Chapter Text
Legend holds that soulmates were of one body in the early days before the gods ripped them apart in a fit of wrathful punishment, leaving humanity to spend their days trying to find their way back together. Back into a single whole. That’s the explanation given for the pinch—the physical pain felt when apart from your soulmate for too long. Manifesting sometime during the mid-teenage years, the pinch helps soulmates find each other.
Changmin first feels his pinch when he’s sixteen, almost half a year after becoming a trainee at Cre.ker. It hits him so suddenly and strongly, bending him over like he’s been punched in the gut and leaving him gasping for breath on the hard wood floor of the company’s practice room.
It’s an open secret that entertainment companies try to keep soulmates together—can’t have idols keeling over on stage after all!—either by debuting them together or else by hiring their idols’ soulmates to work jobs that will keep them nearby, and one of Cre.ker’s staff members assures Changmin that they adhere to those practices. They won’t separate soulmates.
Changmin’s glad to hear it. The pinch is painful, hard to deal with, and made all the worse by having to watch two of his fellow trainees find their soulmates in short order. It’s convenient that Haknyeon’s soulmate is already in training as makeup artist, a job that will allow her to work alongside him, and Sangyeon’s soulmate is older, a sound design engineer that Crek.er is quick to hire.
At least Changmin has Hyunjae to commiserate with.
Two months later, he doesn’t even have that. Juyeon is Crek.er’s newest trainee, and Hyunjae’s soulmate.
Changmin grits his teeth and tries to let his pinch guide him towards his soulmate—whoever they are, wherever they are. Jealously, he wishes Juyeon were his soulmate and not Hyunjae’s, because how easy would that be? They’re together every day. Changmin loves how it feels to dance with Juyeon, but it doesn’t soothe the pain of his pinch.
In September, almost a full year after Changmin began training, one of Cre.ker’s scouters comes back gushing about the good-looking boy she found and “he’s agreed to come in for a tryout. I think he’s very promising.”
It’s nothing Changmin hasn’t heard before. It’s how they talked about Hyunjae and Juyeon too—pretty faces first and potential talents second. But no one can deny their skill. If he were less confident in his own dance abilities, Changmin might be worried. As it were, he doesn’t stress about it. He was never going to be competing for a spot in the vocal line, and his dancing is still untouchable—at least when he isn’t fighting the uphill battle against his pinch.
The five trainees cluster together in the hallway the day of the scouted boy’s tryout, clambering over each other to find the perfect vantage point of the front door while trying to appear like they’re not spying. Technically, they should all be practicing after their group voice lesson, but everyone wants to be the first to catch a glimpse of their potential next member.
“I have a reason to be out here,” insists Haknyeon. He does his best to elbow Juyeon out of his way. “Sunjung is visiting me after she gets out of class today.”
“Yeah? And what time does she get out of class?” Sangyeon shoots back.
Changmin is about to chime in when the pinch hits him. Knees buckling, he sags against Hyunjae with a soft groan, but it feels different somehow. A little warmer, tugging on something inside his ribcage, turning him helplessly towards the door just in time to see it open.
The boy that walks in is handsome indeed, eyes wide with a breathless sort of wonder as he takes in the interior of the building. He turns about, once, then twice, before his gaze lands on Changmin. His lips part in wordless surprise, and Changmin just knows.
“Hyung…” He grabs wildly at Hyunjae’s arm, fingers gripping tight enough that Hyunjae squeaks and tries to shake him off. But Changmin doesn’t care. All he cares about is— “That’s my soulmate.”
His name is Younghoon, Changmin soon learns, and his voice is solid enough—certainly within the realm of trainable to something as beautiful as his face—but he’s more interested in acting than singing, he explains. “Or at least, I was.” He laughs sheepishly, jams his hands into his pockets, and tilts his head to one side as he looks at Changmin. “I guess you’re a pretty good reason for me to reconsider those priorities.”
It would be hard for them to pursue careers that took them away from each other, and they both know it. Changmin tries to imagine living with the pain of his pinch for extend periods of time, then he tries to imagine giving up his dream of being an idol in order to follow Younghoon to film sets. What would he even do in that situation? Try to get hired as an extra in every movie Younghoon made?
