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Josh knew the moment he laid eyes on the lanky and tall bunso of their debut group, yeah, he’s fucked .
It was a quick burn across his chest, something snapping into place, so small he almost didn’t notice.
Justin was young during their predebut era. And Josh, before Paulo had stepped up to the leader roll, was immensely protective of Justin, as the oldest.
Justin’s limbs were long and lanky, his movements were jerked and awkward, often clumsy. He wore a wide eyed look and eyes that sparkled with undiscovered galaxies.
He was just so cute . Josh wasn’t one to assume one’s soulmate status upon first meeting, but he was sure they were soulmates in one way or another.
Even as he gazed at Stell, throwing wads of crumbled tissues at Ken’s face from across the room, or Paulo quietly fussing over Justin because the boy has stumbled into something sharp and scratched his arm. He swears on his life he did feel something faintly snap into place.
He wasn’t one to assume, but he was one to believe.
°
His love for Justin was placed on the back burner for most of their early careers as idols.
But he watched from afar, the way Justin’s now maturer eyes affectionately gazed over his older members, his brothers. His eyes held so much love as his eyes scanned across their chests.
After a particularly strange string of schedules, one that left Ken with a nearly empty schedule, and Justin just completely not having one, he finds Justin’s face buried on a bent arm. His arm was atop his textbook, flipped open and bursting with colorful sticky notes, messily scribbled english jotted on the papers.
Justin was often called the group’s English speaker, even since debut, so he had ended up forming a habit of using as much English as possible in his life; so he could get better and more confident.
It was an endearing habit of Justin’s, and it even proved to be effective, as his english had quickly improved, and he really was fluent.
Not to say the other members weren’t fluent, but they definitely weren’t to the level they could call themselves natively fluent. They stumbled on words and their foreign pronunciation caught on their letters.
And Justin occasionally did talk to them in English, he held the best conversations with Ken and Stell, the two more eloquently spoken and with faster comprehension than himself or Paulo.
But where they had to talk a bit slower and with a bit of a stutter as they translated in their head, Justin was quick and confident in his words, the gentle American accent filtering through his words, calmly and familiarly. The only stutter he held was his natural stutter as his mouth trailed off words faster than his brain could string them together (cute..).
Josh admired his dedication to perfecting the language, on top of all his studies as well.
His heart swelled with pride as he carefully brushed Justin’s bangs out of his face, the youngest’s nose scrunching a bit, but ultimately undisturbed in his sleep.
Josh carefully shifted the boy into his arms, placing him on a nearby couch before he made his way back to the table with Justin’s school stuff.
He closed the textbook, and found the bold letters of the cover reading, “Soul Strings; A Comprehensive History”.
Huh. He brushed a finger across the glossy cover.
He didn’t know that was what Justin was studying. Josh mostly stayed out of Justin’s academic bubble, giving him his space and supporting him from the side. All the members did.
Josh wonders why he didn’t know his study. Perhaps it just never came up. He doesn’t think he ever asked about it.
But he slides the book and various notebooks strung open into Justin’s school bag. He then slings the bag over his shoulder, and hauls Justin into his arms again.
He quietly makes his way back to his own car, settling Justin in the passenger seat and buckling his seatbelt. He once again brushed the boy’s bangs out of his face, his hand resting against the boy’s warm cheek as he just took a moment to admire the sleeping boy (weird..? give josh a break, the boy was pretty..!)
He sends occasional glances to Justin as he drove, the passing streetlights occasionally casting a gentle yellow light across his face before disappearing.
Justin was very pretty. It was never a secret. His members were constantly praising him for his handsome visuals both on and off camera. But if anyone knew how pretty Justin had become, it was Josh.
He was far from the innocent, starry eyed kid he met predebut. He had grown wonderfully into his features, and he grew beautifully into the young man he now was.
But even as he’s grown, Josh still feels compelled to hold him protectively. The innate need to hold and protect. Call it the Kuya instinct™, but he couldn’t shake the feeling off, even years later.
He just couldn’t explain it, but perhaps he could just ask Justin about it, after all the boy was studying soulmates.
He wonders how Justin does it sometimes. His fingers drum against the steering wheel. Justin did so much, how does he handle it?
