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Everyone has at least one soulmate. They may be romantic, they may be platonic, a person may have one, or two, or even more, but everyone has at least one person for whom they are perfectly suited. Even before they meet, soulmates can hear the music that their soulmate is listening to, but only if their soulmate is dancing. Skilled dancing, nerdy dancing, small shoulder bops, grand, sweeping performances, any dancing at all and your soulmate can hear what you’re listening to. In close proximity to one’s soulmate, the music grows in volume; after soulmates touch, they can hear each other’s music even when they aren’t dancing.
In related news, Yoongi is going out of his mind.
He has been hearing the same song, over and over again, for hours at a time, for the last six weeks. It’s not that it’s a bad song, he actually quite likes it. It’s just… when he’s trying to work on his own music, and all he hears is the song his soulmate is dancing to, he has a tough time focusing.
Yoongi has always been very private about his soulmate; he hasn’t met them yet, but he has been listening to their music for two decades and he already adores them. His tendency towards privacy hasn’t changed even through the same unending song. He hasn’t even told Hoseok about it, and they live together.
Not that he’s actually been seeing Hoseok around much recently anyways. Yoongi’s best friend and extroverted roommate has been putting in increasingly longer hours in the dance studio on campus, working towards the last performance of his college career. Yoongi, having already lived through the pain of final composition and production projects, has not begrudged Hoseok his studio time, and has taken to ordering extra takeout and leaving the leftovers in the fridge with passive aggressively mothering sticky notes, and has made sure to schedule in the time to go see Hoseok’s showcase.
Jungkook doesn’t hear as much from his soulmate as he might like to. He can’t be too upset about going without his soul’s music, because he would never ask his soulmate to change anything about themselves, let alone how frequently, or infrequently, they chose to dance. The scarcity of his music makes it more special when he does hear it however.
His roommates, Jimin and Taehyung, are soulmates; they met each other on their first day of university in Seoul, and have been inseparable since. They added Jungkook to their lives and their lease a year after that, and have been gleefully listening to his awe-filled exclamations any time he hears even one note of his soulmate’s music. Jungkook never wants to be annoying about his unconditional positive regard for his soulmate, and his roommates never make him feel like an annoyance; they’re nearly as excited as he is every time his music plays in his head. Seeing how perfect Jimin and Taehyung are for each other, and how in love they are, makes Jungkook even more excited to find his own soulmate.
Yoongi has actually heard his soul music with his ears instead of his mind once before.
He has a reputation for being a homebody, stuck in his studio all the time, leaving only in the dead of night to acquire coffee and convenience store ramyun, and then slinking back into his cave of creativity. This reputation is greatly exaggerated by Hoseok’s dramatic nature; he laments to all of his friends that his best friend Yoongi denies him time and attention and therefore clearly no longer loves him.
Honestly, Yoongi does enjoy going out every so often, if it’s with his friends. He knows that it bothers Hoseok and worries Seokjin when he spent too much time in the studio, so he makes it a point to meet Seokjin for lunch at least once a week and to go out dancing with Hoseok every so often.
Yoongi himself isn’t a big dancer, but he knows that dancing is Hoseok’s greatest joy, so he’ll happily follow Hoseok to his favorite club to spend time with his best friend. Hoseok, in turn, makes sure to pick clubs that he knows will have music that is up to Yoongi’s standards.
It is on one such night, when Yoongi is tastefully drunk, with Hoseok draped over one side and Seokjin and Namjoon being the grossly infatuated couple they are on the other, that Yoongi experiences something he never has before. The bass is pounding in his ears, and since Hoseok is nearly asleep on his arm and Namjoon has to work early in the morning, the group is on their way out of that night’s bar. The dancefloor is packed and the lights are blinding Yoongi’s tipsy eyes as he navigates through the crowd of inebriated strangers. As they get to the door and the music becomes slightly less overwhelming, Yoongi realizes that the bass isn’t just pounding in his ears, it’s been pounding in his mind.
Yoongi has been listening to his soul music and hadn’t noticed.
He turns to look back at the dancefloor, desperately searching for whoever is dancing the music into his brain, but his abrupt movement causes Hoseok to groan and trip over his normally graceful feet.
