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The first time he sees it, Gyuvin can't really blame anybody but himself. His curiosity had gotten the best of him, and he’d found himself going into the deepest rabbit holes, ones he hadn't even known existed.
He’d always had an unspoken rule, as did most of the other members, to not google their own name. To save themselves from seeing the potential hate, or all the weird things people on the internet say about them, with absolutely no shame.
(Why does everyone want to eat Zhang Hao? Gyuvin still doesn't understand. Does Hao really look that edible?)
They call it protecting their peace, staying off of the deeper corners of the internet.
Gyuvin didn't mean to, really. Even though it is his fault, he didn't mean to find the fanfiction of himself. Honestly, it isn't even entirely his fault. He’d been on Twitter, and someone had posted a screenshot of their screen time, displaying that they’d been on a website called AO3 for– eight hours? In one day?
Cue the private Safari tabs, the secret googling under his blanket hours after midnight, to be completely sure that no one will catch him on whatever this website must be.
He'd expected something unbelievable, like the craziest porn he’d ever seen, or maybe something on the opposite end of the spectrum, like a compilation of cute cat videos. Those were the only things he could think of, in his little teenage boy mind, as to why they would've been on one website for eight hours in one day.
Fanfiction doesn't even cross his mind. And he realizes it should have, given that the foundation of the internet is teenage girls that live their lives (and their delusions) on their phones, but fanfiction hadn't even begun to cross his mind.
He does end up giving up his email and making an account for this website. And then he looks through the normal, book series and movies and the occasional anime. He won't lie, he finds stories that are so good it makes him want these characters in real relationships. He reads stories that are so long they feel like they become the real canon, and he can't get them out of his head when he ends up consuming the real media.
Gyuvin finds he has a new understanding of the idea of fanon, because– he understands.
And that’s how it is, the first couple of days. Then, three nights ago, he’d done what he’d been avoiding the entire time he’d been on the website.
Gyuvin started searching for real people. In this case, it was other groups, because of his morbid curiosity. He wanted to see if these idols he’d looked up to for years had fallen victim to weird characterizations and the most heartbreaking, angsty backgrounds he’s ever had the (dis)pleasure of reading.
They had fallen victim.
Every single group he searches up.
Thousands. Some tens of thousands, some hundreds of thousands.
One night after he stays up until five in the morning reading one of the most soul crushing fanfictions about Ateez, one of those secrets he thinks he might have to take to the grave, he does what he never should’ve done.
He searches up his own name.
Kim Gyuvin, he types into the search bar.
There is a breath stealing moment of suspense, when the wifi freezes and he’s stuck on the loading screen for just a moment longer than he should be, and he almost falls out of bed in his panic to fix it.
It loads a second later.
There are hundreds of fics that include him.
He stays up all night. Literally all night. He sits on his bed, hunched over his phone, reading through what feels like hundreds and hundreds of fanfictions that mention his dear members.
He smiles at the mentions of trainees from Boys Planet. He misses a lot of them, and he doesn't mind that they're included in the stories he reads. It's like a fun little easter egg.
For his sanity, he thinks of it as baby steps. Gyuvin has started out with fictional people, as fanfiction was intended for. Then real people who he didn't know. Then real people he did know.
The last thing left was himself.
He knew he should never have done it. He was too new to all of this, and he never would’ve been able to separate the fanfiction from reality. He knew this.
And yet, he finds himself adopting the personality they give him in these little fanfictions, a couple thousand words that are the equivalent of liquid gold and crack cocaine all in one.
He usually stays on the date updated tag.
(Gyuvin wishes he could say it was a choice, but until two nights ago, he didn't even know what filtering was. He’s still new to all this, alright?)
Usually, it’s all Hanbin and Hao. Gyuvin wishes he could say he was surprised, but honestly. Even he wonders if Hao and Hanbin are secretly dating sometimes, and he’s a part of the group. Gyuvin lives with them, and he wonders if he’s missing something, sometimes.
