Chapter 2

Summary:

“Soul mates are muses. The people in your life you despise, disrespect and desire the most.”

Notes:

Nate is Namjoon’s English name. Sean is Yoongi’s English name. I’ll only use them in dialogue so it's not confusing.

“Not a-fcking-gain,” Yoongi groaned, running a hand over his face in exasperation.

“I swear you’ll like this one,” Namjoon argued, scrambling out of his seat to play the track that he had queued up. He’d known Yoongi was going to react this way because the older always reacted this way to songs about soulmates, but Namjoon couldn’t help it. He was really ******* into the idea of soulmates even though his didn’t like him.

Namjoon had been waiting for his soulmate from the moment he turned thirteen and it had been just before his sixteenth birthday when he’d felt the soul connection for the first time. It was eleven o'clock in the morning when he’d suddenly become conscious of the fact that he was no longer alone in his mind. His first instinct was to begin firing off every question he’d been saving for that very moment, but it all came to a quick end when his soulmate had replied in Korean.

Namjoon was Korean, Korean American, but still Korean. His parents were happy at the prospect of a Korean inlaw because then they wouldn’t have to adjust to another culture like they had feared. Namjoon was mildly grateful for his soulmate’s ethnicity because he was sure that his parents would have disowned him if his soulmate was both a male and non-Korean. Thank the universe for small mercies.

“No, Nate, come on. I thought you had stopped this.” Yoongi immediately hit the stop button on the track before the intro could even play. He crumpled up the lyric sheet in his hand and stood up out of the seat. He patted Namjoon’s shoulder before walking out of the studio.

Namjoon sat back in his seat and sighed in annoyance. He had tried to write songs about other things and he was usually mildly successful. Well, he was successful enough that he had a few songs getting radio play, but he needed something new soon if he wanted to keep being able to pay his bills for the studio, his apartment and his parent’s condo. Like a good Korean son he had been paying his parent’s bills since he started making real money from his music. It didn’t stop his parents from thinking he was wasting his life, but at least they didn’t openly criticize him in front of the rest of the family and their friends anymore.

He picked up the lyric sheet and straightened it out before getting up and taking it over to the big dark blue binder he kept on a shelf near the door to his studio. It was filled almost completely with songs about soulmates. Mostly ones from the dark period he’d gone through when he realized his soulmate didn’t want him. He still had yet to write a happy song about soulmates, but he was working on it.

Namjoon’s soulmate was...odd. He seemed to spend a lot of time just sort of observing Namjoon’s thoughts mostly when he was playing video games or watching game plays online. He, for all intents and purposes, sat in the corner of their shared mind and took in what Namjoon was doing without contributing. It frustrated Namjoon to no end.

Namjoon understood Korean. He’d always understood Korean because his parents would often forget words in English and it was pretty much necessary to make it through life growing up in a neighborhood filled with mostly Koreans. He just didn’t speak Korean. His tongue just didn’t seem to be equipped to pronounce Korean and he’d long ago given up on actually speaking the language, but he was still very aware of what people said to him.

Early on in their connection Namjoon had tried to figure out how to convey to his soulmate that he didn’t speak Korean, but he understood it, but his soulmate had been dead set on being an asshole and Namjoon was going to let him.

At this point it was almost funny the things his soulmate would say to him sometimes. A few times he’d caught his soulmate literally screaming thoughts at him about how he couldn’t jerk off because he had another person hanging out in his head. It had taken everything in him not to start laughing because then it would give away the fact that he understood what his soulmate was saying.

His soulmate had also told him some really fucked up stuff, but for all of the aggression his soulmate constantly showed him whenever he tried to make contact Jungkook had no problem ranting at him when he was feeling frustrated. Namjoon was like his soulmate’s own personal diary. Namjoon knew about every time his soulmate had completely screwed up in dance rehearsal, he knew about how frustrated he was when he was a trainee and he’d been there for every angry cry that his soulmate had during school exams. He probably knew more about his soulmate than most people because his soulmate made no effort to edit himself. Most soulmates tried to control their thoughts or at least filter poor thoughts to the background of their mind in an effort to make a good impression, but his soulmate had no qualms about leaving everything to bounce around in the front of Namjoon’s mind. And Namjoon kinda loved it.

In the last six months Namjoon had realized that his soulmate was fast approaching his twenty first birthday and he was once again toying with the idea of trying to start communicating with Jungkook. He’d been slowly working on his speaking abilities and trying to work his way towards telling his soulmate that he’d been aware of everything Jungkook said up until that point or maybe he’d just, you know, keep pretending that he didn’t really know Korean and spare his soulmate the embarrassment.

~~

“I heard you had a meeting with Sean.”

“Yeah.”

“I heard it was short.” Steven was sitting on the other side of the restaurant booth with a stupid grin on his face.

Namjoon rolled his eyes and went back to scanning the menu even though he always ordered the same thing every time he came to the little hole in the wall restaurant beside their studio.

Steven just kept staring at him with that stupid smile and Namjoon kinda wanted to smash his mouth in just a little. Steven and Namjoon were probably the epitome of frenemies. The two had studios on the same floor of the their company and were often put on the same projects because they had similar tastes. They both made the effort to go out to lunch with one another on a regular basis and act cordial inside the office for the sake of appearances. Namjoon hated every moment of Steven’s presence, but he knew that if they were openly hostile to one another the company would force them into competition with one another by playing on their dislike of one another.

