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Seungcheol’s always thought 23 was an odd age to find your soulmate.
It isn’t old enough for you to think yes, this is the age where you should stop meddling in immature business and truly settle down—tie yourself to a mortgage with your loved one, live in a white picket-fence neighbourhood and count your days down to retirement. But nor is it young enough for it to be the very first instance of infatuation you experience, not soon enough to prevent you from making mistakes you’d end up regretting, and ones that could potentially follow you for a lifetime.
This is what Seungcheol concludes as he stays curled up in his bed on the eve of his 23rd birthday, thumb hovering yet again on the break-up message sent—he squints at the timestamp—a little over 47 hours now from a name his brain can’t quite bring itself to remember. It’s all a blur in his head, which makes everything even worse because there isn’t a tangible target upon which to shove all his anger; there is only the heavy cloud of self-deprecation and disappointment, leaving him to curl up rather pathetically on his bed.
The night before he’s supposed to find his soulmate.
“Quit moping, you pathetic lump,” he hears the sharp chiding from the doorway, but it softens immediately as footsteps approach his bed. “It’s nearly ten. You haven’t eaten dinner.”
“Don’t feel like it.”
The covers are peeled away from his face gently—which Seungcheol is glad for, because if someone tries to do anything as abrupt as his breakup, like swipe the covers right off his bed, he might actually cry. He looks up to find Jeonghan frowning at him, though not disapprovingly; more out of confusion and worry than anything else, it seems.
“You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”
“It was a big one.”
“It was a third of what you normally eat.”
“I imagined waking up with him, you know?” says Seungcheol quietly, and immediately Jeonghan’s face clears and his eyebrows lose their crease. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the last year, I don’t know anything else.”
And who can blame Seungcheol? For someone who’s only been in a couple of serious relationships (and one who's spent the better part of the year thinking he’s in love, this is love, and he’s the one), it’s not a far-fetched inference to believe that his long-term boyfriend would, in fact, be the person he wakes up next to on the morning of his 23rd birthday—and therefore, his soulmate. He hasn’t exactly woken up to next to many other people before, save for his mother when he was younger and his best friend Jeonghan when they’d shared a dingy studio flat together in their first year of university.
Seungcheol's pool of eligible partners is drier than the Sahara desert and at this point he really, really doesn’t want to wake up alone the next morning and realise he’s going to be alone for the rest of his life—so much so that he can feel the desperation crawling under his skin, the cravings of alcohol and sweaty bodies and quick fucks in a club like a man starved of food. But even in this despair-addled brain, Seungcheol knows looking for quick fucks can’t substitute for finding a soulmate.
“With all due respect, you don’t know anything else because you haven’t done anything else.” Jeonghan kneels by the bed and rests his arms on the mattress, dipping the edge slightly. Seungcheol blinks a little at the close proximity of their faces. “This whole thing can be a big practical joke and you’re always saying you gotta be someone who pushes the boundaries a little, bend the rules here and there.”
“When have I ever said that?”
“When I called you out on charming our Politics professor into raising your grade back in third year,” grins Jeonghan, and Seungcheol can’t help but give a small smile of his own. “So who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one to bend the rules a little. You’re acting like you life will end at 23—relax. It won’t. There are better alternatives to ‘soulmates’.”
Seungcheol pouts, feeling petulant. “Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know, having a sugar baby? You might be rich and successful in a couple of years—who knows, maybe by then you’ll be loaded enough to lavish a hot, eager sugar baby with all the gifts they want.”
“As enticing as that sounds,” says Seungcheol slowly as Jeonghan’s grin turns bigger. “You know that isn’t really what I do.”
“Yeah, I do know you. And because I know you I’m also fucking worried that you’re going to snap in a few hours, get yourself dressed in those black jeans of yours, mess your hair up a little bit, drive to the club two blocks away and toss the nearest person to you into bed at first opportunity.” Jeonghan is starting to look genuinely distressed. “And you know I can’t persuade you once you start begging me to let you be happy or whatever.”
“Someone’s getting sappy.”
Jeonghan punches his arm through the covers. “It’s because I’m sick of watching you mope, you loser.”
Seungcheol wheezes even though the punch was barely a hard one. He turns around to lie on his back, stares straight ahead and wishes the ceiling was glass so he could at least distract himself with the stars, brainwash himself into thinking that all of this, all of his life won’t even matter in the grand scheme of things.
“You know what? I’m fucking worried about me, too,” he murmurs quietly. For a while, neither of them say anything—Seungcheol too lost in his replays of the bad decisions he’s made in the past, Jeonghan silent in a way that tells Seungcheol he’s calculating, observing, analysing.
Then he remembers something and turns to Jeonghan in alarm. “Did you say it was nearly ten?”
Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “Good morning to you, too, late-ass.”
“You can’t go home too late,” he insists, at which Jeonghan throws him a look.
