“I don’t understand you sometimes,” Kwon Soonyoung sniffs, watching as his best friend, Lee Jihoon, frantically flips through the calendar on his table. Soonyoung had finally gotten Jihoon to step out of his room and come over to the other man’s apartment, yet the minute Jihoon walked through the doorway he had immediately asked for a calendar and was currently calculating who knows what.

          “Same to you, that makes us even,” Jihoon retorts despite his frantic scribbling. Soonyoung rolls his eyes; Jihoon would probably have a snarky comeback even if he was holding up the world while stepping on Lego’s.

          “Fair enough,” Soonyoung sighs, it was easier to go along with Jihoon’s comments. He had learned long ago to let the insults roll of his back, it was better for the relationship. Besides, it’s not like Jihoon meant badly. The boy just felt the need to make up for his lack of height with something more intimidating. And it works, almost half the school was terrified of either his sarcastic nature or his passion for music. The other half was in love with him but it’s not like Jihoon particularly cared. “But what exactly are you doing?”

          “I’m planning,” Jihoon says vaguely, waving his hand in the air like a conductor in front of an orchestra (which wouldn’t be far off seeing as one of the music teachers had been trying to get Jihoon to join choir for the last three years).

          “Jihoon you practically have a stable job why do you need to plan?” Soonyoung resists the urge to face palm. The two same age friends were in their fourth year of university and even though Soonyoung had a couple job offers and internships lined up; Jihoon was the only one in their group that was actually working. He had been picked up by a famous label in America (Jihoon was too secretive to reveal which one, he wanted one of his songs to be used and recorded before he told the world - just in case it didn’t work out and people called him a liar) and was already submitting song after song to them through the emails. Luckily enough, the company had arranged a contract that allowed Jihoon to stay in Korea, as long as he submitted his work and flew over (all fees paid by the company) when he needed to be consulted in person.

          “I’m earning enough to live, obviously, but that doesn’t affect my ability to plan. Besides, he’s coming out with a new book – books to be exact – in a couple weeks and I need to save up. It’s not often that two books in a series come out at the same time, if I don’t plan accordingly, I’ll be stuck with only one of them!” Jihoon exclaims, stopping his scribbling to glare at his friend.

          “What in the world are you talking about?” Soonyoung gives up trying to understand his friend. He pulls his phone out, texting the other members of their group to hurry up and come over so he wouldn’t have to deal with Jihoon alone, before leaving to clean up the rest of the place, leaving Jihoon to his own devices.

          “I’m home!” Jihoon calls, stumbling into his own apartment much later on that night. Jeon Wonwoo and Wen Junhui had arrived at Soonyoung’s apartment a couple minutes after the calendar incident and the four same aged friends decided to marathon a bunch of random movies. Wonwoo then had to leave because he had a date with his childhood boyfriend, Kim Mingyu, and Junhui had to tutor another Chinese exchange student (which Soonyoung suspects him of dating). Soonyoung and Jihoon had then watched one last movie before Jihoon detangled himself from Soonyoung’s grabby limbs and escaped before he was forced to stay the night.

          “You’re home late,” a deep voice responds. Jihoon looks up from putting away his shoes and sees his roommate, Choi Seungcheol, leaning against the doorway. The other man was a year older than him. They had met by chance at a party and decided to room together after Jihoon’s roommate decided university wasn’t for him and Seungcheol’s roommate moved in with his girlfriend.

          “Soonyoung wouldn’t let me leave,” Jihoon shrugs, throwing his keys into his coat pocket. He walks into the living room and jumps onto the couch, causing a couple papers to fly into the air. “What are these?”

          “Don’t touch those!” Seungcheol exclaims, running over to snatch the papers from Jihoon’s grasp. “They, they’re just research notes. B-but they’re in a certain order so I don’t want you to mess them up.”

          “They don’t look like research notes,” Jihoon says suspiciously. He leans over, spotting Seungcheol’s laptop on the ground and tries to read the lines of texts. “Are you writing a story?”

          “I-it’s for my creative writing class,” Seungcheol grabs the laptop and saves the document, before shutting it down. “Sorry, I don’t like people looking at my work before it’s finished. It’s kind of like looking at a person when they don’t have their clothes on.”

          “You walk around half all the time,” Jihoon points out, blushing lightly at the memory of his roommate’s muscular figure. “You really have to bring your clothes into the bathroom with you.”

          “Not like you ever have girls over,” Seungcheol shrugs.