He’s an idol, he’s a singer. It’s his job, of course he spends so much time on it. But he was also still a student, only halfway through college, where did he find the time to do his homework, or study?
But he still had so many hobbies. He loved art, Josh sees new paintings appear hanging in the company building, or in another member’s apartment all the time. When did he find the time to paint?
Did the boy even sleep properly?
Josh’s heart clenched at the thought, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
Why did he care so much?
Josh was unsure if he meant the question for himself or Justin.
°
Justin bumps shoulders against Josh as he passed him in the practice room. He mutters a quick apology before beelining to his water bottle.
Josh stares at him quietly as the boy gulped down his water. Stell was rather brutal with their newest title track’s choreo, even he found he himself was panting desperately by the end of a run through.
Justin’s back muscles tighten as he feels eyes on him, and twirls on his heel to see who was looking. Josh feels his entire neck blow up red (or redder..? he was already rather red just from the overexertion of such a challenging choreo, damn you Vester..!) when Justin’s eyes lock into his own.
Justin immediately tossed his water bottle to Josh, assuming that’s what he had wanted. Josh catches it easily, but allows his eyes to linger a bit, watching as Justin gave him an easy smile, even through the heavy panting, and sweat rolling down his face.
Josh averts his eyes, and tries to drink the water without the thoughts of Justin plaguing his mind.
He tosses the now empty bottle across the floor, ignoring the pointed click of the tongue from Paulo as he littered. He leaned his head against the wall, and closed his eyes. He focused his hearing and tried to identify the sound and matched it to the respective member.
He heard the soft squeaking and stomps of feet against the practice room floor. Stell, his mind supplied.
He heard close by, the echoing of Stell’s exact movement, followed by distant chatter. Ken, it must be then, going over choreo changes.
He tried to listen for Paulo, but he was harder to pinpoint. But then he heard the faint tapping of his fingers against the back of his phone, and the steady way he was focusing his breathing, trying to steady it as he regained his energy.
The cool wood of the wall helped his red face return back to its rich color, and he tuned his ears to listen for Justin. He jolts up when he instead hears Stell’s sharp intake of breath.
Snapping open his eyes, just in time, he sees Stell pouncing for Justin as the boy swayed to the floor.
Even as Stell slides across the floor, Justin is safely in the dancer’s arms.
Paulo is immediately at their side, face flaring up protectively as he swiped his thumb below Justin’s nose, the blood smearing across his lip.
Josh almost thought he looked hot like that, but the protective kuya override™ hit and he shoved that thought to the farthest corner of his mind, never to see the light of day.
From where he was kneeling next to Stell, he sees the dancer and the leader share a strained look over Justin, holding each other’s gaze for a prolonged moment before quickly working in tandem to get him up and laying down comfortably under some bags.
Ken had slipped out of the room apparently in the chaos, because he had soon after come back with an ice pack and a pinched look between his eyebrows.
Josh isn’t sure what had happened when he wasn’t looking.
But he made sure he never did that again, from that moment on, he had closely kept his eyes on Justin.
Whether that was the protective kuya instinct™ or not, he wasn’t sure anymore.
°
Josh never did get around to asking Justin about soulmates, and he really, really fucking wish he had now.
Because the moment he woke up, he looked down and saw a bright red string from out his chest, and pulling through his house’s walls to someone he couldn’t see.
The color had drained from his face, and he rushed to get the hell out of his house and get to the Company.
(Yknow, after a solid hour or so of panicking and trying to figure out how this string was defying all the laws of physics, the usual.)
He bursts into the practice room, the door basically flying off the hinges from how hard Josh had slammed into the door. Stell and Paulo flinch so hard they both stumble and fall to the floor with a shout. Ken flinches slightly, but the biggest reaction is basically his head turning to see what the commotion was.
Josh opens his mouth to explain himself (or ask where Justin was, because the boy wasn’t in the room, y’know, whichever tumbled out of his mouth first) but it quickly goes dry as the words die on his tongue when he sees a red string connecting Stell and Paulo.
There’s a quiet moment of just complete, confused silence as the four boys just stare at one another.