Occasionally, there’ll be one about Matthew and Jiwoong. Understandable, Gyuvin will nod to himself before deciding if he’ll give it a read or not.
Far too often, they’re all word porn. (He’ll later realize that it’s referred to as smut.)
Everyone on this website is consistently horny, and Gyuvin is too embarrassed to read it. He has boundaries too, y’know. He doesn't mind the heavy angst, reading about Hanbin dying a painful death while Hao is left to live out the rest of his life alone, never able to love again, hurting Gyuvin so bad he had to sleep in Hanbin’s bed that night, almost crying himself to sleep, just to remind himself Hanbin was still alive and well.
But he draws the line at word porn.
—
A few weeks into this new discovery of fanfiction websites and common fanfiction tropes (Gyuvin’s personal favorite is enemies to lovers, though he’s also a sucker for tattoo and flower shop AU’s), he has a realization.
He comes across a fanfiction about himself.
See, he’s used to seeing himself in the characters. Kim Gyuvin, comma, another member. It’s all normal.
Seeing himself in the relationship tag is much less common.
In fact, this is his first one.
It’s about him and Ricky.
Gyuvin does not have a crush on Ricky.
He clicks on it, out of morbid curiosity.
It's a story about them in high school, as next door neighbors. They become friends, and slowly lovers, until Ricky has to leave, and then they become long distance lovers, until they drift. (Gyuvin does shed a few tears when Fanfic-Ricky leaves Fanfic-Gyuvin. Just because the writing is very emotion provoking.) Then they meet again in university, and they rekindle an old friendship, and an old flame, and fall back in love.
It’s a very sweet story, Gyuvin won't lie. It’s a good introduction to GyuRicky.
Until after he finishes it, clicks the little heart button at the bottom of the screen, and reality of what he’s just done sets in.
Like post nut clarity, but instead– post fanfiction clarity.
Gyuvin just read a fanfiction about him and Ricky being in love. And liked it. And left a kudos at the end.
The guilt haunts him, and he has trouble sleeping that night.
—
The guilt is still there, everytime he sees Ricky. Gyuvin keeps thinking about that fanfic, about how sweet they were together. How wholesome they were together.
He sees Ricky's platinum blond hair, and all of a sudden all he can think about is what it would feel like to run his fingers through them.
Ricky has a tendency to wear rings, and it isn't a new habit, but all of a sudden, all Gyuvin notices is now they make his fingers look longer and prettier, and how Ricky actually has very nice hands.
“What?” Ricky is staring at him, eyebrow raised, in all his platinum blond glory.
“What?” Nobody heard Gyuvin stuttering.
“You've been zoned out staring at me for the past thirty seconds.” Ricky smirks. “Do you like me?”
Ricky has always been flirty. He’s just like that, speaks without thinking, and if he says something a little too crazy he’ll blame it on the language barrier.
(He’d wiggled his eyebrows at Gyuvin having a popsicle last month. And then, in response to everyone yelling at him, claimed it wasn't his fault because he was Chinese and he was living in a foreign country and everybody was plotting against him. The problem was that no words had been spoken, even between Gyuvin and Ricky, so what language barrier was there, really?)
“I don't like you.”
Usually, Gyuvin will play along. He probably would’ve said something like ‘you wish’, or laughed it off, even. Now, his voice is too serious, and even Ricky looks at him weird, squinting.
“Yeah, obviously you don't,” Ricky squints at him, again. And then he takes his bowl of cereal and shoves a few more chocolate bars in his pockets and leaves.
—
Gyuvin goes down an even worse rabbit hole, reading GyuRicky fics. Maybe they know Ricky better than he does, because now he can’t even be around Ricky without picking up on all the little habits that have been mentioned in fanfictions before.
(In his defense, this doesn’t only happen with Ricky; he’s also noticed the way Hao says sorry in english after messing up a word in Korean.)
But now he keeps thinking about Ricky’s hair, and whether it really feels as soft as it looks.
Late at night, with the moon his only witness, he wonders if Ricky kisses as good as all the fanfics seem to think he would.
