Jinyoung wakes up to the unfamiliar weight of an arm settled across his waist. He groans and attempts to figure out who the person lying next to him is, but his mind is still too cloudy with sleep for him to make any guesses. The person grumbles as Jinyoung shifts around and tightens their hold on Jinyoung’s waist, which sends a spike of adrenaline that overrides the sleepiness in Jinyoung’s brain.

“Let go of me!” he blurts out. “I don’t even know who you are!”

At Jinyoung’s outburst, the person sits up abruptly, their hand flying off Jinyoung’s waist to brush their long hair away from their face. “Who –!”

Jinyoung barely registers the way the person suddenly breaks off, because he’s too busy gaping in disbelief. Sitting in front of him is someone who looks exactly like Jaebeom, if Jaebeom were older, broader, and had longer hair and facial piercings. “J-Jaebeom-hyung?” he manages to choke out.

“Jinyoung?” The fact that this person knows Jinyoung’s name somewhat confirms that he is in fact Jaebeom, but Jinyoung is far from comforted by that. “Why do you look so…different?”

“I look different?” Jinyoung asks, incredulous. “You have multiple piercings on your face!”

“What are you doing in my room?” Jaebeom continues, ignoring Jinyoung’s comment entirely.

For the first time, Jinyoung looks around apprehensively, only to find that the surroundings are completely unfamiliar. “I don’t think this is your room, hyung.”

Before Jaebeom can reply, a few soft meows drift through the room and a moment later, a cat that looks very much like Nora jumps onto the bed, followed by two smaller and entirely unfamiliar cats. “N-Nora?” Jaebeom asks, looking dumbstruck.

Jinyoung is equally baffled – Nora doesn’t live in the dorm with them, and where did these other cats come from? Even more bewilderingly, Jaebeom’s beloved pet walks right past her owner and climbs directly into Jinyoung’s lap instead, settling against his stomach and purring loudly. Jinyoung blinks down at her before meeting Jaebeom’s eyes, feeling a little scared now. “Hyung, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Jaebeom says slowly, staring at the two cats that are rubbing against his legs. Jinyoung watches him pick up one of the devices lying on the nightstand. “Maybe this can help?” He turns it on carefully. “Whoa,” he says, looking up at Jinyoung in shock. “My fingerprint unlocked it.”

For some reason, his face turns red as he looks back down at the phone. “What is it?” Jinyoung asks.

“N-nothing,” Jaebeom says, hurriedly angling the phone away, but Jinyoung catches a glimpse of what he was trying to hide anyway.

“Is that me?” he asks. With a defeated sigh, Jaebeom lets Jinyoung see the full picture. The wallpaper is indeed a photo of Jinyoung beaming up at the camera with three cats climbing all over him and two more in his arms, though he looks much older than the eighteen-year-old that Jinyoung currently is. “Why do I look so…”

“Hot,” Jaebeom mumbles, sounding a little agitated. He claps a hand over his mouth at the confused look Jinyoung sends him, apparently not having meant to say it out loud.

“I was going to say mature,” Jinyoung says as Jaebeom avoids his gaze. Had they been in a less alarming situation, Jinyoung would have seized this rare opportunity to tease Jaebeom – but right now, the last thing they need is for Jaebeom to lose his temper.

“Hang on,” Jaebeom says. Jinyoung watches him open the messages app and scroll through the most recent messages between the owner of the phone – obviously Jaebeom – and “Jinyoungie <3.” Jinyoung wonders in what universe the two of them could possibly be so comfortable with each other. “These all say 2020.” He takes a deep breath. “I think – somehow, we’re in the future.”

Jinyoung wants to tell him he’s losing his mind, but the facts are in front of them: they’re both in bodies that look like older versions of themselves, and Jaebeom is holding a way-too-advanced phone that contains messages filled with smiley faces and hearts between Jinyoung and Jaebeom that are clearly labelled with the year 2020. “Okay,” he says hesitantly, swallowing down his immediate reaction to panic. “So what do we do?”

“Uh,” Jaebeom says, and it’s just so strange because he’s fidgeting like the teenager Jinyoung knows, but it doesn’t fit the body of the twenty-six-year-old he’s currently inhabiting. “Let’s look around this place. The cats need to be fed anyway, they must have come in because they were hungry.”

Jinyoung carefully lifts Nora off his lap before following Jaebeom out of the room and into the hallway. “This definitely isn’t the dorm,” he says, looking around. “I guess we moved out, at some point.”