“Juyeonie and Hyunjae-hyung are soulmates too,” he tells Younghoon and points out to him the two of them. “I think they’re going to debut together.” It’s an unknown future still, but it seems more than plausible. He touches Younghoon’s arm gently. “We could too.”
Younghoon wraps his hand over Changmin’s. The touch feels like sunlight breaking through the clouds for the first time. “Okay,” he says simply, with a soft smile, and that’s all there is to it.
Learning who Younghoon is is a delight. He is sweet and sensitive, with an unexpected humorous streak that always makes Changmin laugh whenever it shows up. He loves dogs of all kinds, throws himself into vocal training with gusto, and even tries his hand at rapping, which he has more love than talent for. He isn’t a dancer, though, which Changmin takes personally.
They stay in the dance studio late almost every day for extra practice—one-on-one lessons that Changmin is more than happy to give Younghoon. Part of it is the satisfaction of watching Younghoon slowly but surely improve. Another part of it is the selfish desire to stretch out his time with Younghoon, squeezing every second out of the day that he can.
Which is why it confuses Changmin that his pinch still bothers him as much as it does.
He knows that Younghoon feels it too. It hits them at similar times, and when one afternoon finds the two of them curled up miserably together, petting each other’s tummies in a vain attempt to soothe the pain, Changmin wonders aloud if there’s something wrong with them. The pinch should only affect them if they spend too much time apart; it makes no sense for it to show up when they’re together.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation for it,” Jacob reasons. He’s the most recent trainee to have joined their cohort, and his gentle demeanor has already made him one of Changmin’s favorites. It comes as no surprise, really, that he’s the first to offer comfort when Changmin bemoans his and Younghoon’s bewildering pinchy pain.
Eric, who joined not long after Younghoon, perches himself on the arm of the couch Changmin and Younghoon are suffering on, peers curiously down at them. At only fifteen, he hasn’t gotten the pinch yet and thus finds the whole concept wildly fascinating. He cocks his to one side, inquisitive, and casually suggests, “Maybe you have a third soulmate.”
Changmin blinks, first at Eric, then at Younghoon. A third soulmate? It’s not unheard of, but the prospect still shakes Changmin to his core.
Having two soulmates was the sort of thing you hear about happening to other people, not the sort of thing that happens to you.
“Do you think it’s possible?” asks Younghoon. His hand stills on Changmin’s stomach.
Instinctively, Changmin curls his hand over Younghoon’s, squeezing his fingers tight. “I suppose it would explain it,” he muses. It would also explain that other feeling he was never going to admit aloud—the lingering sense that, even when he was with Younghoon, something was still missing. Looks like it isn’t a something, so much as a someone.
They don’t find that someone until nearly a year later.
In the time between, Jacob’s soulmate appears in the form of wise-cracking but shy Sunwoo, they gain another trainee named Hwall, and Eric develops his pinch. And then, finally, their missing puzzle piece walks into the Cre.ker building on a blustery late November day.
He’s flustered, running late for his audition, and Younghoon has to physically hold Changmin back from charging down the hallway to corner their mystery man. “Let him get through his audition first!” hisses Younghoon. “Don’t be selfish.”
“But I wanna be selfish,” Changmin whines, but lets Younghoon herd him off anyways.
They wait outside of the audition room with bated breath. Through the door, they can hear him sing, and it makes Changmin’s heart hammer in his chest. He sounds beautiful, his voice light and clear. He’s had vocal training before, Changmin can tell, but there’s an inherent quality to his tone that just lovely.
When he emerges from the room, he startles to see Changmin and Younghoon waiting for him like a pair of lost puppy dogs. His eyes grow wide; he recognizes their connection too. “The both of you?” he asks, wondrous.
“We’ve missed you,” says Changmin petulantly. “Why did you keep us waiting for so long?”
Younghoon elbows him. “We’re glad you’re finally here,” he explains earnestly, and the last piece of their puzzle smiles. It’s dazzling.
“I’m here,” he tells them and holds out his hands. There’s a tiny tattoo on one of his pinky fingers, and Changmin knows there will be time in the future to learn what it is, the story behind it. “I’m Chanhee.”