[Oliver]
To Oliver, IDOL was his only family.
He would even call them the soulmates of his life. Not in the romantic sense perhaps, but platonically they were more than just brothers or best friends. The lack of love throughout his life before stardom had made him sensitive, too sensitive.
It gave him the ability to see beyond the surface.
In the eyes of his members, Oliver saw the love they had for him. The way they would look at him after having not seen him for just a few hours. He saw it in their actions and heard it in their voices when they talked to him. Oliver knew that these people would stay with him until the end of his life.
He would die for them if need be and he knew they would do the same for him.
They were family.
He had even considered that all seven of them were perhaps soulmates to one another. For a while, he hypothesized that maybe the entire time all six of them had been waiting for JieMi to turn 20.
Maybe, JieMi was the rock of their relationship.
These hopes had been dashed with JieMi's 20th birthday. It had left him confused and doubtful of the soul bond. He was naturally sensitive to relationships and love, more so than anyone he'd ever met in his entire life.
He could see that the bond that the members had with each other was more than just a simple brotherhood. This was something deeper, more profound, and more special.
Oliver read others easily.
It was why when the members were unsure of the credibility of a person, they would introduce them to him. Oliver could read deceit and lies because he'd faced it for most of his childhood life. When one lived with the monster under one's bed, one could eventually recognise it in all of its forms.
The women that approached him for the past few years were driven by dirty motives. They were wolves hiding under sheep's skin. They had candy-like appearances, drenched in sugary sweet syrup to cover their rotten interiors.
Each one of them had a deluded personal view of IDOL members. They saw them as handsome idols with money and status. Money that they could spend and status that they could flaunt.
JieMi's Ha-Eun was no exception.
This was why Oliver had never dreamed of having a soulmate. He could not stomach the idea of being bonded to a selfish person. He knew that when she found out his true, pathetic personality, she would be disappointed. She would throw him aside. She would regret being tied to him.
Because without his fame he was nothing.
Then Oliver had met her.
Oliver could not understand it. The whole phenomenon had stolen his breath and his mind struggled to wrap over the concept of her. His soul, frigid and lacking from love had swelled and filled with something indescribably warm. It felt as if he had been trudging through the never-ending blizzard for years and had finally found a house.
A house with a roaring fireplace, warm stew cooking at the stove and her to hold in his arms forever.
His skin had practically moaned at her touch, his soul had lurched within him burning with his need for her. He felt like a sunflower, turning in the presence of his Sun.
The moment he had looked into those beautiful soft, sweet brown eyes. He knew that she was his soulmate without a doubt in the world.
Oliver was sensitive and his soul could recognise her easily, broken as it was. He was a sick patient and his medicine, her, had the greatest effect on him.
Medicine or drug, Oliver didn't know because the sight of her nipples in the light of that convenience store had fuelled a fire deep within him that he didn't know was possible to light.
He was sure that the feeling was definitely akin to addiction.
He'd never wanted someone that much before, never been so aroused that he could barely think. She was dangerous, he realised then. She was a drug that was too sweet and too delicious. If he had a taste of her, he knew he would never be able to leave.
One taste would be all it took to tie him to her and he would stay with her forever. She was the Hades to his Persephone. Only unlike the Goddess, he would stay with his Hades willingly in the Underworld forever.
He had been delighted when he saw her at the concert, absolutely thrilled at the sight of her. He planned to meet her, planned to get staff members to find her for him. He planned to take her out and if he was lucky, make love to her.
That plan did not work out so well. The entire team had gone crazy with JieMi's soulmate and MinJae's soul bond. All of them hadn't prepared for it, for years. Bad planning on the company's part.
His members? Well, nobody, absolutely nobody even dared to dream of the possibility of them having soulmates.
The events of the following few days prevented him from finding her. His heart had filled with overwhelming guilt whenever he thought of her while pressing kisses to MinJae's tear-soaked cheeks. He reckoned that her birthday would come soon and they would meet again with a soul bond. He trusted in fate because fate brought him out of that family, fate brought him to IDOL, fate gave him hope.
He didn't imagine their next meeting to be like this.
Oliver's coping mechanism was to smile. He smiled when he was sad. He believed that if he could still smile through any pain, then he was still okay. He would get through it and he would be fine because unlike those bastards he was the one still smiling at the end of the day.
He could not smile now.
His eyes remained trained on her face, memorising the dips and lines. She had lost weight, her eye bags red and heavy on her bare skin. Beautiful as she was to his love-struck mind, she looked sick. Paler, thinner and weaker than he would like her to be.
She'd lost that healthy glow to her skin. The soft red of her peach skin was replaced by a sickly paleness that scared him. He could see the sadness that clung to her like a cloud, a weight that he longed to kiss away.
Concern roared in his chest despite the spike of anger and jealousy that consumed his every thought. The painful feeling deep within his guts was more than just an emotion. He could practically feel that coiling deep buzz within his chest yearning to take her into his arms and comfort her.
Ezra.
Why him of all people?
His eyes darted up to his best friend, moving to look at the hand that Ezra had placed on her arm.
Protective.
He protected her from him. From him! The audacity pulled at his nerves. He was like a puppet, controlled by the anger that surged through his mind. How fucking dare he? His jaws clenched as he cocked his head to the side to look at him in the eye.
"What?" Ezra snapped back gruffly. He seemed a little embarrassed, a little guilty. The look in his eyes, however, screamed to Oliver that Ezra believed he did absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, he was proud of his actions, pleased to have her in his arms. Happy even.
Proud.