Chapter Text
There are rules to this thing, his mother informs him at the age of eight, when a bout of loneliness from having moved to a new country pushes him to scrawl his phone number in felt marker on his thigh. You can’t reveal that kind of information about yourself.
“What about how tall I am? Or my hair colour?”
“Oh, those things are fine, sweetie.”
Luhan’s confused. “But you just said—”
His mother hums, patting his head. “Why don’t you treat this like a game, hm? It wouldn’t be a very fun game if you gave all the clues away.”
It’s a stupid game, Luhan concludes, even as he writes, in shaky hangul because his mother says practice is important, Hello. Are you there?
The ink fades away this time, unlike the phone number, still bold and black against his skin. He receives his response just minutes later, and it makes his heart hammer excitedly in his chest.
Hello. Yes.
--
Inspiration usually hits at the most inconvenient of times. More often than not, Yixing forgets to carry manuscript paper around with him, so he has to make do with his arms. Five black lines for a stave, then a treble clef.
Ti doh ti soh mi fa
And then they disappear. Yixing drops his pen in surprise. It rolls under the bus seat in front of him, and Yixing cranes forward to snatch it back.
The Universe has just assigned him a soulmate.
He waits, his pulse in his ears, his fingers twitching.
Go on, is the reply. What’s next?
Yixing grins, so hugely his cheeks hurt, uncaring of how he might look to the other commuters. Judging from his soulmate’s response, the person’s able to read the notes. Already, Yixing feels a connection stringing them together, tenuous but hopeful.
Fa soh la ti soh
He runs out of space on one arm, so he hurriedly scrawls wobbly lines on the other and continues, even though writing with his left hand turns his notes into misshapen tadpoles.
Doh mi fa doh doh, Ti lah ti soh soh… That’s all I got so far.
It sounds good.
Really! Did you play it out?
I can sing it, and there’s a tinge of pride to his words Yixing can detect. Keep em’ coming, partner.
--
Make more punch, drunk Chanyeol decides, even as the last rational bits of his conscience plead with him to stop. The kitchen would be a good place to escape to anyway from the noise anyway.
Your fault, sings his headache in the morning, when the sun peeking through the curtains feels like… thousands of stabbing needles in his eyes. It’s too early for similes, but his aching head provides him with one anyway. Now if only his aching head could regain command of his non-responsive body.
“Hi,” Baekhyun chimes, chipper and suspiciously hangover free.
“I hate you. And your parties.”
“Aw,” Baekhyun returns, completely unaffected. “I made coffee.”
That gets his attention, and Chanyeol summons enough strength to roll off the couch. He frowns when Baekhyun’s mouth drops open in shock. “What?”
“When did you erase all that?”
“Erase what?”
“The stuff on you!” Baekhyun gestures animatedly at Chanyeol, his hand motions making Chanyeol go a little cross-eyed.
Baekhyun’s not making sense. Chanyeol tells him as much.
“We went to town with a Sharpie last night, after you passed out,” Baekhyun tells him matter-of-factly, as if desecrating his body were a completely normal thing to do. It is, Chanyeol admits with a long-suffering sigh, considering it’s Baekhyun. “When did you have time to get rid of them?”
Chanyeol stares at his unblemished arms and legs. “I… didn’t?” There’s nothing on him, as if whatever artistic licence his friends took just disappeared—oh.
Oh.
Chanyeol reaches out, with far more clarity than he had a moment ago, grabs Baekhyun by the shoulders, and starts shaking him with enough force to make his neck creak dangerously. “What did you draw on me, you life-ruiner, you—oh my god. Byun Baekhyun, tell me the first message I sent to my soulmate wasn’t a dick pic.”
“Oops,” Baekhyun squeaks.
It’s only hours later that Chanyeol dares to try a second message, because god, his soulmate already thinks he’s an idiot and an embarrassment, what if the person was out in public when all that appeared? In the middle of a job interview? With a family member? His soulmate probably hates him and never wants to meet him and Chanyeol doesn’t know how to rectify it.
So he writes, small and sheepish, Hi, on the back of his hand. Sorry about that. I’m your actual soulmate, I guess? That wasn’t me previously, I swear.