          “That’s because I’m gay,” Jihoon replies bluntly. “I’ve told you this before.”

          “Well, I, fine,” Seungcheol sighs, patting Jihoon on the head. “Sorry, anyways it only happened like, once!”

          “Whatever,” Jihoon blows his bangs out of his face, they were getting too long and he really needed to cut them. Maybe he’d be able to get Mingyu to do it for him. The boy, even though he was studying business, had a passion for hair styling (for reasons unknown to Jihoon) and would probably jump at the chance to practice on something that wasn’t fake hair. “Creative writing?”

          “I had an extra elective,” Seungcheol says quickly. “I’m in journalism anyways so I decided another writing course wasn’t going to kill me.”

          “I don’t know about you,” Jihoon relaxes into the coach, watching Seungcheol gather his papers. “But writing an essay a week would kill me.”

          “I don’t write an essay a week,” Seungcheol protests, carefully placing the papers into a folder and then putting that folder into a bag. “Besides, you’re studying music so it’s not like you have to write much.”

          “There’s a reason I chose music, other than the fact that I like it of course,” Jihoon sniffs. “Why are you so organized?”

          “I’m actually so unorganized it’s not even funny,” Seungcheol laughs. “I’m just organizing these because my editor is going to flip if they’re not clean, I swear to God he has OCD or something.”

          “Editor?” Jihoon narrows his eyes. “So you are writing a story?”

          “I can have an editor for a class no?” Seungcheol smiles at something only he understood before patting Jihoon on the head. “Now, are you going to tell me why you came home with such an angry face?”

          “Angry face?” Jihoon asks, a little surprised. “I didn’t have an angry face.”

          “Your eyes were scrunched together and your shirt is scrunched. You tend to pull on your shirt when you’re mad or stressed,” Seungcheol points out. “So don’t even try.”

          “Soonyoung made fun of me,” Jihoon sighs, not even bothering to ask why Seungcheol knew about his nervous ticks or habits. He had accepted a long time ago that Seungcheol paid way too much attention to people’s body language. When he had asked about it, Seungcheol had answered that ‘he liked to observe people because it helped him understand how people react under certain conditions’, whatever that meant.

          “Why?” Seungcheol presses, knowing that Jihoon didn’t like to share his troubles. Seungcheol knew, from experience, that bottling up one’s emotions wouldn’t help in the long run so he continued his interrogation even though Jihoon was slightly uncomfortable.

          “I don’t know, it’s stupid, don’t worry about it,” Jihoon mutters, crossing his feet and pulling on the bottom of his shirt.

          “You’re doing it again,” Seungcheol points out, looking at the bottom of Jihoon’s shirt pointedly (and trying not to stare at Jihoon’s now exposed collarbones). “It obviously means something to you, go ahead, I won’t judge.”

          “How do I know that?” Jihoon grumbles, glaring at Seungcheol (but removing his hands from his shirt).

          “Did I judge you when you said you were gay?” Seungcheol asks.

          “No, but you’re biual so it’d be hypocritical to judge me,” Jihoon remarks.

          “Do you have a sassy comeback for everything?”

          “ I might.”

          “Just tell me what’s wrong, please.”

          “Well, you know, how, I like to read right?” Jihoon finally says. “Well, I like a lot of different book series, and I’ve followed authors in the past and gone to their book signings and stuff but like, there’s this one particular author that I’ve been obsessed with lately. His writing style is really raw and I guess that could be seen as unprofessional but I think it works with the types of stories he writes. Plus, he’s near my age so it’s cool to see that someone young can articulate words so well.”

          “What kind of books does he write?” Seungcheol smiles slightly, before hiding it behind a cough. “I’ve seen so many of your books lying around that I don’t even know which one is for school and which one you read for fun.”

          “Fantasy mostly, but it’s cool because the characters in his books kind of go through the same struggles as teens our age, I’m not just saying things like ‘oh, woe me I can’t decide who to date!’ but more like, ‘I’m gay but society won’t accept my uality’ or ‘I don’t want to exist but I don’t want to die’, kind of thing... Does that even make sense?” Jihoon replies, face elated at the topic of his favourite book and author.

          “Yeah, I get it,” Seungcheol grins.

          “Why are you smiling like you know something I don’t?” Jihoon asks, confused.

          “Don’t worry about it,” Seungcheol tries to hide his smile but he can’t stop the grin spreading across his face. “It’s just cool to see you compliment someone so much. You’re usually so apathetic.”

