, when seokjin blinks very slowly, starts frowning deeply, while chewing on his lip. “wait… but… we’re both in the loop. right? we both remember yesterday-today? yes? that’s a thing that’s happening as we speak?”
yoongi nods slowly.
they get one of their employees to man the counter, while yoongi pulls seokjin to the back so that they can figure out what’s going on.
“there’s another person,” yoongi says.
“a third soulmate,” seokjin nods. “how?”
since yoongi has no answer to that, he shrugs and shakes his head. it’s too early to be figuring that out. “let’s just make a list of places we’ve been so that we can get this over with. it’s way too early for this. a fucking soulmate loop… can you believe it?”
seokjin’s frown disappears slowly. in its place, a smile starts showing. it goes from fond, to relieved, to pure, unadulterated happiness. “you’re my soulmate, after all,” he says. when he sighs, it comes out in a shaky force. he takes yoongi’s face between his hands and pulls him forward.
their lips crash together clumsily, as though this is the very first time they’ve kissed. for a moment, it feels like it is.
“why are you being like this?” yoongi asks, as he pulls back. his eyes have misted over. “i thought we stopped caring about soulmates long ago.”
seokjin hums. he wipes yoongi’s cheeks dry and kisses his forehead. “only because we thought we weren’t soulmates. but now it turns out that we are. it means we were right all along.”
yoongi sighs slowly. he leans into seokjin, resting his forehead on seokjin’s shoulder. he holds onto him tightly. “but there’s another person.”
“it doesn’t matter. we’ll find them and then decide how to handle it. i told you i didn’t care about soulmates, but i never really stopped caring, you know, because i was deathly afraid of losing you. now i know that i won’t, so i’ll finally stop caring for real. whatever happens, happens.”
yoongi nods slowly. he sighs again. “lets just make that list…”
the only two places on their list are their home and the office building. there’s, of course, the chance that they ran into their soulmate while going to work or coming back home, but it doesn’t make sense to focus on their commute in too much detail.
they decide to target the office building only and settle for a flyer hung up in the entrance of their apartment building. it reads soulmate loop? followed by seokjin’s phone number.
it’s a lazy attempt, but it’s the easiest solution they can come up with. they’ll waste too much time if they try to search their apartment building.
they try to comb through the office building, but they’re very aware that they’re dragging it out. they’re hesitant to meet their soulmate, because they have no idea what it’ll mean for their relationship.
realistically, they know it’ll work itself out, but that doesn’t help ease their reservations one bit. the thought of a soulmate still threatens their relationship, the way it always has, even though they’ve firmly maintained that it’d never be of influence.
eventually, it’s namjoon they run into, sat at the café at an hour at which he shouldn’t be there. they debate whether to go over to him and figure out whether he’s their soulmate, even though they already know that he is. he makes the decision for them when he turns to look at them. they have no choice but to go over when they make eye-contact and they see their exhaustion mirrored back at them. like yoongi and seokjin, namjoon seems to be going through hell just a little.
“wait…” jimin whispers. “i forgot my soulmate could’ve been hiding in my apartment building… i can’t believe i didn’t think to look there. that note was so smart.”
the comment makes seokjin grin proudly. “right? isn’t yoongi the smartest?” he turns to look at him and pats his head. it almost looks condescending, were it not for the pride in his eyes.
jimin smiles. “you two are very cute. i’m glad you turned out to be soulmates. either way, i think it’s really cool that you decided to throw caution to the wind and get married, anyway.”
yoongi smiles a little. “thanks.”
“we saw you around, you know,” seokjin says. “both of you. we’ve always liked when you stopped by. your smile is a nice beginning to our day.” his gaze lands on namjoon. rather than extend the sentiment toward him, his gaze travels down very slowly, until he can’t get any further and he’s stuck looking at the edge of the table. all he does is shake his head slowly and look away to fan himself discreetly.
“yours, too,” yoongi adds lamely. he clears his throat and nudges seokjin in the side, who can’t help but snort.
jimin and namjoon turn to look at each other, and promptly burst into laughter, as well.
as they’re all laughing, a brief moment of relaxation in such a weird situation, jimin happens to glance over at a table not far from theirs. he spots jungkook there, sat with the same stranger jimin saw him sit with before.
he realises as he watches them that they’ve been sat here for a while now, and that they’ve been glancing at the four for most of it. he realises, too, that they’re not supposed to be here at this hour. it isn’t time for lunch yet. they’re supposed to arrive here much later.
another realisation hits him, then, that trumps all the other revelations. the stranger is new. jimin hasn’t seen the stranger before, other than on the day that had triggered the loop.
“it’s you, isn’t it?” jimin asks the stranger, knowing he won’t have to raise his voice, since they’ve probably been listening in for a while now. “you triggered the loop.”
taehyung and jungkook meet up with each other on the very first day of the cycle, after independently coming to the decision to keep their day as close to the original as possible for the best chance at finding their soulmate.
they’re sat at the café, feeling strangely awkward while gazing at each other. it isn’t like them to not know how to act around each other. they’re roommates, after all; there isn’t a person they’re more comfortable around than each other.
eventually, jungkook breaks the tense moment by leaning forward, looking left and right, before whispering: “hyung, i’m in a soulmate loop. what do i do?”
“what do you fucking mean?” taehyung whispers back, leaning in, too. “i’m in a soulmate loop.”
“oh my god,” jungkook whispers. “we’re soulmates. dude, we’re soulmates. that’s so sick; we get to settle the loop on our very first day.”
before taehyung can tell him to use his brain, jungkook sighs very slowly and leans back. he crosses his arms in front of his chest and purses his lips. “never mind. i’ve just realised that makes no sense. we would have gone through our loop ages ago if that were the case.”
they sit in silence for a while, trying to figure out what’s going on, if there’s something wrong with their loop or if they’ve actually just gone crazy and they’re not in a loop at all.
“we’re missing a soulmate,” taehyung says.
jungkook cocks his head. he knows a lot about soulmates, considering how excited he is to find his own, but he’s never heard of having multiple before. “is that even possible?”
taehyung nods slowly. “i’ve heard of it happening once. it doesn’t happen very often, as far as i’m aware. most people don’t consider it possible, but… yeah.”
“i’ve had a crush on you for so long,” jungkook mutters. “i can’t believe we’re soulmates after all…”
taehyung gasps dramatically. jungkook gets the distinct sensation that he’s not even exaggerating. “you bitch! i’ve been pining after you since we became roommates!”
“well, why didn’t you say anything!” jungkook pouts.
“because you were hung up on your soulmate,” taehyung mutters, squinting childishly at him. “you were always so lovestruck with the idea that the one would be out there for you that i knew i wouldn’t stand a chance.”
jungkook opens his mouth to respond, only to close it again when he realises taehyung is right. he sighs and looks so nonplussed that taehyung promptly bursts into laughter.
he pokes jungkook’s shin with his shoe and quirks his mouth up into a smile. “hey, soulmate…”
jungkook hangs his head to hide a shy smile. “yeah, soulmate?”
taehyung shakes his head. “nothing. i just wanted to call you my soulmate. it has a nice ring to it.”
jungkook’s too busy blushing and trying to stay cool and calm in front of taehyung, but if he were in any way composed, he’d probably lift his head and nod and tell him that calling taehyung his soulmate makes him feel as though his heart is bursting at the seams.
once they’ve composed themselves a little, they move on to talk about how to find this third soulmate of theirs. they agree pretty quickly that their best bet is to pay close attention later that night, once it’s time for them to meet up at the bar they went to the day before. it seems the most likely they’ll meet their soulmate there, although neither can say why they feel that way.
they don’t find anyone at the bar that first night, but they’re not too disappointed as they walk home and end up making out as soon as the door falls shut behind them.
they spend the first iterations of the loop paying attention to the bar and spending the rest of their time together, making up for lost time by making out, talking, holding hands and cuddling even more than they would before.
it’s only in the later loops that they start to wonder if, perhaps, they should check out the office a little. they’d met up there, too, after all. they probably shouldn’t have excluded it from their search.
jimin sighs in relief as taehyung and jungkook finish giving the others a summary of what they’ve been up to. he’s stupidly glad to be done with this loop now, and the rest all agree when he admits to it out loud.
as much as having a soulmate is exciting, going through endless iterations of the same day is beyond exhausting. he’s done seeing the same thing over and over, he’s done feeling like he has to constantly be on the look-out; he just wants to rest, he just wants saturday to come around.
it’s not even about sleeping in at this point. it’s about feeling like he’s being held hostage, like his free will has been taken away, without a promise of when it’ll be given back to him.
everyone agrees. they’re all tired. they’re all glad for it to be over. jimin doesn’t get the sense that any of them are unhappy with their newly acquired soulmates; they’re all just tired to the bone, and can no longer find it in themselves to pretend otherwise.
