Chapter Text
December 25th 2005
Taehyung is nine years, eleven months and twenty five days old.
It’s really early in the morning. Earlier than Taehyung usually rises but it’s Christmas and there are presents to open. Habitually, he would have rushed down the stairs and would be going through every package like a tiny hurricane but this morning he heard the voices of his parents in the living room and that stopped him in his tracks. He sits at the top of the stairs, curled into himself and listens to their hushed voices, feeling small but warm. Happy.
His parents aren’t soulmates. They don’t have each other’s marks. In fact his father doesn’t have a mark at all. Whether it’s because he doesn’t have a soulmate or because he was never ready to accept them, Taehyung doesn’t know.
He never asked. He doesn’t want to know.
His mother’s mark sits on her neck. It’s small, small enough to be confused with a beauty mark. But it’s in fact a small star. She’s had it since she was seventeen but she’s never met the person that gave it to her. Sometimes, Taehyung catches her looking out of the window, watching his father work in the field and thumbing over her soulmark absently.
It always makes Taehyung worry a little.
They say soulmates aren’t a life or death thing. Some people have marks, some people don’t. Some people never find each other despite being ready. Some people don’t care enough to look, their marks fading with time. Some people find their soulmate when they’re children and live long, happy lives together. Some people don’t marry their soulmates, happy to remain friends until they die. Some people go kind of crazy trying to get their mark and never let go of the resentment they feel toward a soulmate that never wanted them or a God that never gave them one to begin with.
Stories about soulmates have stopped making news a long time ago, because the world have seen and heard them all. Sometimes his father will quickly change the news channel when reports of people killing their soulmates do make it to the news. When that happens, Taehyung runs to the library and spends his day looking at better stories. He looks for hope in history because that’s real too. Because there are bad people but there is even more love and even more happiness to find. Because he knows, deep down, that the soulmark doesn’t turn people one way or another. It doesn’t define you and doesn’t make your decisions for you.
Taehyung is young, he knows, but the subject of soulmates has always fascinated him so he did a lot of research on it. Especially since his parents aren’t soulmates. He always found it strange that they weren’t bound when it was so clear they were made for each other.
Taehyung’s parents aren’t soulmates but they love each other deeply and somehow, that’s always made Taehyung just a little sad. The idea that the person you love is not the exact right fit for you has always made Taehyung feel slightly uncomfortable. He never told them of course, and it’s not something that bothers him per say.
He just wants to understand.
Maybe it has nothing to do with his parents. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he got his soulmark when he was six. Earlier than most people. So early in fact that he wasn’t even fully aware of the concept itself. He woke up one day with his wrist burning and, as he ran to his parent’s bedroom, crying and scared, he wondered what kind of sickness could cause your heart to burn so much. The pain didn’t last, it was almost completely gone by the time he was in his mother’s loving embrace, but Taehyung still remembers how his whole body had caught on fire, how hard his heart was pounding and how it felt like he was almost floating as he ran to his parents’ room.
He looks down at it now, the moon crescent, and rubs his thumb over it.
It’s been almost four years and he still doesn’t understand. Why he got it so young? Who is his soulmate? Why a moon? How can his parents love each other this deeply and not be each other’s soulmates?
One of the questions plaguing him, one that he doesn’t like to dwell on is this: what if they’re actually soulmates but his father will never be ready to accept it?
It seems impossible; his father would get the moon and all of the stars down for his mother. Still, his mind his hungry and his heart is worried so he wonders.
What Taehyung doesn’t know yet, what he hasn’t experienced yet is that people with soulmarks see their other half. They appear to them in dreams, in photographs, in thoughts. Little fragments of the immensity of what they are will start peppering the marked one. That’s how soulmates recognize each other. Some have theorized that it’s a residue of their past lives, of the unbreakable bond between them. A phantom link that refuses to break.
Young Taehyung doesn’t know that, not yet. But he’ll learn.
At some point he’ll even miss the days where he didn’t know.
But that’s not for now.
For now Taehyung watches his parents talking about their plans for the day, drinking coffee and holding hands. His heart aches a little and that he doesn’t understand either.
But Taehyung doesn’t like to dwell on things he has no control over, not for long at least. So he goes down the stairs and hugs his parents.
Two days later, when he dreams of Jimin for the first time, he’ll know, without having to research it, what it means.
~*~
December 27th 2005
Jimin is ten years, two months and fourteen days old.
It’s Christmas morning and Jimin wakes up in his parents’ bed.
Well technically, it’s not, but Jimin’s mother was still on a business trip Christmas morning so they had to postpone all festivities. Including this one.
Every Christmas eve, Jihyun and he will sneak in their parents’ bed and spend the night there. Usually by the time he wakes up, they’ve all gone downstairs to wait for him with breakfast and presents. He didn’t sleep well last night however. Maybe he’s outgrowing this particular tradition. It’s a big bed but it wasn’t meant for four people. He feels like he spent the night sleepwalking, like he was pulled out of sleep too many times. It’s the first time he’s felt like this upon waking up and it feels strange, like all unknown feelings do.
He turns around with a sigh and he finds himself looking at the flock of robins on his mother’s arm. It’s one of the most intricate and biggest soulmark he’s ever seen. In comparison the one on his father’s hand looks really small. It’s an iris but it has the peculiarity of glowing yellow when Jimin’s mother feels a very deep emotion.
Each soulmark is different or so they say. They come in different sizes and shapes, a reflection of your mate’s soul. Some come with… quirks, like the one on his father’s hand. No one understands really what these particularities mean, just that they are and that if they exist they only amplify with the bond.
The bond.
Jimin was four years old when he asked his mother why she had tattoos on her arm. He doesn’t remember much of that conversation, he was too young and it was a long time ago but he does still remember how it left him feeling kind of… hollow. To him, it felt unfair, all of it. He didn’t understand the need for soulmates. He thought that things could have been a lot simpler without the whole business.
He was four years old and he had just been told his fate wasn’t his own. Not really.
He never forgot that feeling; the tiny hole in his heart that had formed then.
He tries his hardest not feed the hole, dig it deeper. He tried making it disappear, he avoids thinking about it at all. It’s hard however when your parents are soulmates and so proud of it that they constantly brag about it.
“You’ll understand when you get your soulmark,” his father would say as he ruffles his hair. Like getting a soulmark is a certainty, like he won’t be whole until he gets his.
“It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world,” his mother would sigh dreamily before booping his nose. Like there aren’t other things to be proud of. Like Jimin won’t know true happiness, real love, until he accepts his soulmate and meets them.
“I can’t wait to get mine,” Jihyun would giggle excitedly as if getting a soulmark is a goal, something you can work for, something you can achieve.
It’s not.
And it’s not that Jimin has anything against them, his soulmate, they’re probably lovely, it’s just that people have defined Jimin’s life through them and it has never sat right with him.
What young Jimin doesn’t know yet is that his refusal to accept his soulmate is the very reason that will lead him to Taehyung. He doesn’t know it but he’s going to make so much room for Taehyung in his life, he won’t have a choice but to take responsibility for his own actions.
For now, Jimin traces the wings of one the robins on his mother’s arm and hope for happiness.
A happiness he can live with.
What will assuage Jimin’s fear is that he won’t get a mark. Not for a very long while at least. He won’t get those dreams his mother always tells him about either and he won’t have to even see his soulmate if he doesn’t want to.
Here’s the catch though, Jimin will want to see him.
He’ll want so much of Taehyung he won’t even be able to wrap his head around all of it.
For now though, stubborn Jimin is safe, cocooned between his parents. Safe and determined to live his life the way he wants it to.