‘Bros before hoes,’ Yoongi’s drunk brain reminds him, so he allows himself another few seconds of scanning the crowd, then he rededicates himself to making sure that his considerably drunker friend gets back to their apartment in one piece.
When he gets settled in bed, after getting Hoseok set up in his bed with a glass of water and Advil on the bedside table, Yoongi lays awake, mentally punching himself for not noticing that the music was his music until it was too late.
Jungkook is entirely too drunk for a Thursday night. Jimin and Taehyung have been a touch too enthusiastic in keeping his drink full, even though Taehyung doesn’t drink and Jimin doesn’t need to drink to be the most energetic, charming person in any room.
He’s been in the middle of the club dancing with Jimin and Taehyung for the last hour, sweating through his shirt, laughing uncontrollably at the moves his friends are pulling together. The bass is pounding in his ears, and he can barely hear his friends laughing along with him as Taehyung trips over Jimin’s flailing leg and ends up on the floor.
Eventually though, he heads in the direction of the bar, putting on his best pout to beg the bartender for water. While he’s sipping on it, he notices bright orange hair in the corner of his eye. He spins on his stool, narrowly avoiding falling off, looking to see if it’s Hoseok-hyung from the dance studio. By the time he finds his balance again, he’s too late and the orange-haired man is practically dragged out the door by his shorter friend, who’s headbopping along to the music even as he pulls his friend out of the club.
Through the haze in his head, Jungkook doesn’t notice that the music suddenly seems a little quieter.
Before Hoseok got so busy that it felt like he dropped off the face of the planet, he had been pestering Yoongi about meeting one of his friends from the campus dance club he was president of this year. When he first starting bugging Yoongi about it, the producer really was overwhelmingly busy; he was in the middle of what felt like a thousand projects simultaneously, and barely had time for monthly dinners with Hoseok, Namjoon, and Seokjin. After a certain point, it entertained Yoongi to refuse Hoseok’s pleas, so he kept it up, even though he might have been slightly interested in meeting the dongsaeng that Hoseok was so proud of. It helped that said dongsaeng apparently was part of every club on campus, so even when Yoongi was no longer drowning in work, the other boy was busy with tutoring sessions or photography club or helping a classmate film a video for class or volunteering at the nearby animal shelter.
“Hyung, I don’t understand why you don’t want to meet him!” Hoseok whined for the nth time. “He’s so talented and he works so hard, and he’s even a fan of your music! I know you say it’s weird to meet your fans, but doesn’t it just mean he has good taste?”
“Seok-ah, it’s not that I don’t want to meet him, we’re just always so busy, I just never have the time,” Yoongi drawls from his position in the middle of the couch, where his body and the cushion have practically fused during his current anime binge. He’s got that same song, that same beautiful, constant melody, playing in his head again, and it’s only serving to make him more relaxed into his slouch.
Hoseok doesn’t justify Yoongi’s statement with a response.
“It doesn’t matter, hyung, because he’s dancing in the showcase and you’re coming to the showcase to support your bestest friend and the most amazing roommate in the world, and so help me, I’m going to introduce the two of you if it’s the last thing I do,” Hoseok ends his statement with the most menacing point he as a ray of sunshine can produce, and leaves Yoongi to continue his transformation into a couch in peace.
Hoseok has been telling Jungkook that he has a surprise friend for him to meet practically since Jungkook joined the dance club that his hyung is the captain of. During their break one day, a few weeks into practices, Jungkook had been listening to the most recent Soundcloud release of his favorite artist when he noticed Hoseok’s laughing face poking over his shoulder.
“Hyung!” Jungkook had whined, “why are you laughing at me? I thought my dancing was good today, and I’ve just been sitting over here since we stopped!”
“It’s nothing, my young grasshopper,” Hoseok replied, still snickering. “You just keep doing you.” Jungkook chose not to question him, and returned to his appreciation of Agust D’s latest single.
Jungkook still doesn’t know what had amused Hoseok so much, but he’s been so busy with all of his classes and extracurriculars, and Hoseok’s friend has been busy with work and “being a cave-dwelling gremlin” (Hoseok’s words) that they haven’t had time to meet. If he’s Hoseok’s friend though, Jungkook figures he must be good people, so he’s looking forward to when they both have enough free time for an introduction.