even jungkook, who tells them all, blushing heavily and his voice quiet and almost nervous-sounding, that he’s looked forward to meeting his soulmate ever since he was a kid, isn’t in a hurry to get to know them all better right away. even he agrees it’s better for them to go home and get some rest, that they’re better off meeting up when they’re all refreshed.
since the soulmate loop settles the way the very first day had, it makes no sense for them to exchange numbers. instead, they agree to meet up for lunch the day after at a place not far from the office.
they call it a day not long after agreeing on a time, and jimin goes home feeling very strange. he knows he should feel good, and he does. he does. it just… feels strange. he feels like he should be elated, but instead he just feels hollow inside.
he can’t pinpoint the feeling exactly, so he writes it off to exhaustion and tells himself to sleep it off, that he can look at himself critically tomorrow, on saturday, with fresh eyes.
as soon as he’s home, jimin digs his phone out of his pocket. he calls namjoon on a whim and asks if he wants to come over. he doesn’t say why, nor does he explain that he feels like he kind of needs namjoon. he doesn’t say anything other than that, and simply holds his breath until namjoon tells him he’ll be there soon.
they once again end up in bed together, turned onto their sides to look at each other. they barely exchange more than a few words, but they’re okay with that; they just want to lie together and gaze at each other for a bit.
jimin traces namjoon’s face with soft, curious fingers until namjoon dozes off with a small, pleased smile on his face that makes jimin’s heart skip a beat.
when his alarm goes off the next day, on a day it definitely shouldn’t, jimin doesn’t even want to check the date at first. he refuses to. he refuses to see the same date he’s seen for almost two weeks now.
still, he checks. he already knows what he’s going to find, but he still needs to check. just to be sure.
for a split second after confirming his suspicions, all jimin wants to do is burst into tears, but he composes himself and searches for namjoon’s contact details in his phone, instead. before he can call him, however, namjoon beats him to it.
“jimin-ah…” comes namjoon’s tired voice from the other end of the line.
jimin sighs heavily. he drops his head back down onto his pillow and closes his eyes. “i don’t fucking understand. we found taehyung. we found him.”
namjoon sounds as exasperated as jimin feels as he echoes jimin’s sentiment right back at him. “just come to the café. the others will be there. who knows, maybe with six we have enough brain cells to figure out what to do…”
“hyung,” jimin whines.
namjoon hums. “i know. we’ll figure it out. don’t rush to get here; take your time, okay? it’ll be okay.”
as soon as jimin hangs up, exhausted beyond what he’s capable of putting into words, he ends up crying for a bit. it isn’t a full-on sob fest; he’s crying only to let some frustration out, since he has no clue what else to do. there really isn’t anything else to do but let it all happen to him and hope it’ll end soon.
only once he’s managed to compose himself, does he drag himself out of bed with a sigh and begins getting dressed. the only thing keeping him going is the thought that namjoon will be at the café in a bit. knowing he’ll be there is comforting enough for now.
they’re all noticeably tired when they get together at the café. they talk quietly among themselves, taking their time to complain at first, before discussing the absolute helplessness they all feel.
now that they’ve found taehyung and they still haven’t settled the loop, they no longer know what to look for. is it someone the others already know? is it one of the café regulars? or is it some random person they’ve never seen before?
they don’t have a single clue to go off of now, which is kind of terrifying. it means they have no estimate of how long this is going to take. what if they’re forever stuck on this dreadful friday? what if they can never settle the loop?
“i’m going insane,” seokjin mutters. he sounds as miserable as the others feel. “i feel like i’m just a puppet. who is controlling me? i don’t know!”
they talk, and talk, and talk… until jimin tunes out for a moment. he looks around the table, instead, studying their faces and wondering when it’ll hit him that these faces belong to his soulmates. so long as the loop doesn’t settle, he doesn’t think it’ll ever feel real.
when he reaches namjoon eventually, keen to study the features he already knows like the back of his hand, the features he’s starting to realise he may have loved for longer than he’s realised, he notices something he hadn’t until then: namjoon is incredibly distracted. namjoon hasn’t said anything for a while now.
jimin follows namjoon’s gaze, curious to see what he’s been staring at so intently, and finds hoseok standing there, frozen, staring back at namjoon. he’s been stood in the middle of the café for what looks to be a while. has he been looking at them this entire time?
“hyung,” jimin says, trying to catch namjoon’s attention. he gets the others to stop talking and look at him, but namjoon remains unresponsive, unable to take his eyes off of hoseok.
eventually, jimin gets up. he walks up to hoseok slowly. the moment their eyes meet, jimin knows. he’d kind of known the moment he’d caught the two staring at each other, the moment he’d seen hoseok look at namjoon, but perhaps also at the others.
“we’ve been looking all over for you,” jimin murmurs with a soft smile, as soon as he reaches hoseok. he takes his hand and holds it gently. “would you like to come sit with us?”
hoseok is so dazed that all he can do is nod. his feet dutifully follow jimin as he’s pulled along, and he can’t seem to stop staring at him with wide, shiny eyes.
“i’m sorry i’m so late,” he finally says, as he sits at the head of the table, six pairs of eyes on him.
hoseok doesn’t realise he’s in a soulmate loop. it’s not like the others, not like yoongi and seokjin, who only realise after about two hours of being awake, or like jimin, who only finds out when he’s in the metro station, wondering why he’s up so early on a saturday.
no, hoseok doesn’t realise until… well… until twelve days in, he finally thinks to pull his phone out in the café and feels his blood run cold when he sees the date from eleven days ago.
since he’s been put in charge of developing a new choreography for an artist he’s been working with for a while now, he’s decided to lock himself into one of the smaller rooms of his dance studio. he’s found replacements for all the classes he was supposed to teach and makes sure to buy enough food for two weeks, even though he thinks it may be excessive. he’d rather be prepared, if he’s honest.
he’s got a small little employee area he uses, where he’s been eating and sleeping and showering, and even goes outside for small little breaks. sometimes, they’re coffee breaks at yoongi and seokjin’s café, the couple he’s been telling himself not to get interested in. other times, he simply goes for a short walk in the park close to the studio.
he decides to stay at his studio the day before the loop is triggered and resolutely puts his phone away until he finalises the choreography, which is why he doesn’t realise he’s repeating the same day over and over. he’s so busy dancing that he doesn’t pay attention to anything else. when he’s out, all he does is go over the choreography in his head.
it’s only when he goes down for coffee after twelve cycles, finally feeling confident enough with his choreography that he decides to take his phone with him and spend a little longer outside. he figures he’ll celebrate with some coffee, maybe even talk to his favourite couple, or stare at the cute guy with the amazing dimples for some time, or his equally as cute friend.
the café is pretty quiet when he gets there, which suits him just fine. he gets his coffee, stands with it while considering whether he should sit down for a moment to relax. eventually, he decides that he probably should, since he needs some rest.
he pulls out his phone while he walks over to an empty table, only to stop in his tracks when he notices the date.
“it can’t be,” hoseok mutters, although he realises it very well could. he’s been holed up; it’s not like he knows what’s been going on in the world outside of his studio.
he stands staring at his phone for a long while, before finally looking up and sighing heavily. he realises that, not only has he been in a soulmate loop, but he’s wasted an awful amount of time. truthfully, he doesn’t know how many cycles he’s actually missed, or where to even start. it’s not like he’s been anywhere—where could he have even met his soulmate?
it’s while staring up ahead that he notices them all sat around a table. he sees yoongi and seokjin. he sees the dimpled guy and his cute friend. he notices two other cute people, one of whom he vaguely remembers having seen before.
the dimpled guy stares at him as though he’s seen a ghost, and hoseok thinks he knows why, the same way he also thinks he knows why the cute guy’s friend is coming his way.
how long has he kept them all waiting?
it’s quiet for a long while after hoseok’s finished explaining his side of the story. he can’t tell what they’re thinking, unable to read the expressions on their faces, but he can’t help but hang his head and feel at least mildly ashamed.
“i’m sorry, did you just say you weren’t aware you were in a soulmate loop until now?” seokjin asks eventually.
hoseok nods meekly.
seokjin starts laughing uncontrollably. jimin snorts a little, while namjoon just stares wide-eyed, incapable of handling the idea that the person he’s had a crush on for so long has turned out to be his soulmate. in fact, he can’t believe that multiple people he’s had crushes on for so long are now, apparently, his soulmates.
eventually, once everyone’s calmed down again and jungkook and taehyung have stopped staring at hoseok as though he hung the moon, hoseok clears his throat. “so… what’s next?”
“i think we should stick to our original plan. yesterday, we agreed to meet up tomorrow. today. ah. hm…” jimin smiles lightly and shakes his head. “i think you could use some rest. sounds like you’ve been working very hard.”
hoseok laughs sheepishly. he hangs his head. “i’m sorry. if i’d been aware sooner…”
yoongi shakes his head. “don’t be. we only ran into taehyung and jungkook yesterday. we’ve all been struggling.”
taehyung hums. “jungkook and i haven’t… hm…” he starts blushing. “we haven’t been looking too hard, i’ll admit.”
