Chapter One: Dumb, stupid curiosity

Jisoo knocked politely on the door of Jihoon's studio, coming in after getting an affirmative mumble from the boy within. He sat down at his side, frowning as he inspected his profile. Jihoon looked like . He had, for the past week or so at least. Most of the other members had dismissed it as being work related stress, and after receiving less than appreciative responses to concern in the past, they left their producing idol to work it out himself. Of course, they cared about him, but generally when Jihoon got like this it was more helpful to cheer from the sidelines than try to therapize him directly.

Any other time, Jisoo would have done the same. This time, though, he could tell it wasn’t just the pressure of his responsibility that was eating away at him. When Jihoon was stressed about work, he was moody, and irritable, on the constant verge of smashing his computer to dust with a hammer along with the rest of the members. This wasn’t the case, and today had been the day when it all came to light. Jisoo had sat from the couch and watched the younger trudge over to the fridge, a rare little sparkle of excitement in his eyes as he opened it up.

He peered in, searching, and as that light in his eyes faded, Seungkwan had come up behind Jihoon with an apologetic frown.

“I’m sorry, Hyung!” he clapped his hands together, Jihoon turning towards him with a quirked eyebrow.

“Did you?-”

Seungkwan answered before he could get another word out. “Yes! I’m sorry, I didn’t know that cake was yours. I’m sorry! I’ll buy you a new one, I promise.” His eyes were pleading, frightened, but he was fully prepared for the events to come. Jihoon would curse him out, smack him, scold him, and demand twice the cakes he originally had. Seokmin was behind them, apparently standing as the mediator in case thing’s got gory, although he hardly looked confident in getting between them.

Jihoon opened his mouth, and Seungkwan flinched. Instead of yelling, though, the shorter boy simply sighed, shoulders slumping as if he had given up on a response.

“It’s okay.”

Seungkwan was left wide-eyed and bumbling for a good minute or so, and in the meantime Jihoon had slinked back into his studio without another word. When the initial shock had passed, Seungkwan cheered along with Seokmin, equally surprised, and glad to be out of the doghouse so quickly.

Jisoo, still watching, was not so relieved. Something was very wrong with their Jihoon, and what’s worse was he seemed to be the only member who realized.

Seungkwan and Seokmin were relieved, he supposed. The others had diverted their attention elsewhere to stay out of the confrontation. That alone was concerning enough, but Jisoo couldn’t blame them for wanting to avoid a moody Jihoon.

He got up from where he was sitting, not bothering to answer when Seokmin called after him in question. What was important to him right now, was to get to the bottom of this mystery.

~

Jihoon stared at the computer screen for a long time, playing the short clip of arrangements he had managed to piece together despite his lack of inspiration. He played this 30 second melody over and over again, hoping if he listened enough, the next sequence would flow through his mind naturally. Instead, he picked out every single flaw in the piece until he couldn’t bear to listen to it again. Dragging a box across the screen in one fluid motion, Jihoon deleted it.

There was no use in him denying it to himself, he was feeling low. It had been a month since the last time they’d had a fan meeting, concert, v-live-whatever. This next comeback was going to be big, and the company didn’t want to risk any spoilers leaking through the slippery tongues of his bandmates. That in its own was a logical idea, and it gave the fans a sense of suspense. It was the hype they needed, but… The point was, he hadn’t interacted with fans for FAR too long, and he was starting to feel the effects.

He was sure he had talked about it before, his fan’s gave him confidence, they inspired him, more literally than he could ever emphasize. Without being able to hear their encouragement for so long, was frankly making him depressed. The things he cared about were becoming vaguely distant to him, and what’s worse was he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what to do about this song.

Hearing a knock at the door, Jihoon straightened up as if he was working, despite the blank screen. “Come in.”

Jisoo sat next to him, staring intently at the side of his face. It felt awkward, but Jihoon wasn’t really feeling up to kicking him out over such a small thing. “Did you need something?”

Jisoo swallowed audibly. “You okay, Jihoonie?”

“Yeah, fine, why?” He avoided looking at him, and began clicking on audio tracks absentmindedly in an attempt to appear busy.

“You sure? Cause, you just a put bunch of your ‘Aaow’ adlibs onto a blank song” Jihoon’s hand froze, his face flushing with embarrassment. Damn Jisoo for being so attentive. Pulling off his headphones, Jihoon turned towards the older with a frown.

The look on Jihoon’s face was answer enough for him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m fine… I should work.”

“Jihoon.” He stared hard, an aura of seriousness shooting lasers through Jihoon’s shifting gaze. Eventually, he was forced to up his pride and let it go.

Jihoon didn’t cry when he was explained how he was feeling, not that Jisoo had expected him to. He was surprised, though, seeing Jihoon open up like that. He supposed it was just because he was the first one to take initiative. Usually Jeonghan or Seungcheol were the ones who Jihoon talked to about his problems.