          “Wow look at you and your fancy vocabulary,” Jihoon grumbles sarcastically, blushing.

          “A better word would’ve been ‘diction’ but the point was proven,” Seungcheol teases, causing Jihoon to smack him across the chest. “Anyways, who is this author? Maybe I’ll check him out – if he really is as good as you say.”

          “S.Coups, he’s writing under a penname,” Jihoon sighs, “which really because I’d like to meet him in person.”

          “And why can’t you?” Seungcheol drums his fingers on the table in amusement.

          “Because he’s never seen, he doesn’t want his photo on the back of the book and he’s never had a book signing even though he’s really popular,” Jihoon complains, leaning into the couch in his annoyance.

          “Well, I’m sure he appreciates his fans,” Seungcheol stands up with his laptop. “I’m going to a friend’s tomorrow so don’t worry about me. In any case, I think this ‘S.Coups’ fellow is really thankful for people like you.”

          “How do you know?” Jihoon asks skeptically.

          “Trust me,” Seungcheol smiles, “I have a knack for these things.”

          “, Jihoon, I have neighbours,” Soonyoung jumps at the sudden, piercing scream emitting from his bedroom. Wonwoo looks up from his phone and sends him a confused look, to which Soonyoung shrugs.

          “Maybe something bad happened?” Junhui suggests in accented Korean. “You should probably go check on him.”

          “Why me?” Soonyoung grumbles, but stands up anyways since he knew for certain that either Wonwoo or Junhui would ramble on about how Jihoon and Soonyoung were ‘best friends’ and that ‘Soonyoung you’ve known him the longest’. “Jihoon, what’s up?” Soonyoung sticks his head into his own room to see Jihoon sprawled on the floor, clutching the book he had bought that same day with, were those tears in his eyes?

          “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS,” Jihoon screeches, looking up at Soonyoung.

          “Jihoon I swear to God we should have put you into a psych ward years ago,” Soonyoung sighs, carefully approaching the rabid animal that was a fanboying Jihoon. “Does this have something to do with the books you bought today? The ones written by that S.Coups fellow?”

          “LOOK AT THIS,” Jihoon says as a reply, causing Soonyoung to sigh and roll his eyes. He took the book regardless, Jihoon was there when Soonyoung was fanboying over his favourite YouTube singer (Dokyeom), so he was obligated to deal with Jihoon’s fanboying.

          “Author’s note,” Soonyoung read out loud as Jihoon fell to the floor. “This book is dedicated to all my fans, especially to a certain someone who made me realize who exactly I’m writing for. Lots of love to Lee Jihoon.”

          “HE KNOWS ME,” Jihoon grabs Soonyoung by the shoulders and shakes the poor boy. “HE MENTIONED ME BY NAME. DOES THIS MEAN HE KNOWS ME? IS HE SOMEONE I KNOW? SOONYOUNG I NEED ANSWERS.”

          Sighing, Soonyoung pulls Jihoon into the living room and throws him onto the couch for Wonwoo and Junhui to deal with. He had accepted, since this morning when Jihoon burst into this room and forced Soonyoung to drive him to the bookstore at freaking 5 AM, that he’d have to deal with Jihoon’s fanboying; but he sure as hell wasn’t going to do it alone.

Tada~ Another JiCheol fic I write too much JiCheol tbh. It’s okay, I have a Meanie oneshot planned out! Meanie has been on my mind lately so yeah. I just wanted to write this first because it’s been in my head ever since I finished writing Bachelor in a Bind. SeventeenCarrot actually left a comment on that chapter that sparked this fic idea into my mind so thanks very much! I dedicate this fic to you since you technically inspired it.

I feel like Jihoon isn’t one to fanboy but if anyone in Seventeen were to fanboy over a book I’m 90% it’d be him. Just my own thinking though. *shrugs* Not like I fangirl over books too haha... Don’t judge me this is a judgement free zone! Anyways, I laughed for years over the “, I might” line you don’t even understand xD

This is also crossposted on my Tumblr and AO3.

Once again, thanks for reading and I do not own anything in this story other than the idea and plot, any similarities to other works of fiction are purely coincidental or have been used as sources of inspiration. Please do not repost this anywhere without my permission; plagiarism isn’t nice!

Hope you’re smiling!

~ Alateni

PS: Thanks to keaves1019, SeventeenCarrot, galaxytaos, and Kasaiii- for upvoting!!