“hyung,” jungkook whispers. he elbows taehyung in the side, cheeks colouring, too. the others all laugh at them.
finally, jimin wakes up on saturday. there’s no alarm to rudely awaken him; he wakes up naturally, blinking up blearily at his ceiling, wondering for a moment if the past eleven days had truly happened to him or whether it’d all just been a fever dream.
he checks his phone just to be sure, wanting to confirm that it’s actually saturday. what if he’s dreaming that it’s saturday, and it’ll be friday again once he opens his eyes? he supposes there’s no true way to check whether he’s in a dream, but it doesn’t feel like one, so he’s pretty confident when his phone tells him it’s saturday. he sighs in relief, drops his phone onto his bed and goes back to staring up at his ceiling. now that he finally doesn’t have a single thing to do, no soulmate hunting to occupy his endless friday, all jimin wants to do is lie down and stare.
once the relief has thoroughly washed over him, the reality of the situation starts to sink in slowly but surely: he has six soulmates. namjoon is one of them. a married couple are two more of them. he has six soulmates… jimin has six fucking soulmates—five of which he sees daily.
he’s about to start freaking out when his phone lights up and he sees namjoon’s name on the caller display. jimin hesitates, but he picks up in the end. whatever he has to say, hearing namjoon’s voice will be worth it. it’ll help him calm down.
“can i come up?” namjoon asks.
jimin just hums. “you’re downstairs?” he asks, despite knowing the answer already. he just wants to say something. he wants to ask a normal question and pretend he’s fine, that they’re both fine, and that nothing is going on.
“yeah.”
“come up,” jimin says. he hangs up and lies on his back some more, staring, before he rolls out of bed and rushes to his bathroom. he should at least brush his teeth and wash his face. even if he can’t hide the fact that he was in bed only moments ago, he should look at least mildly presentable for namjoon. for his soulmate.
one of them, at least.
the more he waits, the more nervous he feels. he paces around, feeling the reality of it all hit him a little more with each small step he takes. namjoon is his soulmate. namjoon is one of his soulmates. jimin has six of them.
even though he’s never truly been nervous around namjoon, he is now. he has no clue what to say to him or how to act. should he acknowledge what namjoon is to him now, or should he ignore it completely? should he tell namjoon how much he’s freaking out, or should he play it cool?
he’s thoroughly freaked out by the time namjoon rings his doorbell, but all of it disappears the moment they lay eyes on each other. it all sort of starts to make sense as namjoon looks at him with his soft gaze, his eyes that are still a little sleepy.
jimin feels a strange calm settle inside of him as he looks at namjoon and knows distinctly that everything will be okay somehow. they’ll figure it out together; he’s sure of that.
he steps back to let namjoon in and doesn’t ask why he’s come, he just walks back to bed, crawls underneath the covers and looks up at namjoon standing awkwardly at the foot of his bed. “could you take off your jeans and your sweatshirt? not… trying to seduce you,” he says lamely. “just don’t want anything from the outside in my bed.”
namjoon just laughs softly. he nods and begins stripping his clothes off, before slipping underneath the covers and scooting closer to jimin. he turns onto his side and regards jimin silently.
they lie like that for a while, gazing at each other and not feeling the need to say anything. it feels surreal to look at namjoon’s face and try to keep in mind that it’s his soulmate’s face he’s staring at. it feels surreal that namjoon’s face, so familiar to him, could hide such important things from him.
namjoon’s face looks the way it always does, soft and pretty and calm, but jimin can’t help but feel as though he’s looking at it for the very first time. it almost feels like a stranger’s face, even though he knows it so well.
eventually, namjoon parts his lips. “hoseok…” he begins. he doesn’t go on, because he doesn’t know what to say.
jimin giggles. “i knew you’d bring him up eventually!”
“i can’t believe this is actually happening,” namjoon admits. “i’ve stared at him from afar for so long… how is this possible?”
jimin smiles lightly. “i don’t know. i’ve been asking myself that question.”
“i’ve been trying to figure out all morning whether i liked him because i knew, deep down, that he was my soulmate, or whether it’s all just a big coincidence.” namjoon shakes his head. “i don’t know.”
“does it matter?” jimin asks. “whether it was a coincidence or not?”
“i guess it doesn’t,” namjoon admits. “i’m just trying to decide which option i like more.”
jimin smiles lightly. he reaches out to stroke the side of namjoon’s face. he’s always felt very fond of namjoon, but now even more so. “what do you think about the rest? you know, the… six soulmates thing?”
namjoon thinks of his answer for some time, before eventually blushing lightly and shaking his head a little. “it’s scary. and overwhelming. and confusing. but… i can’t deny that…” he doesn’t finish his sentence, because he doesn’t need to for jimin to understand.
“yeah. i don’t know how to feel about it exactly, but it does feel right, doesn’t it?”
namjoon nods.
they discuss the others only lightly, unsure as of yet how to feel about any of them. even though they know them all, apart from taehyung, to a certain extent, it feels weird to draw conclusions from those short moments of interaction. that, and it doesn’t feel right to discuss the others like that—it kind of feels like they’re talking about them behind their backs.
they stay in bed together, gazing at each other curiously, until it’s time for them to get ready for their lunch with the others. they get ready together, feeling comfort in the fact that they’ll at least have each other to lean on while trying to figure this all out.
hoseok’s the only one there when namjoon and jimin arrive at the place they’d agreed to meet up at. he’s relaxing back in his chair, idly scrolling on his phone, looking calm and collected and stupidly and effortlessly hot.
namjoon noticeably holds back at first, wanting to study him from afar for a moment, until jimin notices what he’s doing and links his arm through namjoon’s. he pulls him along with a grin, reassuring him he can look all he wants from up close.
hoseok smiles at them as they sit down. he greets them and assures them he’s early when they apologise for arriving late.
they exchange some pleasantries, because that feels like the right thing to do in this situation, and because they don’t really know what else to do. they talk about the weather, and then hoseok asks if they’d slept well and if they were looking forward to this meet-up, as a way to gently steer the conversation into the right direction.
since jimin feels a little awkward trying to explain that he doesn’t know how he feels about the whole soulmate thing, he kind of nods and smiles, while namjoon just blinks dumbly at hoseok.
hoseok leans his elbows on the table, planting his chin in his palm. he cocks his head a little and offers them his most teasing smile. “jimin...” he says, looking him dead in the eye, before studying his face. “namjoon…” the name leaves his mouth as though he’s testing it out. when his eyes bore into namjoon’s, namjoon blushes heavily.
“i’d always meant to talk to you two,” he continues.
the comment makes namjoon even shyer, while jimin only cocks his head in response and smiles lightly. he raises his brows.
hoseok hums easily. without shame, he goes on: “i’ve always had a little crush on you. well, all of you, except taehyung, of course.”
namjoon turns to look at jimin. his eyes are wide and mildly panicked. jimin resists the urge to pat his head. he turns back to hoseok and offers him an amused smile. “you’re very direct.”
“it’s not so scary to admit that, now that we’re literally soulmates,” hoseok says, smiling back. “feels like the universe has my back, i guess.”
namjoon can only blush heavily in response. he squeezes jimin’s fingers tightly when jimin finds them in his lap, wanting to give him a reassuring pat on the thigh. unlike hoseok, he very much doesn’t feel the same way. the fact that they’re soulmates only seems to make him more shy. just because he’s now soulmates with the people he has crushes on, doesn’t mean he isn’t any less terrified of admitting to his feelings.
still, he stutters through an awkward: “i think you’re cool, too.”
jimin snorts loudly. since he’s unable to hide his amusement, he turns to hoseok and bites back a giant grin. “he’s a little nervous, but he means well.”
hoseok laughs at that. it’s a warm and loud laugh, and it lights up his entire face in excruciating detail. even jimin feels his heart skip a beat.
while namjoon blushes even more, unable to keep his eyes on hoseok for more than a few seconds at a time, taehyung and jungkook choose that exact moment to join them and take the attention off of him. he sighs in relief, squeezing jimin’s fingers some more.
taehyung and jungkook sit down opposite jimin, looking pretty and relaxed. they have no problem jumping into the conversation; taehyung especially seems to effortlessly join in, while jungkook hangs back to test the waters a little at first.
while the five talk, jimin studies the newcomers. he studies their faces slowly, since he’s the least familiar with them, and takes in their features one by one. there’s a lot to look at, but jimin ends up mostly focusing on something else entirely: the two can’t stop glancing at each other, blushing each time their eyes meet.
they look at each other the way namjoon looks at hoseok, although they seem to have a lot more confidence about it all.