“I just don’t know what to do… I feel like without hearing back from my fans, I’ll never get the inspiration to write… But, if I don’t finish this album, I’m never going to see them again.” Jihoon pulled his knees up on his desk chair, burying his face between them with an weak sigh.

Jisoo ran a comforting hand along his back, thinking for a moment. His eyes trailed to the computer screen as a lightbulb lit in his mind. “Oh, I’ve got it.”

Jihoon raised his head in question, expectance behind his sad brown eyes.

“Why don’t you just, search yourself online?” He continued with a bright smile. “Compared to the ones in real life, I’d say online fans are the next best thing.”

Jihoon deadpanned. “Are you kidding me?” That was the stupidest idea he had ever heard. The stupidest, most tempting idea he had ever considered.

“Really! I do it all the time, like, look at #Joshua on twitter. Fans post art, and nice messages, I think in the least it could help you get your confidence back… I mean, if you gave it a try.” Jisoo ran a hand through his hair, looking embarrassed. For good reason, too.

“Isn’t the, I don’t know, most constant advice our manager gives us ‘don’t look yourselves up online!’” Jihoon mocked in a deep voice, attempting to imitate their manager.

“And why did he tell us that, Jihoon?”

Jihoon thought about if for a moment, his mouth opening as if anticipating his own response. He had actually never thought about it, though… Why couldn’t they?

Jisoo watched Jihoon’s mouth clasp into a thin line, defeatedly unable to answer. He chuckled. “He think’s we’ll get upset if we see ‘sensitive content’ or something. It’s really not that bad, though.” Jihoon quirked an eyebrow. “I find you have to dig pretty deep to find the haters, and the weird stuff.”

“Yeah, I’d kind of rather not take the risk.”

Jisoo sighed, his smile persisting. “You’re probably the only one who takes our managers advice seriously. Ask anyone in the group, and I bet you they’ve done it at least once.” Jihoon’s eyes were contemplating, despite putting on a front of ‘I could care less.’

“How would you know?”

Jisoo smirked, a kind of mischievous expression he wasn’t used to seeing against the lips of his most kind-hearted hyung. “Let’s just say you’re not the first person I’ve given advice to.” With that Jihoon gazed dumbfounded, almost annoyed that he hadn’t been introduced to this revelation earlier.

Wait! He wasn’t really considering this, was he? It was stupid! And pretty conceited, looking himself up online to make him feel better…

Jisoo watched the shorter boy gnaw at his bottom lip in contemplation. He stifled a laugh. Hopefully, at least he had succeeded in cheering him up a bit.

Jihoon watched as Jisoo got up from the spot beside him, ducking his head when a hand came up to ruffle his hair teasingly. “Anyways, just consider it. It might be more helpful than you’d think.” He’d better leave Jihoon to figure out the rest. Jisoo started to leave, holding onto the feeling of giddiness in his chest from being able to help.

“Hey, hyung?” Jisoo stopped at the door. “Uh, thanks.”

Jisoo smiled adoringly. “Anytime.”

­~

It had been an hour after Jisoo left, an hour of Jihoon biting his nails to a nub and staring at the search engine he had up on his studio laptop. Why was he so nervous about this? Did he think he was going to find out the whole online world hates him and wishes him dead? Oh god, what if…

He knocked a fist against the side of his head a few times. He was being stupid, there was no way to find out unless he actually tried this out. Jihoon popped the joints in his fingers quickly, before typing in his name into the search engine.

Not unexpectedly, the question of his height popped up right away. He rolled his eyes and ignored that, looking among the recommended search suggestions. Spotting ‘woozi looks like suga,’ he groaned. This wasn’t helping at all. He settled with just searching his name alone.

He looked at a couple of the first things that popped up. He clicked on a news article forum, but immediately pressed the back button when his eye caught an article about that wardrobe malfunction from the don’t wanna cry era. Geeze! Why was it so scandalous that one of his s were showing!?

Remembering what Jisoo had said, he scrolled through #Woozi on twitter next.

A single scroll and Jihoon found his frown fading, replaced by a dumb grin that he wouldn’t dare show anybody else. Holy hell Joshua was right, this was amazing! He had searched in English, so not everything made sense, but nonetheless it felt so nice to see everything they had created for him. There was fanart, and pictures of him. He could make out what words he knew like ‘love,’ ‘cute’, the occasional ‘y.” He found himself laughing quietly into the palm of his hand. As much as he hated to be called cute, when it came from fan’s, it was almost endearing.

He stopped at a photo someone had drawn, of him, Seungcheol and Hoshi standing together. “Leader line” they called it, pretty cute. In the tags of the photo however, there was one word which caught his attention.

What was #Jicheol?

Shrugging it off, he kept scrolling, looking through the posts with glee, although he couldn’t help but be distracted.

The photo’s which had the tag were rare, but they were noticeable, and Jihoon deducted one constant trend in the #Jicheol posts.

They all had him and Seungcheol together.