“I’m a grown adult, not a five year-old who can’t walk himself home, thank you. And besides,” he pushes hair out of his eyes—a nervous tick. “I thought I’d stay behind to night to make sure you’re eating so you don’t die. But clearly I’m not even doing a very good job.”
“Where will you sleep?” Seungcheol’s studio isn’t the biggest, but it isn’t the smallest they’ve ever come across, either.
“Cheollie, you have the luxury of possessing a whole couch,” Jeonghan laughs. “I’ll make myself at home there.”
“Oh,” Seungcheol replies dumbly, not having anything to refute to. “Thank you.”
And there it is again—the soft expression Jeonghan seems to adopt often tonight. “It’s really not a problem.”
Hesitating a little, Seungcheol licks his lips and pushes a little bit of the covers further down again, if only to give him some more air to breathe because he’s feeling just a tiny bit breathless at the moment. “Um—since you’re staying over, can you—can you make sure I… don’t leave the bed?”
“I’m trying to get you to leave the bed and eat, you dimwit.”
“No, I mean—“ Seungcheol huffs out loud. “You know what I mean.”
A veil of understanding is cast over Jeonghan’s face as he purses his lips and nods, once, then twice, more resolutely the second time. “Of course. I won’t let you out of my sight. And you won’t—“ Jeonghan has trouble phrasing the next words—he’s never found trouble phrasing anything. “You won’t wake up to anyone you don’t want.”
“I trust you.” Seungcheol really, really does. “Don’t let me leave this bed.”
“You sure you don’t want me to handcuff you to it instead?”
And just like that, the thick air of seriousness dissipates around them, leaving Seungcheol with a light heart and making it easier for him to breathe. “Kinky, and tempting. But I’m gonna need to pee at some point. What did you cook for dinner, anyway?”
Jeonghan scoffs at him and playfully shoves the pillows strewn around Seungcheol in his face to muffle his protests.
“In your fantasies am I cooking for you—we’re getting delivery. Come on, old man.”
“Can’t you bring it to bed?” he whines. “I don’t feel like leaving it.”
“…Just this once. But you’re going to teach me how to beat that crappy rhythm game in exchange.”
Seungcheol grins. “Easy.”
So they end up eating dinner on Seungcheol’s bed and getting lost in miscellaneous conversation. Once full, they hastily set aside the cutlery and take-out boxes on the floor to make space for Jeonghan’s preferred sprawled position, his attention already riveted by the numerous mobile games he’s downloaded but is unfortunately pathetic at. Seungcheol patiently coaches him through the gameplays, laughs at his failures, cheers obnoxiously at his success and quickly forgets the despair that’s shackled him for the past two days.
Neither of them remembers falling asleep.
Seungcheol wakes up warm, even though the AC is on at full blast. And then nearly jumps out of his skin.
Because lying on his side facing him, eyes sleepily wide, hair spread out like halo on the pillow and still wearing his walking clothes from last night is none other than Jeonghan.
“I’m sorry,” Jeonghan whispers, his face a mixture of horror and panic. “I’m sorry, fuck, I messed up, I’m sorry. I promised you wouldn’t have to wake up next to anyone you didn’t want to, but—”
The rational thing to do would be to chide Jeonghan for doing a piss-poor job when he really only had one—but something strange happens.
Seungcheol realises that he really, really doesn’t mind at all.
“You…” his voice, raspy from disuse and broken with nerves, sounds alien even to his own ears. “You kept your promise. Don’t worry.”
“What?” Now it’s Jeonghan’s turn to be confused, his eyes narrowing with apprehension and probably a myriad of conflicting feelings. “You mean—Seungcheol. It’s your 23rd birthday.”
“I know.”
“It’s morning right now. The morning of your 23rd birthday. And I’m in your bed.”
“I am aware.”
“I—“ Jeonghan’s voice catches in his throat. “I… I am now. Your soulmate.”
Seungcheol licks his lips, bites it—maybe a nervous tick. And something clicks in his head—maybe something he should’ve realised before he made mistaked he ended up regretting, ones that could potentially follow him for a lifetime, and something he is apparently realising before he has time to settle in a white picket-fence house and sign himself off to a decade-long mortgage.
At 23, the odd age, Seungcheol realises that Yoon Jeonghan, his best friend, has always been the best man for him.
“Is… is that such a bad thing?”
Jeonghan bites his lips, pushes hair out of his eyes. Definitely a nervous tick.
“I want to kiss you to make sure—but this isn’t just something I’m feeling because I just realised we’re going to be soulmates forever, right?”
“Nah,” Seungcheol murmurs as he rests a hand on Jeonghan’s nape, pulling him closer. “Pretty sure it’s been there way before today."
And as Jeonghan’s (soft, so soft) lips close over Seungcheol’s and their legs tangle around each other’s, Seungcheol accepts that they’ve still got a lot to figure out—this isn’t, of course, something that can be reconciled overnight.
But for now, he’s content with not leaving his bed the entire day. And maybe for the rest of eternity, if possible.