“you’re roommates, right?” jimin asks with a grin, once he finds an opening in the conversation. when they nod, he continues: “so you must have gotten a head start, then, since you found out during the first cycle.”
he asks with the intention of making them blush some more, since it looks pretty on them. he’s successful in making jungkook blush, but taehyung is tougher to crack. taehyung only stares back with a grin as playful as jimin’s, while he looks between jimin and namjoon and focuses in particular on jimin’s hand so very obviously in namjoon’s lap.
“you say that as if you two didn’t get a head start.” he lifts his brows. once he sees their reaction, his brows lift even higher. “wait, you didn’t?”
even though jimin doesn’t really know taehyung, he can tell from his expression alone that he’s about to start teasing them relentlessly. luckily for jimin, yoongi and seokjin choose that exact moment to join and save him from the embarrassment of his own making.
“i’m sorry,” seokjin says, as he sits down. “we were kind of freaking out, so we needed a moment to calm down before coming here.”
hoseok laughs softly and shakes his head. “it’s okay. i’m sure you weren’t the only one. should we order? i’m getting kind of hungry,” he pouts.
“it’s kind of weird,” yoongi says, when they finally start to talk about it. “not just the amount of people, but… the fact that we’re married is… you know. i mean, we did it ourselves. we knew the risks and decided to ignore them all. it turned out much better than we’d expected, but...”
“we took a gamble,” seokjin goes on, “and we’re only realising that just now. we’ve been so stupidly lucky that i’m kind of terrified of what could have happened. it feels extremely reckless now, looking back on it.”
the others understand. even though, unlike seokjin and yoongi, they’re all single, it isn’t hard to see where they’re coming from. sure, they’ve crushed on others, but no one had such high stakes regarding all of this. the two could have easily ended up in separate soulmate loops.
in truth, everyone is very much on the same page. the fact that they’re seven is confusing to all. it’s not something they’ve ever been prepared for, and it isn’t something they know how to handle.
hoseok seems by far the one who has the easiest time with it all. he listens to them with an understanding smile, one that makes them feel at ease and valid for feeling whatever they feel. he explains that he doesn’t have the easiest time accepting such a sudden change, but that he’s having a surprisingly easy time with this.
"i found myself thinking you’re telling me i just got five extra soulmates for free? normally i’d start freaking out, but i kind of felt like everything would be okay.” hoseok smiles. the rest follow suit and sit in comfortable silence for a while.
gradually, they move onto a lighter topic and talk about themselves, instead. there are plenty of things they know about each other, but they’re all surface level. in a way, most of them are barely more than strangers to each other, despite seeing each other every day.
once they’re no longer on such a heavy topic, they warm up to each other very quickly. perhaps the fact that they vaguely know each other makes it a little easier, but even taehyung has no problem warming up to them and worming his way into their hearts even just a little in such a short amount of time.
there’s a reason they’re soulmates, after all, and they all very much feel it while they’re sat around the table, on the first day after the loop.
after finishing their lunch and talking their throats raw, no one really wants to part yet, so they decide not to. they go to a nearby park, instead, and spend some time walking in relative silence, simply enjoying the company, before finding a low wall to sit on and rest.
they sit and breathe, mostly. they don’t do too much thinking, because then they’ll have to acknowledge the fact that, for all the passersby, only a day will have passed, even though twelve whole days have passed for the seven of them.
“it feels surreal,” jimin finally says. “i went through eleven days that didn’t happen.”
everyone stays silent, knowing there’s more he wants to say, that he’s trying to figure out how to put it all into words.
“i feel so weary. i thought a loop would be something glamorous, the ultimate test of love, or whatever they call it. but instead, i feel like i’ve been put through the wringer. no one said it would be this tiring. they all brought it as though it were some kind of fairy tale, but none of it felt like a fairy tale to me. it was confusing and exhausting and frustrating. i still feel on edge. i’m afraid of looking down at my phone and seeing yesterday’s date again. it feels so weird, because soulmates are supposed to be a good thing, but...”
jimin takes a second to calm down, to steady his breathing again. “not that you aren’t…” he adds, once he realises where he’d left off his rant.
“it’s okay,” taehyung says. “we understand.”
jimin huffs. “it’s supposed to be a good thing, but that loop was hell.”
hoseok, shoulder to shoulder with jimin, hangs his head and sighs softly. “if i hadn’t locked myself in my studio…” he mutters.
jimin takes one of his hands, while jungkook pats his thigh on the other side.
“it wasn’t your fault,” jimin says gently. “it wasn’t anyone’s fault. it’s just that there were so many of us. everyone always has such good advice on what to do during a loop… you can read article after article on it, or even whole instructional pamphlets to prepare yourself. but that’s all targeted toward people with one soulmate, whose soulmate they’ve never met before. how were we supposed to be prepared for this? apart from taehyung, i’ve seen all of your faces before, and yet the first thing they tell you to is to eliminate the faces you know. so what was i supposed to do?”
he sighs. “it feels like a big fuck you from the universe. i feel toyed with. i’m not mad it’s you, or that there’s more than one of you, i really don’t. i feel like the luckiest person in seoul, since i get to sit next to all of you, but at the same time… i feel so empty. or deflated. i don’t know. i just feel hollow, and i feel bad that i feel this way, because settling a soulmate loop is supposed to feel…”
“what’s it supposed to feel like?” seokjin asks softly, when jimin doesn’t finish his sentence.
jimin shakes his head. “i don’t know anymore.”
they all stay quiet for some time, allowing jimin’s words to wash over them. perhaps they can’t fully relate to everything he’s told them, but they can relate to a lot of it. they’ve been through the same loop, even if they experienced it from a different point of view.
eventually, jungkook speaks: “i’ve dreamed of finding my soulmate ever since i was little. i’ll admit that i’ve let it rule my life sometimes and that i’ve passed up on people because of it, but do you know what i like so much about it? it’s the fact that it’s so personal. it’s a one of a kind thing; there’s no other soulmate out there like the one you have, because they’re yours. a soulmate loop is different for everyone, even for the ones within the same loop. so it’s okay for you to feel like that. it’s your soulmate loop. it’s… our loop. it’s ours. no one else’s.”
hearing jungkook say that, especially after having admitted how he feels about soulmates, makes jimin feel a little better. the hollow feeling and the guilt don’t go away completely, but he doesn’t feel as bad anymore. he feels valid.
jimin looks around hoseok to make eye-contact with jungkook. he smiles gratefully and nods slowly. he gets a smile in response.
“i understand how you feel,” yoongi says with a nod. “i do. it’s okay. like jungkook said, it’s our loop. we can do with it whatever we please.”
it’s quiet for some time, before jimin finally admits quietly that he’s glad. he’s so, so glad.
“what are you glad about?” namjoon asks. he takes jimin’s hand.
“that it’s you. all of you.”
namjoon smiles softly.
“but…” jimin goes on. he purses his lips, and hopes they won’t hear how his heart is hammering away in his chest. he feels nervous asking this from them, but he knows it’s for his own good. “but i do need some time. i don’t think i know how to deal with all of this right now. it’s a lot.”
the others all snicker and hum their agreement. jimin’s right. it is a lot.
“that being said,” jimin sighs. “let’s exchange phone numbers now that we finally can. we can make a group chat and keep in touch. we should get to know each other more, right?”
jimin wants to take it easy, but that doesn’t mean he wants to do nothing. he does want to get to know them better, even though it’s hard, but he doesn’t know where to start, so he decides to go easy on himself and stick to namjoon for now.
they meet up a lot. they already did so before, but more so now. it’s not out of a sense of obligation; it’s just that it feels right to be with each other. they know how to do that, they like doing that. it’s comfortable.
each time namjoon comes to him, or jimin comes to namjoon, namjoon has something new to tell him about their other soulmates.
unlike jimin, he’s been getting to know them better and putting in the effort jimin has not. he’s still much too terrified of the idea of having soulmates, any amount of soulmates, and the way their soulmate loop had gone has left him severely questioning why something as good as a soulmate would bring on such a dreadful time.
so he sticks to growing closer to namjoon and asking him as many questions as he’s able to about who namjoon’s been with. he asks after his crush on hoseok and encourages him to go for it. he listens while laughing as namjoon recalls how taehyung and jungkook had held him hostage on their couch to watch a series with them, and has a fond smile on his face when namjoon tells jimin about how the hyungs had gone hiking with him.
jimin likes to listen to him, likes to see the bashful smile on his face and the way his eyes light up. he likes the way it makes him feel warm and kind of nervous, knowing very well that the fluttery feeling in his chest has always been there, that he’s been bottling it up inside of him for longer than he can remember. it’s only now that he’s allowing himself to feel whatever he’s feeling for namjoon that he’s starting to realise the feeling’s always been there.
namjoon stays over a lot at jimin’s place. sometimes they talk, often about their soulmates. jimin’s very honest about what he feels regarding the whole thing, which namjoon seems to appreciate a lot.
other times they only lie in bed together and stare at each other’s faces. they trace each other’s features softly and curiously, as though it were the first time they’re touching each other. in those moments, it easily feels like they’re discovering everything for the very first time and jimin can’t quite get enough of the sense of wonder it sparks in him.
even though his feelings have been amassing inside of his gut, jimin doesn’t do anything with them until namjoon comes to him to talk about hoseok, to tell him just how close they’re getting, because he’s excited and it makes sense for him to tell jimin. while he tells jimin everything, his eyes shine so brightly that jimin can’t help but lurch forward and kiss namjoon.
they’re on the couch while it happens, sat cross-legged and face to face, and jimin has to plant his hands on namjoon’s thighs to stop himself from toppling over. his fingers dig into namjoon’s skin, but namjoon doesn’t seem to mind very much—he’s smiling softly when jimin stops, looking pleased and happy.