Stell grows increasingly uncomfortable with the silence and shifts his weight from one foot to the other (Josh isn’t sure when Stell had gotten up from the floor since Paulo was still settled in a heap on the floor). He opens his mouth to break the silence only for Josh to beat him to it with a loud,
“What the fuck!”
And before Paulo can reprimand him for the foul language, Josh is already out of the room again, nearly slamming his face on the floor from how fast he was moving and tripping over his feet.
Josh asks (takes) a staff’s keys with a quick “I need to use this, sorry bye!” and soon enough he’s headed to the De Dios household because that’s clearly where the youngest was (if he had spent like five seconds not panicking over the sudden string and just checking their groupchat or their posted schedules he would’ve known already).
After so much as slamming against their front door, Yani let him in without much of a greeting, just wordlessly gesturing with his head to Justin’s room. His eyes flickered down to Josh’s chest for a second, his eyes flashing knowingly.
Josh didn’t have time to read into the strange look, instead knocking on the door.
(yeah? he was in a hurry in all, but he still respected the dude’s privacy!)
When Justin’s voice filters through the door with a ‘come in!’ that’s all Josh needs as he swings the door open. He has so many questions, like why are only some members connected to one another? Why is Ken by his lonesome??
(Josh had not spotted any strings trailing from his chest no matter how long he spent searching)
He spends a moment frozen in place, with his hand still on the doorknob. And all of what he wanted to say immediately dies on his tongue.
He’s not exactly sure what he was expecting, but to see the red string trailing quietly from his chest only to connect to Justin’s was certainly not it.
He hadn’t even realized the string was pulling in Justin’s direction in the first place. (How he managed to miss that, he’s actually not sure, since he spent essentially the entire time traveling here obsessively staring at the string as if it held all the answers).
He knew vaguely of the soul strings and what they meant, yknow, everyone had a lesson in soulmates and strings in like middle school, literally like a week after sex ed (so obviously Josh wasn’t gonna pay attention, but he really wishes he did now). So he was sure being connected to Justin wasn’t.. a bad thing..?
Sure, it made quite a few feelings he had a bit more complicated, but.. maybe it also justified them?
Josh’s eyes catch into the painted glowing strings coming from Ken’s chest on the easel sitting across from Justin.
Okay, so that only gave him even more questions, first of all.
He distinctly remembers Ken having a grand total of zero (0) strings. But here Justin, depicting Ken with four?
And a quick glance down at his chest would show the glowing red, a stark contrast to the glowing cyan he had painted.
Was he.. perhaps mistaken..?
Justin doesn’t look compelled to even so much as acknowledge Josh, so he finally reaches in the deepest caverns of his mind to form the words.
“Jah.” He starts, watching Justin’s gentle singing along trail off as his round eyes lock onto his in acknowledgement. “I have something important I want to ask you.”
Justin immediately gestures to come inside, lowering the volume on the music blaring from his phone.
Josh settles on the floor near the easel, watching as Justin follows him to the floor shortly, settling across from him.
Justin asks him something had happened, and his memory immediately flashes to not even a few hours ago in the practice room. He winced a bit to himself, reminding himself to apologize to them later.
But he stares pointedly at the loose string hanging between them. “Yeah. You could.. say that.” His eyes shift to a point on Justin’s floor, stained with blue paint.
Justin is patient as he waits for Josh to continue, and Josh can feel Justin’s eyes on him, heavy against his skin. They soon travel off of him, right as Josh’s shift to try to meet them.
“You’re in Soul Studies, right?” He finally asks, once he’s tired of the quiet music tightening the tension.
Justin nods shallowly, finally meeting his eyes. “Soul string studies, yeah.” He clarifies, but he still looks a bit confused.
Josh bites his lip, fingers tapping against his thigh as he tried to force the bomb down.
“Has there ever been a case where.. someone who couldn’t see strings suddenly… could..?” Josh almost doesn’t want to see the reaction when he does. The way Justin’s face twists and contorts in unreadable ways. It’s a bit jarring, to not even be able to get a slight read on the youngest’s face.
