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“can you keep a secret?” dongsung says, voice low and deep in his throat, looking up to catch hun’s eyes.
and around him, amongst all the red lines strung across his vision, sits hun, no strings attached.
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dongsung would like to think of himself as a pro by this point.
all around him, red strings come to life, twisting and tangling until they eventually straighten out, the two ends meeting in something that he can’t actually understand, something that he hasn’t experienced himself, and he knows he won’t ever experience. the lines are all around him, though, so he’s gotten used to this, used to being in the weird space where he watches people fall in love every day, and yet knows that he has no string, nothing to attach himself to someone else.
all of this, however, never prepared himself for cha hun, who the red lines almost seem to push away from, none of them attached to the man himself. it’s confusing in the way that hun looks around, looks like he’s watching invisible threads of his own, and yet he always manages to catch dongsung’s eyes before a glimmer of a smirk stretches across his face.
so, yeah. secrets.
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nothing about cha hun is actually that confusing until he’s put in a room with kim jaehyun.
whereas hun seems almost cat-like in a sense, seems observant in a way that dongsung could never be, jaehyun’s a whole different ballpark. he’s like the human embodiment of chaos if chaos were a small, energetic puppy.
“it’s nice to meet you!” he says, and his face is completely scrunched up in a grin that makes dongsung smile back while also fearing for his life, which is an odd disposition to have and yet seems completely fitting all the same.
next to him, hun’s calmly sipping at his coffee, watching the interaction play out. this is the first time that he’s invited dongsung to meet his roommate, despite all the years that dongsung has known him, and he seems to be enjoying it more than jaehyun is. when he catches dongsung’s eyes he winks, and dongsung blushes in spite of himself.
“you too,” he says to jaehyun, doing his best to ignore hun.
it feels almost weird , to be sitting with hun and jaehyun like this. there’s no string between them, and dongsung can see jaehyun’s red thread being pulled towards elsewhere, but the two of them still seem almost attracted to each other, similar to how the people who’ve found their soulmates are. it kind of feels like he’s intruding on a moment, not quite as a third wheel but similar, and it’s a feeling that he can’t shake off, no matter how hard the two of them try to incorporate him into their conversation.
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dongsung meets hun by accident.
he’s walking down a street, not paying attention to where he’s going, and suddenly he’s almost lost his balance, his body colliding with someone else’s.
“you good?” hun, why at the time was a stranger, asks. it’s a lot nicer than expected from someone that dongsung had run into, but before he can start apologizing hun continues. “i hope i didn’t hurt you by accident.”
“you didn’t,” dongsung says, and it feels almost too quick, almost like it doesn’t belong in the slow moment that the two were caught in, but there’s a gentle smile spreading across hun’s face.
“that’s good to know,” he says and, in a fashion that dongsung would eventually come to be familiar with, he practically disappears, walking away as though nothing had ever happened.
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“do you think that i’m good at keeping secrets?” hun asks back, an eyebrow casually raised. his shoulders are tense, though, and dongsung can see the way his leg subtly shakes under the table.
around him, there are no red threads, no one else close enough for there to be lines across dongsung’s vision.
“okay then,” dongsung says, “maybe asking if you’ll believe me would be a better question.” he bites his lip. “do you believe in soulmates?”
hun gives a jerky shrug. “sure i do,” he says, “why’re you asking?”
dongsung blinks. “you- you do?”
hun slants his eyes. “yeah? why?”
“i can see romantic soulmates.” it comes out in a rushed breath, dongsung already reeling from the fact that he really didn’t think that hun would believe in soulmates.
(it sounds ridiculous, to believe in soulmates. a partner, made just for you? and then what? what happens to people like dongsung, who’s aromantic? what happens if the thread don’t make the perfect match?)
“ah,” hun says.
“yeah.”
“what color is it?” he asks it so naturally, some of the tension bleeding out of his shoulders.
“what color is what?” dongsung asks back.
hun shrugs again, cupping his chin into his palm. “the thread color,” his nose scrunches up for a split second, and dongsung can see the smile threatening to break out on hun’s face.
dongsung, as any normal person would, groans and falls into the closest seat. “red,” he says, muffled by the couch cushions that he fell in. “you?”
hun hums. “they’re blue,” he says, and dongsung looks up just in time to see him flick some hair out of his eyes. “platonic soulmates, except there’s the added bonus of people having multiple platonic soulmates so it uh,” he laughs, “it becomes a lot, but i make do.”
“do you have a platonic soulmate?” dongsung ends up asking without thinking, and his eyes widen when he realizes, pulling a pillow off of the edge of his couch to hide his face behind.
“yeah?” he sounds confused, and dongsung squeezes his eyes tight. “why wouldn’t i?”
taking a deep breath, dongsung takes away the pillow and sits up to face hun. “you don’t have a romantic one,” he rushes out, “which like, is why i wanted to tell you because like, not gonna lie dude, the threads don’t like you. like, not at all, and i don’t know why.”
“oh, probably because i can also see threads,” hun says. “my threads don’t really like you, either, but you’re still connected so they can’t stray that far.”
“i have a blue thread?”
hun nods. “yeah. that’s actually why i ran into you that day. we’re connected, you and i, and me and jaehyun.”
it all makes sense now, how hun had suddenly popped into his life and kept crossing paths with him.
“you don’t have a red one,” dongsung looks down.
he hears hun laugh. “good,” he says, and when dingsung looks at him he’s smiling, his eyes twinkling, “i think it’d be more of a problem for me if i did have one.”
dongsung doesn’t know what he means by that, not really, but he thinks he gets it, thinks that the pieces of the puzzle he’s been trying to put together have all fallen into place.
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“oh no,” jaehyun says when he finds out, dramatically rolling his eyes, “don’t tell me there’s two of you now.”
dongsung and hun both laugh, but for once he feels in place in the little group they’ve made.