“took you long enough,” he murmurs, catching jimin’s lips in another kiss when jimin goes to sit back again.
jimin raises his brows once they make eye-contact. he’d figured namjoon wouldn’t mind very much, but the comment catches him off guard. had namjoon been waiting for him to make a move?
namjoon doesn’t answer at first. he turns to lean back into the couch cushions and uncrosses his legs, only to pat his thighs and raise his brow and gently pull jimin into his lap once he starts moving. “i’ve wanted to kiss you for the longest time,” he admits. “but i didn’t think there was anything there on your end. even after it turned out we were soulmates, i resisted the urge. you were still conflicted about everything and i wanted to give you space. i didn’t want to make it harder for you.”
jimin pouts after hearing namjoon’s confession. “thank you,” he murmurs, only to apologise right after. “i’ve taken a while, haven’t i? i’ve taken a very long time.”
namjoon takes jimin’s face between his hands to make sure jimin’s properly looking at him, before slowly shaking his head. “you don’t have to apologise. your feelings are valid. i understand, and the others do, too. we all understand where you’re coming from, because we all feel it to a certain extent. if anyone understands, it’s us, okay?”
jimin nods slowly. he’s not sure how willing he is to take namjoon’s word for it, but he can’t deny that he feels some relief after hearing that. maybe if he’ll hear it often enough, he’ll actually believe that they understand, that they don’t mind.
it’s quiet for some time. they look at each other, while jimin slowly feels the need to confess bubble up his throat. the urge to speak and let namjoon know is so overwhelming that it almost feels like it’s ripped out of him when he finally opens his mouth: “i’ve been in love with you for a long time. i think.”
he takes a second to breathe after having said that, questioning whether he’d actually said that out loud, for namjoon to hear. “i didn’t really acknowledge it until this all happened.”
a slow and sweet smile creeps onto namjoon’s face. he reaches out to stroke the side of jimin’s face as his smile continues to grow. “i’ve always felt the same way for you. ever since meeting you.”
jimin purses his lips and squints at him. “i thought you were just into hoseok.”
namjoon shakes his head and laughs softly. “i just thought you were as out of my league as him. that’s why i never brought it up. i’m good at pining from a distance. you know that.”
“hyung,” jimin begins, frowning. “stop thinking like that. you’re not out of anyone’s league. anyone would be lucky to have you.” he shakes namjoon’s hands off his face and takes namjoon’s face between his palms instead. he kisses his forehead, the tip of his nose, his cheeks and chin and, finally, his lips. in between each kiss, he gives him another compliment while simultaneously telling him he’s a fool.
“you think so?” namjoon asks shyly, once he’s free from jimin’s loving assault. he blushes lightly and seems unable to look jimin in the eye now.
jimin nods. “i don’t even need to ask the others to know they agree with me.”
at the mention of them, namjoon starts blushing even more, and a shy smile that jimin particularly loves takes over his face. “i really like them all, you know? i’ve been waking up each morning wondering if i’m dreaming. i’m afraid of waking up and realising none of it is real.”
softly, jimin kisses him on the lips. he strokes his hair, the bridge of his nose, the side of his face… “it’s real. trust me, hyung. you have six soulmates and, from the sound of it, each one likes you more than the last.”
“that makes no sense,” namjoon mutters.
“shut up,” jimin giggles, kissing him again. he wraps his arms around namjoon’s neck and leans into him with a sigh.
jimin had kind of figured he’d end up hanging out with yoongi and seokjin first, since they’re the ones he knows best after namjoon, but it ends up being taehyung and jungkook who claim him first.
after kissing namjoon and confessing to him, after having been told that the others understand that he’s working through things and that he still needs his time, jimin tells himself he’ll start making more of an effort to get to know them properly.
the problem that arises following that decision, is that he starts agonising over pulling away from them. he feels guilty that the others are trying to get to know each other and that he’s not playing along. in fact, he feels so guilty that he can’t even bring himself to come to them.
it’s such a stupid feeling, but it makes him feel anxious and bad.
he’s just playing with his phone, staring at their group chat and trying to figure out which person to single out. he knows without a doubt that he’ll end up going with either yoongi or seokjin, since he’s a coward, but still, he wants to pretend to think about it.
while he looks at the different names, reading them over and over, taehyung texts him privately to ask if he and jungkook could come over. before jimin can even think about what to say, he follows up with another text:
it’s okay if you’re not up for it!! don’t feel like you have to say yes ;-;
that second almost apologetic text is what gets jimin to say yes before he can change his mind. he tells them to come over. he’s curious to see what they want, but he feels weird asking, so he doesn’t.
they get to his place so fast that they don’t even need to confirm that they were already in the neighbourhood. he lets them in and tries to shove down his nerves as they move into his living room easily, no awkwardness to be detected anywhere; barging in feels normal to them, because they feel that confident that jimin will be okay with it.
they proudly show him the bag of food they’ve brought with them as they sit down and jimin almost feels relieved to have something to do. when they eat, jimin will have something to focus on, other than the fact that they’re in his living room and that he’s made no effort to get to know them and that they’re his soulmates.
they take his space over so easily, as though the place is theirs, and jimin kind of likes that. it proves to him that they’re probably not very mad at him for not coming to them before. they harbour no bad feelings; perhaps namjoon was right after all.
jimin’s still afraid to ask them why they’re here, so he doesn’t, and instead watches them do whatever. he allows taehyung to snoop in his bedroom and wherever else his curiosity takes him. he allows jungkook to commandeer his laptop and choose whatever they’re going to watch. he watches them feel comfortable enough to do all these things, and feels extremely grateful that they feel so at home.
eventually, when they’re all settled on the couch and taehyung and jungkook haven’t brought anything up, to the point where jimin is starting to relax finally, jungkook speaks.
he sounds like he’s been holding back the entire time, waiting for the right moment to talk, only to realise he can no longer wait around. “namjoon-hyung talked to us. he told us you… kissed. he said you were still struggling with all of this. so… we just… we just wanted to come to you and tell you that it’s okay. we know it’s a lot, and i hope you know that it’s okay to take your time.”
jimin kind of slumps into jungkook after hearing that, not feeling the slightest bit awkward. he sighs in relief, realising he needed to hear that from someone other than namjoon who he knows very well. after dropping his head on jungkook’s shoulder, he quietly asks them how they’re doing, how they’re feeling about all of this.
jungkook is unable to contain his excitement as he starts talking. he seems to try very hard to stay cool for jimin so as not to overwhelm him, but he does a poor job at it. still, jimin is endeared. he nods along as jungkook expresses his contentment, as well as his curiosity at getting to know them all better and how much he likes the fact that he has way more soulmates than the average person.
“i’ve always had feelings for him,” taehyung says with an amused smile, once jungkook’s done and smiling sheepishly. “but he was always such a lovesick puppy for his future soulmate that it was impossible to even hook up with him. even just to have fun! can you believe that? i’d try to make a move, and he’d get this dopey look in his eyes and bring up his stupid future soulmate again and i’d just have to nod along and go yes, jungkook. that’s really cool, jungkook. i love that for you, jungkook while trying to stop myself from grabbing his cheeks and kissing him on the mouth to shut him up.”
jungkook lets out a whine at taehyung’s complaints. he pouts and narrows his eyes at him over jimin’s head. “stop being a meanie, hyung.”
“i’m not being mean,” taehyung answers, childishly sticking out his tongue. “admit it, you ridiculous romantic. you cared more about a stranger than me. that’s terrible.”
“hyung!”
“awful,” taehyung goes on. “you awful, awful, horrible person you.”
out of the corner of his eye, jimin can see taehyung’s grin. when he peers up, he sees jungkook’s pouty yet amused face. they’re just bickering for the sake of bickering. it’s a game they’re playing, and half of it seems for jimin’s benefit, as though they’re putting on a show in an attempt to entertain him.
“be honest,” taehyung says. “if i were in a burning car with this nameless, faceless soulmate, and you could only save one of us, who would you save?”
jungkook remains silent, lips pursed.
taehyung laughs triumphantly. “see! i’m right!”