“Yeah,” Jaebeom says, staring at something behind Jinyoung in a daze, and Jinyoung turns to find two additional cats walking behind him. “Probably because there are five cats living with us. Apparently.”

Jinyoung goes to the living room while Jaebeom stops at the kitchen to feed the cats. One wall is entirely covered by a bookshelf full of books, albums, and pictures, and Jinyoung walks over to examine them. Looking at the pictures, Jinyoung finds that most of them are photos of combinations of him, Jaebeom, and five boys, some of whom he recognizes as trainees. But there are also some of the two of them with each other’s families, many of just the two of them, a few of just Jaebeom, and a lot more of just Jinyoung.

It’s incredibly weird, Jinyoung thinks. The man in the pictures looks just like him, but as he takes in the smiles, the affectionate touches, the intimate gazes, he feels like he’s looking into snapshots of someone else’s life, someone who has been to award shows and travelled the world, someone who has a special bond with these select six people.

Tearing his eyes away from a picture of Jaebeom’s arm around him as they smile at each other in a way that seems like it should have been kept private, he reads the spines of a few albums instead. “Who’s GOT7?” he asks aloud, reading the name that appears the most among the albums. He pulls one out at random, one called Eyes on You, and is startled to see himself, Jaebeom, and the same five boys from the pictures on the cover. “Hyung, you have to see this,” he says, unable to look away from their smiling faces.

Jaebeom joins him in front of the bookshelf a moment later, staring at the album he’s still holding. “Is that us?”

Jinyoung nods. “I think…I think we’re a group of seven now,” he says. “Not JJ Project, anymore.”

“Well, look at this,” Jaebeom says, pulling out another album, one called Verse 2. “This one is a JJ Project album.” His eyebrows furrow. “There’s only one, though. I guess GOT7 is our main group and we became a subunit?” He clears his throat, looking slightly embarrassed. “And…we live together.”

Jinyoung thinks about how they woke up in the same bed, how his picture is the wallpaper of future-Jaebeom’s phone, and how all the pictures on the bookshelf contain the two of them. He decides not to point out that all these things suggest that there’s a little more to their future relationship than just living together.

But it makes him feel a little more hopeful about returning back to the past, now that he’s gotten a glimpse of what the future has in store for him and Jaebeom.

(Bonus:

Jaebeom wakes up feeling more alone than he should be, considering that he almost always wakes up before Jinyoung because of the cats. A quick glance around tells him he isn’t in their bedroom, and this isn’t their bed. There is something familiar about his surroundings, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

“Oh my god, Jaebeom!”

An incredibly loud yell has Jaebeom jumping up and running towards the sound of the voice immediately. “Jinyoungie? Where are you, what’s wrong?” Even in his rush, though, he realizes that he knows exactly where he is – he spent too many years of his life here to not know. “Uh oh,” he mutters to himself. He thinks he knows what he’s going to find in Jinyoung’s room.

Sure enough, an eighteen-year-old Jinyoung is staring at his reflection in horror. “Jaebeommie, tell me we haven’t woken up as ourselves during Bounce era.”

Jaebeom joins Jinyoung next to the mirror and sighs in resignation at the sight of his bright blonde hair. “I wish I could.”

Jinyoung groans. “I already lived through this once. I refuse to act hyper and cute all the time.”

“Good thing you don’t need to do any acting, then,” Jaebeom grins. He hugs Jinyoung from behind and rests his chin on Jinyoung’s shoulder. “You’re cute all on your own.”

“It’s so weird to see you being this friendly with me in that body,” Jinyoung says, though he leans into Jaebeom’s embrace readily. “At least this time around I know that eight years from now, you’re going to be totally whipped for me.”

“You say that like you’re not exactly the same way,” Jaebeom says, not bothering to protest because Jinyoung is right. “Hey, I wonder if the past versions of us are in the future now.”

“They’re in for a real shock if they are,” Jinyoung says, laughing a little.

Jaebeom laughs too, trying to imagine what his reaction would have been if he had been put in that situation at eighteen. “Little me will probably have an aneurysm when he sees what you look like in the future. I had enough trouble back then when you were only putting your energy into being cute, now you go around being all hot too.”

“Flatterer,” Jinyoung says with a smile, and Jaebeom is momentarily amazed that he was able to resist teenage Jinyoung’s charms for so long. “Little me will have no idea how to react to the piercings. You were always attractive, but you look way too good with them.” He turns around to peck Jaebeom’s lips lightly. “Now come on, hyung. Let’s go show the world what JJ Project is made of.”)