God, that sounds lame, even to him.
I see.
Chanyeol blinks in surprise. Hope buds in his chest, along with a flicker of elation. His soulmate is still willing to talk to him; he’d expected radio silence after all that transpired. Nice to meet you, he ventures bravely.
Pleasure’s mine, comes the bone-dry response. It isn’t every day that I encounter dudes with thirteen inch long dicks.
--
“I don’t understand!” Zitao wails to Sehun, thrusting his arms in his face. “Look, my soulmate’s practically writing an essay, but it’s in Korean!”
Sehun raises an unsympathetic eyebrow. “Thought you were learning?”
“Help me,” Zitao whines, waving his arms about. “It could be important!” He is learning, but it’s going to take him far too long to read. What if his soulmate is trying to tell him something urgent?
Sehun huffs, reaching out for Zitao’s flailing limbs and holding them still. “Important, right,” he says. “Your soulmate thinks your body’s a diary.”
“What?”
“Hi soulmate! How are you? I’m fine today. It’s sunny here! I went out to get some new shoes, they’re so nice! Then I—oh my god, I can’t do this anymore.” Sehun drops his peppy tone and rolls his eyes. “It’s basically nonsensical drivel about what he did in the day.”
“What did he say about the shoes?” Zitao wants to know.
“Amazing,” Sehun says, with all the enthusiasm of a wet paper bag, “you guys were made for each other.”
--
One in five people never find their soulmate. It’s an alarmingly high percentage, but inevitable; the Universe designed this soulmate business in a fashion that practically prevents people from meeting.
Sehun thinks that the Universe can go suck it. Which is why he refuses to writes on himself.
“You have no faith,” Zitao tells him sadly, to which Sehun retorts that having faith in such a broken system is nothing less than stupidity.
The first time words appear on his wrist, Sehun quashes the sudden, unexpected flare of hope (stupidity), and covers them with a bracelet. He ignores them until they fade, a rebellion, a protest. I’m not part of your silly game.
(A small part of him feels guilt, thick and viscous, weighing him down. Guilt for the person waiting on the other side of the pen.)
Hello, Sehun reads once, because curiosity wins out. How are you? I hope you’re doing well.
I’m not, Sehun wants to reply, because the messages leave him confused and aching and unbalanced, craving something uncertain and fragile. So he tries dismissing them with even greater fervour, wrenching his eyes away from the words whenever they materialize.
But for all his grievances against the Universe, they must have known to assign him someone persistent.
--
With work taking up a hefty portion of his time, Junmyeon forgets to write. It’s not as if he doesn’t care for his soulmate, but dedicating so much of his energy to other things diminishes the need for him to connect with yet another person—especially a faceless, unknown one. It helps that his soulmate responds just as infrequently as well.
Junmyeon doesn’t mind, really. They’re both busy people. Frankly, it’s a lot more convenient.
“You look awful,” Junmyeon says without preamble to the man striding into his office.
“Tired,” Yifan rasps, and he looks it. He’s dressed sharply, as he always is, but there are unmistakable bags around his eyes, and a slump in his shoulders. Junmyeon feels a sharp pang of sympathy.
“I can postpone the photoshoot, if you need more rest.”
“It’s fine,” Yifan shakes his head. “Thanks, Junmyeon.”
Perhaps the proper reason he doesn’t reach out to his soulmate has much to do with the man standing before him. Rebelling against the Universe probably isn’t the wisest thing to do, but Junmyeon already knows what it means to love. It’s unfortunate that the person’s not the one assigned to him, but Yifan isn’t aware, and Junmyeon intends to keep it that way. He isn’t about to rob someone else of the joy of knowing their soulmate.
“Have you eaten?”
Yifan smiles at him, fond and familiar. “No, mum.”
Junmyeon clucks his tongue, under the pretence of hiding his clogged throat, and grabs his coat from the chair. “Let’s go. Fried chicken?”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Sushi it is then.”
“This is why you’re the best manager I’ve ever had.”
“Suck up,” Junmyeon throws back, ignoring the way the earnest compliment renders his heart. This is what it feels like to love, he understands. “I’m the only manager you’ve ever had.”