“it doesn’t matter,” jungkook mutters with a pout. “you are my soulmate.”
“but—”
jimin still feels the same weariness that’s been with him constantly, ever since the loop first started, but it seems to weigh him down less now that they’re sat on either side of him. he suspects it has to do a lot with the fact that they’re distracting him, and that it isn’t due to any kind of soulmate bond.
he knows a lot of people chalk everything up to the magical bond between soulmates, but jimin isn’t willing to accept that as an explanation. it’s too easy. it disregards all the hard work you have to put in to make sure you develop a good relationship with someone.
whatever the case, jimin is glad that they’re distracting him. it’s probably the reason they came over in the first place; to try to help him without expressly letting him know.
eventually, when there’s a lull in their bickering, jimin clears his throat. “how are you getting along with the others? how… do you feel about everyone?”
“i’d always noticed the others,” jungkook says with a light smile. “i was… a little interested, but i never went too far with it, because of my soulmate i hadn’t met yet. i didn’t want to focus on anyone else. but now that it turns out i’m, ah… allowed, i guess, to be interested, i kind of feel like a kid in a candy store. i don’t even know where to start. feels like there’s too little time. i want to be everywhere at once, but i can’t.”
“although…” he continues. “i’m a little intimidated by the hyungs. by their relationship. since they went against the idea of soulmates, only to find out they were soulmates after all. feels like i could never live up to such a strong bond. they love each other so much.”
taehyung smiles. he reaches over jimin to pat jungkook’s head. “i don’t think you have to worry about that. they seem very fond of you.”
jungkook smiles shyly.
“i mostly felt very out of my depth at first,” taehyung shares. “because i was the new guy. it felt like you all had an advantage over me, while i was stumbling in the dark. but… it doesn’t feel like that anymore. it feels really easy to be around you all.”
he snorts. “i was never that big on the idea of having a soulmate, but i think i kind of understand now. i don’t think it magically makes you like your soulmate, but there is a bond. the beginning of one, at least.”
learning that taehyung shares his skepticism makes him feel a bit better about his own feelings, although he does realise it’s not the same thing. taehyung is still trying and actively working on building said bond, while jimin is running away from it.
jungkook nudges jimin gently. “how are you and namjoon-hyung doing? he says you two are hanging out. he talks about you a lot, but he won’t say… you know.”
jimin starts smiling a little. “i think i’ve been in love with him for a while now. no, i know.”
taehyung whistles teasingly, while jungkook makes his own teasing remark about jimin’s red cheeks, and how heavily namjoon had blushed when he’d told them about the kiss.
jimin doesn’t mind. he likes that they’re teasing him the same way they’re teasing each other. it makes him feel a part of them, the way he might have been had he not been running away from everything.
eventually, without much warning, taehyung wraps his arm around jimin’s shoulder and pulls him in for a hug. once he realises what he’s doing, he apologises quickly and goes to let go, only for jimin to shake his head and tell him it’s okay.
jimin burrows into taehyung, relaxing into him with a sigh. blindly, he finds jungkook’s hand and grips onto it, pulling him closer, too, until jungkook gets the hint and hugs him from behind.
he relaxes into them, not feeling the need to talk, and not feeling guilty about it for once. he feels so comfortable that it’s almost overwhelming.
“thank you,” he says quietly. he doesn’t explain what he’s thanking them for, because he doesn’t really know how to put it into words.
“you have nothing to thank us for,” taehyung says.
jungkook hums. he pats jimin’s hip. “you’re doing just fine, hyung.”
“hey,” taehyung says, as he, jungkook and namjoon step into jimin’s place, not even a week later. “we wanted to run something by you.”
jimin feels a little apprehensive, especially when he sees taehyung’s lazy grin and immediately thinks he’s up to no good, but he’s willing to hear them out since namjoon’s there. he trusts namjoon... enough. “okay,” he says, trying not to narrow his eyes at them.
“we wanted to suggest having dinner at yoongi and seokjin’s place. like, tomorrow. or the day after. soon.” jungkook grins. “we wanted to know if you’d be okay with meeting up as a group.”
“it’s not just for you to meet the others,” namjoon adds. “it’s also for yoongi and seokjin. they… seem to be struggling, still. we don’t want to pull whatever they’re dealing with out of them; we just think it’d be good for all of us to get together and hang out. as… a distraction, i guess. and to be around each other.”
jimin nods slowly. he likes the plan, especially because it means he has an excuse to be around everyone. although he feels slightly nervous about the prospect of seeing them all, it already feels less daunting now that he’s been around taehyung and jungkook. together with namjoon, that means he already has half of his soulmates down.
taehyung proposes the plan to yoongi and seokjin then and there, only to quickly get a how does tonight sound back.
“what about hoseok?” jimin asks.
“hm?” jungkook looks up. “oh, he’s in on it already. he’s the one who came up with the idea.”
“but…” jimin cocks his head. “you came here to ask me about it.”
namjoon nods. “he thought it would be better if i asked. these two just tagged along; i didn’t ask them to come.”
“but you should have,” taehyung says. he sounds severe, and he looks the part, too, what with the way he’s dramatically narrowing his eyes.
jungkook nods. he grins widely.
seokjin and yoongi offer to cook. the others begin trickling in while they’re busy in the kitchen, and jimin is content to hang back and watch everyone. he hides in the kitchen for some time, offering help wherever possible, and moves into the living room once everyone’s complete.
they have dinner without talking about much. they don’t discuss jimin’s hesitancy or yoongi and seokjin’s struggles; they talk about their day, instead, or their week. jungkook complains about something that happened to him at work, and seokjin chimes in with complaints of his own about a particularly nasty customer he had to serve.
hoseok talks about a class he taught just this morning to his youngest students, happy to report that they’d all had fun, and that he thinks most will stick around for a bit. jimin likes the way his face gets when he talks about teaching and about dancing. his smile is gentle and almost reserved, like he’s smiling mostly to himself.
nothing that’s shared during dinner is extremely personal, and yet, at the same time, jimin realises it couldn’t get more personal, more intimate, than this. despite not contributing to the conversation as much, he feels an overwhelming sense of belonging that he’s never felt before.
it makes him feel as though this is the exact spot, the exact moment, he’s supposed to be in. it makes him feel as though he’s at home. and maybe he is.
he likes the fact that they’re just hanging out, as though they aren’t all soulmates. it feels distinctly normal, which is nice. it makes him feel at ease.
since he observes more than he talks, he notices how yoongi and seokjin seem to be holding back a little. like jimin, they’re not as talkative, but he can tell they enjoy being surrounded by the others, much like jimin had enjoyed taehyung and jungkook’s company when he’d been too afraid to seek any of them out.
it makes him feel a little closer to the couple, although he doesn’t try to talk to them about it. instead, he just listens to the others talk, the same way the hyungs are mostly just listening, too.
they move over to the couch once they’re done. they don’t all fit there, but there are enough pillows available to throw on the floor, and eventually everyone’s lounging in various states of relaxation.
the conversation naturally peters out after some time, and the quiet that follows is comfortable. jimin takes the time to look around, to study all their faces and take in any new details he may have missed during previous observations.
he catches namjoon’s eyes and smiles at him, followed by a nod when namjoon raises his brows at him to ask him if he’s doing okay.
hoseok gazes at him at the same time that jimin turns to look at him, and jimin finds himself unable to look away. there’s a faint trace of a smile on his face, and his eyes are kind and open, the way they’ve always been. jimin smiles back at him.
taehyung and jungkook are leaning into each other, holding hands, playing with each other’s fingers. jimin studies the pair and thinks it makes sense for them to be soulmates. how could they not be?
he thinks the same thing when he looks at yoongi and seokjin. they’re on the couch, tucked away in a corner. yoongi’s leaning heavily into seokjin, who absentmindedly caresses his arm, his hip, his side… he doesn’t seem very aware of what he’s doing, the same way yoongi doesn’t seem aware of seokjin’s ministrations.
it seems almost like a waste to ruin the perfectly calm moment by opening his mouth and bringing up a subject he doesn’t really want to talk about, but he knows he won’t find better timing than this. they’re all here, they’re all relaxed—including himself.
“i was so freaked out during that first cycle,” he mutters with a sigh. he leans his elbows on the coffee table and rests his chin in his palm. “i threw away my first day because i got so spooked. i actually ran into one of my coworkers, and i must have looked like hell, because she told me to go home early.” he snorts.