Of course, he saw things like soonhoon too, but that made sense. His managers were always encouraging the members to have a kinda, sorta, not really, ambiguous ‘thing’ with another member, for fanservice or something. He sorta did it with Soonyoung, not too willingly. Joshua Seungcheol and Jeonghan often did that together… Seungkwan with Vernon, it was all part of the job, he supposed.

So, the soonhoon pictures made sense to him, as embarrassing as it was to admit that. What didn’t make sense was, why the hell was Jicheol a thing?

He tried to ignore it, he really did, but the more he scrolled the more he began to notice it. Why?? They were just standing next to each other! Usually he would brush this kind of stuff off as a few delusional fangirls, but it was so consistant! Jihoon shoved his headphones off, making sure nobody was walking past his studio. It was late, so the other members should be sleeping by now.

With a frustrated breath of air, Woozi entered #jicheol into the search bar.

His face was turning red with every plunge deeper into this mess. There were a few cutesy edits of their selfies together, some innocent photo’s. His heart plummeted in his chest when he examined an incredibly detailed fanart of him and Seungcheol as ‘the phantom of the opera.’ What was it? What did they do that made so many fans think this way? It’s not as if they had been trying to get this kind of a reaction!

His deduction skills would not be able to assess the situation through twitter alone. He needed to go deeper…. He needed to go to youtube.

He leaned his head from side to side, cracking the tension in his neck before he began his search.

The recommended searches were enough to bring a flush to his cheeks alone. Kiss?? Wedding? Since when did they… oh.

Predebut! That had to be the reason. They had been pretty damn close before they debuted. He remembered the kisses, the cuddling, that damn wedding announcement, but that stuff had been the comfort they’d created in the midst of their coping. Being there for each other since the beginning had made training their way into stardom much easier to deal with. Of course, it had been nothing more than two kids innocently joking around, though.

After debut it was only natural that they’d grown out of it. They were adults, they couldn’t just go around landing platonic kisses on each other for the whole world to see.

Jihoon could understand how his fans might misinterpreted that, though. Feeling more confident now, Jihoon pressed enter.

What he saw made his jaw tighten. There was plenty of #jicheol video’s from predebut, sure, but far too much of it was recent. What kind of stuff had these people leached onto and called romantic? Curiously, frustratingly, Jihoon began to watch any video’s he could find.

A lot of them were the duet’s they had sung, song’s they had been bonding over since before debut. Some of them were simple edits of cheesy song’s and cheaply suggestive photographs. He scoffed, but before he could start deciding his fans were completely delusional, Jihoon began to doubt even himself.

He begrudgingly watched the video’s where all the member had to kiss him, paying specific attention to the endearingly expectant grin Seungcheol held behind him. The way he would wrap his hands around his head and press his lips against his hair softly. It wasn’t Just once that it had happened, each time Seungcheol would stand behind him with a big dumb smile on his face, and aim right for the head or neck. Never his face, Jihoon would have noticed his expression then.

When His back was turned to Seungcheol, his friend’s face was often caught looking unfamiliar to him.

Wait, where did they get this video!

He watched the secret camera footage one of his snoopy staff members must have taken, those crazy women! They were just talking, sitting next to each other… Seungcheol was just, leaning his head one him, and stuff.

It was just them being friend’s, but why was everyone saying they were an ‘off-camera couple’?

That does it! His fans were delusional! Jihoon’s eyebrows nearly connected as hard as he was furrowing them together. Despite the resolution he had decided, his clicking didn’t stop. Video after video, he caught thing’s he’d never noticed before. He wasn’t really one to pay attention to these sorts of thing’s, honestly. Quite a few video’s accused Mingyu of supporting this affair. He does tease them a lot, but it’s just Mingyu’s thing, he’d been teasing them since the day they met.

He watched a few pre-debut video’s, feeling his annoyance slipping as he reminisced in old times. He caught himself with a small smile as he watched him and Seungcheol sleep on each others shoulders, holding Samuel against him. Jihoon remembered that he hadn’t been sleeping that day, he wasn’t even tired, he’d just wanted to sit by Seungcheol’s side at that time. Their friendship back then had been so sickeningly cute, he nearly gagged.

Video after video after that, every touch, every kiss, each little glance was engraved in Jihoon’s mind. The clock read 3am, and he hadn’t even begun to get the hang of this song, not to mention get a wink of sleep. Not wishing to trudge back to the dorm, Jihoon lay on the couch beside his studio chair, attempting to rub his eyes to remove the images playing over in his head. One thing was nagging him, even though he was pretty ing sure he was just being delusional, ‘cause it was 3am, and he’d spent the last 4 hours looking at this conspiracy theory on the internet. He just couldn’t shake the question, no matter how much he reminded himself that it was stupid… But,

Since when had Seungcheol looked at him like that?

A/N Just a short little band fic cause I love canon Au's hahaha

https://twitter.com/gehenna1986 link to the jicheol fanart I mentioned <3