On the day of Hoseok’s showcase, Yoongi wakes up after his roommate has already left, which isn’t really any different from their regular routine. He wants to get some work done, but knows that if he starts, he’ll get sucked in, and he’s not ready to risk the level of whining and teasing that his friends would direct his way if he missed the showcase because he was working.
Thankfully, Namjoon and Seokjin are already outside the auditorium when he gets there, so he doesn’t have to stand around looking lost while he waits to meet up with them. They make their way inside the venue, to their tried and tested “best seats in the house for acting like Jung Hoseok’s embarrassing parents.” When they make it to their seats, however, they find two underclassmen giggling and chattering excitedly at each other. Yoongi throws a look back at his friends, but he doesn’t want to make a fuss on Hoseok’s day; luckily there are three seats together in the row behind their regular positions, so they grab them before any more colorful underclassmen can scoop them and settle in to wait for the performance to start.
Jungkook was rudely awoken on the morning of the dance club showcase by Jimin and Taehyung jumping on his bed, singing a made-up song about bunnies dancing. In his groggy mind, Jungkook makes the connection that he must be the dancing rabbit, though it takes him a moment; when he fully regains consciousness, he admits to them he was truly impressed with the complexity and synchronicity of their impromptu performance.
The three of them head to the showcase together, mostly because the older two have a car and Jungkook doesn’t, and he needs a ride. They get there early, talk Jungkook down from a bout of panic, and then abandon him to find their seats. This leaves Jungkook free to have another quick anxiety attack before getting ready to go onstage.
Yoongi, Seokjin, and Namjoon do their due diligence as friends and hoot, holler, and generally make fools of themselves as soon as the last strain of Hoseok’s music ends. Seokjin had made a glittery sign the night before, which he was gleefully waving with no regard for the heads of those around him. They were, Yoongi decided, as Hoseok laughed and waved at them, the best friends.
A few more students make their way on and offstage – a lyrical trio of freshmen, a hip-hop group, a senior doing her thesis performance, and then.
And then . The most beautiful boy Yoongi has ever seen walks out onto the stage.
And then. The music Yoongi has been hearing nonstop for months starts to play.
And then. The beautiful boy starts dancing and Yoongi hears the song in concert, in his ears and in his mind.
Yoongi is spell-bound. Fireworks could go off in the auditorium and he would have no idea; he couldn’t take his eyes away from the boy leaping across the stage. Couldn’t take his eyes away from his soulmate. Even through his haze of soulmate-related awe, Yoongi recognizes that the boy is talented, so talented, and all Yoongi wants in that moment was to make music for him to dance to.
He sits through the rest of the performances in a daze; he doesn’t hear the two guys in front of him screaming for the boy, his soulmate, after his performance ends, doesn’t hear Seokjin and Namjoon’s teasing comments, doesn’t hear any other music because his mind is stuck on his music.
After the bows and applause and closing announcements, Yoongi, Namjoon, and Seokjin make their way through the crowd of adoring friends and family to meet up with Hoseok. They give him the congratulations and hugs and compliments he was due, and then Hoseok turns a sneaky look on Yoongi, and he is reminded of Hoseok’s promise (his threat?) to introduce Yoongi to his dance protégé. In Yoongi’s opinion, no one other than the beautiful boy should make Hoseok this excited; his standards had increased dramatically since seeing his soulmate’s performance. Regardless, this is Hoseok’s day, so Yoongi let him grab him by the arm and pull him through the dense crowd of dancers and their well-wishers.
After a minute of searching, Hoseok must find who he was looking for, because he starts dragging Yoongi with greater intensity. Even though Yoongi would never admit it, he was a few inches shorter than his friend, so he couldn’t see who Hoseok was making a beeline for; all he can do is be pulled along and prepare himself for the awkward introduction he was guaranteed to have with Hoseok’s friend.
And then.
Yoongi and Hoseok come to a stop in front of the beautiful boy, and he’s even more beautiful up close than he was on stage, because Yoongi can see the lights shining in his Bambi eyes and how his front teeth are slightly too big in the most endearing way and Yoongi is lost.
He barely hears Hoseok introducing the boy as Jungkook through the rushing river in his ears, but when Jungkook shyly smiles and addresses him, Yoongi hears it clear as anything.