“i kind of feel like the whole… soulmate thing… has been tainted for me because of how i felt then. i haven’t been able to shake it, even after we settled the loop and we met outside of it. it makes me feel as though i did something wrong, since you’re not supposed to feel like that.”
jimin feels relieved after having said that, but he also feels anxious, waiting for one of them to express hurt by his admission, or to call him out on it. he’s waiting to be scolded, or to be kicked out, or something of the sort, but he’s surprised to find them all staring at him with soft, understanding eyes.
namjoon, sat next to him, pulls him in and kisses the side of his face. he holds him without saying a word, while hoseok reaches over the table and extends his hand palm up for jimin to take it if he’s comfortable with that.
jimin looks down at it, before slipping his hand in. he looks around again, finding only comfort when he meets their eyes. for once, there’s no anxiety brewing inside of him; all he feels is peace.
his gaze locks on yoongi and seokjin especially, and thinks he sees the same feeling reflected in their eyes, too.
“you did nothing wrong,” jungkook says quietly. he bumps his shoulder into jimin’s and offers him a lopsided smile. “trust me, i’m the soulmate expert.”
taehyung snorts loudly. “will you shut up about soulmates already?” he locks eyes with jimin, mouths not you, and goes back to staring at jungkook with narrowed eyes and a stupid grin. “you only like me because i’m your soulmate, right?”
“i—” jungkook begins, spluttering.
“don’t even try to deny it,” taehyung says.
hoseok smothers a laugh into his free palm. “not this again…”
after that dinner, and feeling so comfortable with them, jimin decides to keep the momentum going by texting hoseok and asking him to meet up.
when hoseok says he’s practicing, jimin immediately begins typing a that’s okay! we can meet up some other time but he gets another text before he can press send:
come to my studio? watch me dance :)
jimin, of course, accepts. he has to. there’s no way he’s about to pass up on such a tantalising offer.
when he arrives, letting himself into the studio hoseok directed him to, hoseok’s still dancing. he doesn’t seem aware of jimin’s arrival at first, so jimin quietly sits down and looks at him in awe until hoseok notices him staring.
hoseok doesn’t even stop; he smiles and slows down, but he never stops moving, as though he’s compelled to keep going. “enjoying the show?” he asks.
jimin just nods, slowly starting to grin. his eyes are trained on hoseok as he’s approached by him, and he follows him with his gaze as he goes to sit down in front of him.
“i heard you like dancing, too,” hoseok says conversationally.
“yeah,” jimin says. “i used to be very serious about dancing.”
“what’s changed?”
jimin shrugs. “lost passion, i guess. it became more about performance and less about my own enjoyment.”
“do you still dance now?”
“sometimes. not as much as i’d like to.” jimin smiles. he can’t remember the last time he properly took the time to dance. it feels as though he hasn’t in years, even though he knows it can’t have been that long.
hoseok nods slowly. he looks jimin up and down very thoroughly, taking his time to appease every part of his body, until he finds jimin’s gaze again. “dance for me. if you’d like.” the grin he offers is just the right amount of teasing for jimin to be thoroughly impressed. normally, he’s the one doing the teasing, but hoseok is proving to be a strong contender.
“i haven’t done any warming up.” jimin quirks a corner of his mouth up into a smile.
“i can help with that.”
jimin can’t help but hide half his face behind his hand and snort. he slides his hand up to cover his eyes and leans over onto his knees to laugh some more.
“i’m sorry,” hoseok laughs. “too direct?”
“a little.” jimin gets up slowly and sticks his hand out to hoseok. “come on, then. you want to help me warm up? let’s dance together.”
jimin doesn’t end up dancing for hoseok. instead, they dance together under the guise of warming up, only to end up having so much fun that they keep going.
their dance styles don’t necessarily overlap, but that hardly stops them; it only pushes them to keep going, laughing at each other when they move almost clumsily at times while they try to get to know each other’s bodies.
once they’ve tired themselves out a little, they end up lying on their backs in the middle of the studio, giggling and sweaty. their shoulders are pressed together, and their elbows knock into each other when jimin moves his hands to rest them on his stomach.
they start out by staring up at the ceiling, but turn their heads to look at each other eventually. they’re both panting, and jimin keeps glancing down at hoseok’s chest, watching it rise and fall, watching his shirt cling to his skin.
hoseok works himself up onto an elbow once they’ve gazed at each other long enough for their breathing to slow down again. he leans over, hovering over jimin for a second and searching his face for any indication that he’s uncomfortable, before pressing a kiss to his lips.
jimin kisses back, cupping hoseok’s cheek to tug him down and to prevent him from pulling back. he starts out by pressing close-mouthed kisses to hoseok’s lips, but it doesn’t take very long for his lips to part, to allow hoseok to lick into his mouth.
his hands wander after making sure hoseok won’t pull back. he slips his fingers into hoseok’s soft hair, trails them down his neck, his shoulders, down his sides. they make out lazily, yet thoroughly, until they’re both severely out of breath again.
jimin likes that he doesn’t have to talk and actively try to work through stuff; he likes that he can just do this. he likes that he can take hoseok’s bottom lip between his teeth and smile teasingly as they both open their eyes to look at each other. it’s intimate, but fun and easy at the same time.
hoseok eventually pulls back with a teasing smirk. he nips at jimin’s lips again, before lifting his head a little, enough that they’re able to look at each other without issue. “i’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he murmurs. he leans down again, moving to kiss jimin once more, only to land a peck on his nose when jimin meets him in the middle.
he laughs when jimin lets out a noise of complaint. “we can talk later, if you want,” he mumbles, letting out another laugh when jimin sighs in relief. he kisses him again, on the lips this time, and caresses the side of his face.
“i’ve been agonising over talking. not having to think or talk is really nice,” jimin says softly. he can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him, feeling so light and airy and comfortable, pinned underneath hoseok’s warm body.
once they’ve wound down a little, hoseok moving to sit back against a mirror and pulling jimin close to him and getting him to rest his head in his lap, jimin glances up at him curiously. “how’re you doing, hyung?”
“hm?” hoseok looks down with a soft smile. he cards his fingers through jimin’s hair and plays with the locks on his forehead. “i’ve just steadily been losing my mind in the best way,” he says with a soft laugh. “i’d always been interested in meeting my soulmate, but i wasn’t in any hurry. i know six is a lot of people, but i can’t get over how much i like it. it’s… embarrassing to admit, maybe, but i’m already so attached that thinking about a time before this is almost impossible. i don’t… i don’t want to go back to before. i like this a lot.”
“even me?” jimin asks with a light smile.
“especially you,” hoseok grins.
“what about yoongi and seokjin? have you been hanging out with them? jungkook said that the dinner was your idea. that you thought it would help them. and me.”
hoseok laughs softly. “they told you about that, huh?”
“yeah.”
“i’m sorry,” hoseok says. he scrunches up his nose. “i didn’t want to butt into anything—just wanted to help where i could.”
“it’s okay… i had a really nice evening. i think the hyungs liked it, too. they seemed very relaxed. thank you for trying to help.”
hoseok smiles. “to answer your question; yeah, i’ve been hanging out with them whenever possible. they’re still trying to wrap their heads around it all, i think, but they’re getting there.”
“i haven’t really talked to them yet. or you. i’m sorry.” jimin pulls a face.
hoseok shakes his head. “it’s okay. i understand.” he strokes jimin’s hair and bends back over to kiss him and stroke his face. he smiles fondly as he bumps his nose into jimin’s cheek and gets a soft laugh in response.
“hyung,” jimin says. he reaches up to awkwardly cup hoseok’s cheek. “do you want to go on a date? right now?”
hoseok blushes lightly, despite the fact that they’ve already made out heavily just now. he nods and kisses jimin again.
after helping jimin sit up, getting to his feet and pulling him up, as well. he takes jimin’s face between his hands and gazes at him softly, studying parts of his face idly. he takes his sweet time looking at him, before he finally speaks again: “you’re doing fine, you know that, right?”
jimin nods slowly. looking into hoseok’s sincere eyes, he finally starts to believe it.
never in a million years jimin would have thought he’d find himself hanging around the office building on his day off. it’s not that he hates the place, but the idea of going there when not absolutely necessary is absolutely dreadful to him.
it’s not so dreadful now, though, as he steps into the café so very close to his office. he’s not here to work; he’s here for yoongi and seokjin. he’s here to see his soulmates, at the place where it all started.
it’s quiet when he arrives, which he’d aimed for. he’d purposefully come at a later hour, not too long before closing time, with the idea of helping them out and asking them to go for drinks after. or dinner—whatever, really. he just wants to hang out with them for a little and actually show interest in them for once.
he goes up to the counter and leans his arms on it as he waits for yoongi to turn around. he slides his hand out when their eyes meet and yoongi takes it with a soft smile.
“where’s hyung?” jimin asks. “you’re all alone today?”
“he went home ahead of me,” yoongi says. he strokes his thumb over the back of jimin’s hand. “hyung was a little tired. i told him i’d lock up.”
“how long until you go home?”
yoongi looks down at the watch fastened around his wrist. “about half an hour.”
jimin nods thoughtfully. he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth while he looks around the mostly empty place. “can i do anything?”
he ends up walking around the counter and helping yoongi clean up wherever possible, although he spends most of the time peering at him and blushing heavily when their eyes meet. he’s not typically a shy person, but he still feels a little out of his depth now, and the only way he seems to be able to cope with it is by blushing heavily every once in a while.