Most of Namjoon’s hatred of Steven stemmed directly from the fact that he was an *** kisser extraordinaire. Steven was so far up Yoongi’s *** sometimes that Namjoon was sure Steven could taste Yoongi’s food before he did. Namjoon was more of the type to let his work speak for itself, but he’d been working long enough at this point to know that *** kissing was a talent within itself.

“Wrote another song about being rejected by your soulmate?” Steven asked, eyes still fixed on the menu.

Namjoon cracked his neck before going back to reading, not bothering to answer the question.

“Honestly, don’t you think there are already enough songs on the radio about soulmates? Rejected or not soulmates are kinda old news.” Steven tried to play his words off with a nonchalant shrug, but what he said was something that could only come from someone who was happily matched with a completed soul connection. He was speaking from a place that was painfully out of Namjoon's reach and they both knew it.

It was no secret around their company who had completed bonds and who didn’t because it was normally pretty obvious who was suffering from body aches and who wasn’t. And of course once everyone realized you were matched but the connection was incomplete they needed to know where you were in your search. Namjoon had simply stated that he and his soulmate were probably gonna stay incomplete and left it at that. Most people assumed his soulmate had died until he’d started presenting songs about soulmate rejection and then it became glaringly obvious what had happened to him.

“Soulmate songs are the top ten on every chart in every country,” Namjoon mumbled. It wasn’t an exaggeration because people were still finding their soulmates or dying without them everyday and that was beautiful and tragic. It was perfect songwriting, movie making and story creating material. Soulmates would never go out of style as a topic of discussion.

“I guess. Sean doesn’t want to play into the old cliches though,” Steven argued just as the waiter approached their table.

Namjoon just glared at Steven’s stupid smiling face as he started placing his order.

~~

“When are you going to Korea?”

Namjoon rolled his eyes at the question. This was part of the reason why he normally screened his mother’s calls. She was constantly pressuring him to go after his soulmate regardless of how many times Namjoon told her that his soulmate didn’t want him, didn’t want anyone.

“I’m not. I have work. I’m busy. A few artists are starting to work on new albums for the summer so I need to be in the studio working as much as possible. Sean is making the rounds and I need something radio friendly by next week. I don’t have time for trips to Korea.”

“Kim Namjoon,” his mother’s tone hardened as it always did about the topic of his soulmate. “How can you expect that boy to love you if you never give him the chance?”

Namjoon ran his hand over his face in annoyance. “I have given him plenty of chances the last few times I’ve spoken to him in Korean he told me to stop talking to him. I think he’s being pretty clear about not being interested in me.”

“He’s just intimidated because you’re smart and you know two languages. If your father had come to me speaking English when we connected I probably would have been scared too.”

That was always his mom’s argument. In her mind it wasn’t possible that someone would reject their soulmate.

“You know this is the problem with this new generation. When I was young we didn’t ignore our soulmate. The only people who didn’t finish the soul connection were people who literally couldn’t and now you kids are taking it for granted and deciding to ruin your bodies because you’re stubborn.”

Namjoon sighed. Talking to his mother was like a constant loop of the same arguments over and over again. He was currently finishing his stretches because he’d found that the calm he felt as he finished the exercises mixed with the drowsiness he felt from the pain meds was the only time he could put up with his mother without wanting to punch himself in the face.

“I’ll be sure to keep all of this in mind as I plan my trip to Korea,” Namjoon muttered, lowering his face towards his knee while sitting in a partial split.

“I just want you to be happy. You’re my 첫째 (first born).” his mother said more calmly.

“I know. I’m working on it,” he told her as he stood up and shook out his muscles, “His twenty first birthday is coming up maybe I’ll try and figure out how to send him something.”

“He is like this because he is an Ox. If you had been born one year sooner then you two would be most compatible, but it can’t be helped. You’ll win him over don’t worry.”

Namjoon hummed absently at his mother’s observations before telling her he was going to go to bed.

~~

Namjoon wouldn’t call himself obsessive, but that was the perfect word for the way he kept track of his soulmate. Whenever he had time he loved tuning into his soulmate’s thoughts and taking down notes on whatever he thought would be helpful to him in the future. Well, in the future he’d created in his mind where they were supposed to meet.

He’d compiled a list of all the things he’d learned about his soulmate over the last few years. At this point he’d completely filled several notebooks with information about the stubborn *** he was matched with.

He was currently sitting with his notebook open as he listened to his soulmate rant about the terrible day he was having. Apparently the younger’s body was starting to show signs of body aches and that meant he was having a hard time doing the choreography for his latest show. Namjoon knew that Jungkook had begun doing the nightly exercises a while ago, but the younger hadn’t been prepared for how the actual pain would feel once it started.

Jungkook was lamenting about the many ways in which he wanted to kill whoever had decided that soulmates were a necessity. Over the years he had, many times, brought up how jealous he was of his friend Hoseok for being unmatched and Namjoon had just come to accept that his soulmate’s interest in dancing took far greater precedence in his life than a soulmate. If Jungkook didn’t have a soulmate he would be able to dance until nature took away his ability. He wouldn’t have to do extra exercises to combat the body aches. He’d just be able to live his life.

Sometimes Namjoon wondered why he couldn’t stop trying to connect with his soulmate. Jungkook had made it abundantly clear that soulmates were stupid and he didn’t need one, but Namjoon was still here seven, almost eight, years later still listening intently to everything and still writing down anything he deemed important. He looked down at the notes he’d made so far and sighed, he was whipped. His soulmate didn’t even want him and he was still completely taken with the man.

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