But then the word stumbles out of Justin’s mouth clumsily, his cheeks gently dusted pink, ‘Kuya..?’. The word does something to Josh’s chest, perhaps because he doesn’t call him that often, perhaps because it’s always so endearing when he does.
“Because there’s a really glaringly obvious red string hanging between us, and I really don’t know what that means.”
Justin’s face freezes, features releasing in surprise, maybe at a revelation. He’s quiet, so Josh reached his hand to place on top of his thigh, only for the winding feeling in his chest finally tightens unbearably, and the bond snaps firmly into place, burning everything around it.
Josh’s face falls open in his own shock, knowing damn well Justin felt it too when he releases his own sharp gasp.
Josh pulls his hand back when Justin’s eyes flicker from his own chest to Josh’s, then to his eyes.
“Is that.. why you came to me?” He asks, stumbling on his words a bit, and Josh finds himself smiling fondly at him.
“What? Because we’re connected? No.” He admits. Honestly, being connected to Justin did make a couple of things a lot easier for him, though. “I know you study these in school, and wanted to know if I actually was going insane.”
Josh glances up at the Ken painting. “I didn’t even know i connected to you until like five minutes ago.”
Justin takes a few quiet moments just thinking, and Josh takes the time to just take in Justin’s face. He had forced the feelings he had for the youngest down for so long now. He always placed the best interests of the band over his own, even if it meant forcing his love down.
But now, seeing the string snapped into place, pulsing with energy as it sat between them, it really only just forced those feelings back to the surface.
But Justin really is pretty. And he can’t help but think that nothing had really changed.
Justin finally settled on asking about addition strings he could see.
Josh hadn’t really thought much about it after seeing the one hanging from his own chest, but he had seen strings trailing off into the distance from people around him, people he didn’t even know. His mind flickers to the staff who he took the keys from (yikes. Another owed apology), even in his hurry, he had caught the glowing of their string.
But one occurrence springs to mind, so he blurts it. Paulo and Stell.
And at the admission, he watched as Justin’s face finally settles firmly, pieces apparently falling into place.
When Justin softly exclaims his thoughts finally making sense, of Paulo and Stell not being connected, Josh’s brain flatlines again.
“What do you mean they aren’t connected?” He exclaims incredulously. “You can see them, too?” His eyes flicker to the painting.
So that answered that question.
Justin just laughs a bit at his reaction, Josh not bothering to hold back the pout at him.
“Cyan strings.” Justin clarifies, and a distant memory is pulled into place, of Ken and Justin talking of different colored soul strings.
Right. He glances up at the cyan strings glowing on the canvas.
And that answers that question, okay, cool.
Justin mumbles under his breath again, staring up at his painting, the brush strokes of brilliant color as the formed the second youngest’s face. It is a rather pretty painting.
Josh’s eyes are pulled to the boy’s pouted lips, and he feels his body moving, but it’s as if he’s watching from a third person view, not in control, as his hands move to cup Justin’s face, forcing him to look at him.
Josh revels in the aggressive blush painting across Justin’s face as he gazed at him.
The string burns across his chest again when he feels the bond snap into place. Josh managed to fight back the flinch at the sudden scorching heat singeing his chest. Wow, that’s a feeling he’s suddenly going to have to get used to.
Josh just takes a moment to admire Justin, and Justin isn’t sure what to do under such an intimate gaze. Justin’s eyes follow the curve of Josh’s cheeks, the sparkle in his eyes. The dip of his mouth, and the furrow of his eyebrow.
Then Josh is pulling Justin’s face into his own, eyes fluttering shut when he feels Justin’s gentle exhales of breath through his nose against his cheek. The swell of music seems fitting, Josh can’t help but think, albeit a bit corny.
Josh liked how correct it felt to have Justin wrapped up in his arms. Soulmates. He think he liked the way that sounded.
And when Justin melted against Josh, he can’t help when his love buries even deeper than before, bursting at the seams, and through their pulsing soul bond.
He smiles into the kiss when Justin sends a burst of love right back.
°
Ken nearly cries when Justin presented the finished portrait to him, and Josh thinks he catches a glimpse of the cyan snapping into place when Ken tackles both of them in a hug. A quick crackle in his vision, before popping away.