“how’re you doing, hyung?” jimin finally asks, after studying yoongi’s face for the zillionth time and spotting the lightest frown. he steps up to him, but doesn’t reach out to touch, even though he kind of wants to.
“you know…” yoongi snorts. “figuring things out.”
“and how’s that going?”
yoongi finally looks up. he leans back against the counter with a sigh, crossing his arms in front of his chest. he doesn’t look like he has a good answer for jimin, but he still thinks of something to say, other than an i don’t know. “about as well as expected,” he ends up with.
jimin laughs softly. he kind of understands. he kind of understands a lot.
“you?” yoongi asks. he extends his arm toward jimin and curls his fingers around jimin’s hip when he steps forward. gently, he pulls him closer.
“yeah, about the same. although i can imagine you’re dealing with a whole lot more. my struggles seem so easy compared to what you two must be dealing with.”
yoongi dismisses jimin’s words with a shake of his head. he scrunches up his nose in disagreement. “you know that’s not true. we may not be dealing with the same thing, but we’re both trying to work through stuff. this isn’t a struggle olympics.”
“but wouldn’t it be fun, if it was?” jimin grins.
yoongi laughs. he shakes his head, looking as though he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes.
“hyung,” jimin says. he steps closer until they’re pressed up together and places his hands on the counter on either side of yoongi. “can i come home with you? i was going to ask if you wanted to go for drinks, but since hyung isn’t here… don’t want him to feel left out.”
yoongi raises his brows, looking pleasantly surprised that jimin is reaching out to him. a vague smile appears on his face as he nods.
when jimin steps into their living room and finds seokjin sprawled on the couch, he waves and smiles almost awkwardly, wondering for a moment if he should even be here, if he shouldn’t give them their space. he knows firsthand what it’s like to deal with all this soulmate stuff, and he wonders if he isn’t just making it harder for them by showing up here.
seokjin doesn’t seem very put off when he sees jimin standing there, hovering just inside of the room, unsure of whether he should make up an excuse to go home and give them some time to themselves. he lazily lifts his hand to wave jimin over. “you…” he says. “come sit… on the couch. with me. and let me lie in your lap.”
jimin walks over without a second thought. he feels comfortable enough to sit where seokjin directs him to and waits patiently for him to lie down, before resting his arm on seokjin’s chest. he resists the urge to slip his fingers into seokjin’s hair, although he doubts seokjin would mind terribly if he did.
yoongi sits on the other side of the couch, tugging seokjin’s feet into his lap. he squeezes seokjin’s calf and smiles down at him sweetly. jimin almost wants to look away, feeling like he shouldn’t be witnessing such an intimate moment, but yoongi looks back up at him before he can look away and gives him a similar smile.
the three sit in comfortable silence for a while. seokjin doesn’t ask why jimin’s come. yoongi doesn’t explain anything, and neither does jimin. perhaps it doesn’t matter. maybe there doesn’t need to be a reason for jimin to come over; he’d never needed one before to visit someone, so why should he need one now?
“jimin-ah,” seokjin says out of the blue. he looks up. “how are you doing? are you getting used to things?”
jimin lifts one shoulder into a lazy shrug. “a little. when i don’t think too much i find myself relaxing into everything. it’s only when i have too much time to think that i go back to feeling… insecure, i guess. i don’t know.”
“you still feel like you’re doing things wrong,” seokjin guesses.
jimin worries his teeth on his lip. “sometimes. feels like i’m not trying hard enough. i know hiding isn’t the best way to handle this, but it’s… easy.”
yoongi rests his hand in jimin’s neck, stroking his nape and playing with his hair. it seems to be for jimin’s benefit as much as his own. “you’re trying your best.”
“so are you, hyung,” jimin says, looking at yoongi. his gaze drops down into his lap, where seokjin’s soft eyes are staring up at him. “and you. it’s hard, isn’t it? it must be a lot to take in. a lot to adjust.”
seokjin and yoongi look at each other for a moment, before seokjin sighs a little. “yeah. we’re still trying to get used to it. not… to all of you, that was never up for debate, really, because you’re… well, you. it’s just the adjusting of our relationship. it’s… it’s scary. it almost feels like we need to get to know each other all over again, even though we know everything about each other already.”
“what makes you feel that way?” jimin asks.
yoongi slowly shakes his head. “i don’t… know exactly. it’s hard to explain.”
“that’s okay,” jimin says. “it’s not like i can explain my feelings, either. we all feel the way we do. we can’t help that.”
yoongi and seokjin nod slowly in response. they know that, of course, but the hard part is actually internalising it. it’s easy to tell yourself something, but it’s hard to make yourself actually believe it.
“the others have all been saying the same thing, you know,” yoongi shares. he smiles a little, clearly thinking of them while he stares down into his lap. “we know why they stop by a lot. we know they’re trying to take our minds off. namjoon stops by and purposefully doesn’t talk about it, he just comes to hang out. taehyung and jungkook just come and take over the apartment like they own the place. hoseok…”
jimin can’t help but sigh dreamily. “did you make out with him? i made out with him. he’s so easy to be with. he gave me the feeling that i didn’t have to talk about a single thing, and yet i still found myself talking about everything once we went on a date.”
yoongi licks his lips as he nods, like he’s recalling it all. “he has a way like that…” he trails off.
“we’ve, uh…” the tips of seokjin’s ears start turning a deep shade of red. he can barely look up at jimin, although he seems to make a valiant attempt. “we’ve slept with him.”
“i better not try to imagine that,” jimin whispers, mostly to himself, although, judging by their smothered laughs, they’ve heard him just fine.
the conversation comes to a halt after that, just for a little. jimin tries not to think about hoseok naked, or yoongi and seokjin naked, or the three in bed… naked. he’s not entirely successful, but he does manage to shift his focus onto something else after some time. rather than think about them without clothes on, he thinks about his current situation.
he thinks about how comfortable he feels. he thinks about how none of this feels particularly strange to him, how there’s a sense of familiarity that he hasn’t been able to shake. he thinks about how easy it is to be with them.
“it feels weird, still,” jimin says after some time. “but not a bad weird. it’s just strange. i feel like i don’t know you, but at the same time it feels as though we’ve been close for years. i feel that comfortable. you all… make me feel good. i’ve been running away from it, but i’m starting to question why. why would i run away from this?”
“you know,” seokjin begins. he smiles up at jimin and catches his hand, tugs it down until it’s resting on his chest. he holds on tightly. “we’ve felt that way about each other since the very first moment we met. i felt it with the others, too.”
“it’s still scary,” jimin says, “because i can’t explain it. i can’t… rationalise it. but i feel like i’m getting there slowly.”
yoongi and seokjin get that, too, by the looks of it.
after finally talking so openly about the things he’s been trying to keep inside, jimin feels deflated in the best way possible. he relaxes into the couch cushions with a sigh, smiling softly when he sees yoongi do the same in the corner of his eye. they remain silent, because they’ve all done enough talking for a while; just sitting together is enough.
things settle eventually. everyone finds their little spot in the group thrown haphazardly together. it’s not hard to, because everyone has a distinct place, as well as a peculiar sense of belonging that’s hard to put into words.
they get to know each other very easily, and fall in love even easier. it’s not so difficult, once they all open up to it.
“hey, hyung,” jimin says, as he makes it downstairs for his coffee, finding yoongi behind the counter, smiling at him fondly while he busies himself with preparing jimin’s usual order.
“where’s namjoon?” yoongi asks.
“still in a meeting. he said he’d be down soon.”
jimin’s not very surprised to feel a hand pressed to his lower back, nor is he surprised to find hoseok’s pretty face when he looks over his shoulder. when he cranes his neck just slightly, hoseok doesn’t hesitate to plant a soft, discreet kiss that makes jimin giggle.
taehyung, jungkook, namjoon and seokjin show up, too, and the seven of them end up sat around a table to have lunch together. it’s a common occurrence, although taehyung doesn’t always join them.
“i thought you had to work,” jungkook says.
“i wanted to have lunch with my soulmates,” taehyung answers easily. “what’s the big deal?”
the scene looks a lot like that first time they all came together as seven, back when hoseok stumbled into them in the café, but there’s a significant difference that can be easily spotted after some observation: they’re very much in love now. there’s no doubt that they’re soulmates.
jimin looks around the table slowly while the others talk. he smiles to himself, feeling like the luckiest person on the planet being able to sit with them like this, doing something as simple as having lunch together. it’s a small thing, but it means a lot.
he meets namjoon’s eyes. namjoon smiles, and jimin smiles back, as he makes a heart with his thumb and pointer finger and makes an exaggerated kissy face.
namjoon blushes. jimin’s heart skips a beat. it skips several more when he looks around some more and finds the others all smiling at him fondly.