Maybe he would. Ricky spent multiple years in the States, so maybe he lived recklessly like how their characters seem to in fanfics. (Has Ricky ever snuck out of his room in the middle of the night to meet up with his friends? That seems like one of those things Gyuvin has only heard of in books and movies, something he never would’ve gotten away with if he actually tried it.)
Gyuvin has never really brought up their love lives with any of the other members, especially not Ricky.
—
The opportunity presents itself one day, when everyone else is out of the house, and Gyuvin and Ricky are alone at home. They’re lounging in Gyuvin’s room, pretending to be interested in the video game they’re both playing.
“Ricky?”
Ricky hums.
“You lived in America, right?”
“For a couple years, yeah. Why?”
“...Did you date a lot of girls?”
Ricky stares at him. “Why are you asking?”
“I’m just curious, I guess.” Gyuvin is trying his best not to squirm, and make himself look more suspicious than before.
“I mean, a lot of girls liked me, if that’s what you wanna know.” He pauses. “I dated a few of them. They didn’t really last.”
They’re sitting in front of the tv in Gyuvin’s room, Gyuvin on the edge of the bed, Ricky next to his feet on the floor.
So Ricky looking up at him, leaning his head back on the bed, and basically in Gyuvin’s lap, feels far more intimate than it probably should.
“Why do you ask?” Ricky asks him this, his platinum blond splayed out on Gyuvin’s knee, his eyes full and open and way different than usual, and Gyuvin’s hands are twitching to touch his hair, to feel it.
So he does.
He runs his hands through Ricky’s hair, feeling all the way to the scalp, spreading it out even more on Gyuvin’s knees and in his lap, and Ricky–
Ricky just closes his eyes and lets it happen.
Gyuvin is glad he does, because Ricky’s hair is just as soft as it looks, is somehow not severely bleach damaged, and Gyuvin wouldn’t mind doing this for the rest of his life, really.
And then Ricky opens his eyes, and Gyuvin really wishes he could pull the foreigner card, because he cannot remember a single word in the history of all languages right now.
(If Ricky were in his head, which thank god he isn’t, he would probably say ‘Sorry, I forgot’. And make Gyuvin contemplate shooting himself in the face.)
“Why’d you ask about my girlfriends?”
“I just wanted to know.” Gyuvin falls back on his bed, somewhat for dramatic effect, but also because this means he doesn’t have to look Ricky in the eyes when he talks. “Living in America seems so different from here. So I just wanted to know if you did stuff like that there.”
And Gyuvin is fine, in his own personal space, until Ricky gets up and crawls next to Gyuvin, until they’re both face up, staring at the ceiling.
“America is pretty different.” Ricky pauses, and Gyuvin doesn’t say anything, the tension in the room dropping, darkening. “Um. Only Hao knows, so don’t say anything, but– about the dates.”
And then Ricky pauses again, and Gyuvin turns to look at him, completely curious now.
“America is a lot more, um. Open? Maybe accepting is the right word? But they’re better than here, so– I went on dates with guys, too. It’s a lot less weird, over there.”
The tension in the room freezes over, Gyuvin trying to decipher what this means.
“Oh.”
“...Yeah.” Ricky is staring at him again.
“That’s… really cool, dude.” Gyuvin smiles, a little bit. “I don’t, like, hate you, or anything. Thanks for telling me.”
“Sure.” And then it’s a little bit awkward, and Gyuvin’s brain is still swimming, but he does what he does best to diffuse the tension: fuck around.
“Did more girls like you or more guys?”
“More girls publicly. But a lot of guys would act like they hated gay people and then get a little wasted and immediately start talking about my luscious blond locks, so. I’m sure there were a lot more guys that I don’t know about.”
“Did you, like, committedly date guys or girls?”
“Why are you so invested in my dating life? I dated a lot more girls as, like, a one-off kinda thing. I dated a few guys, those were usually at least two or three dates. But I’ve never had a super committed kind of thing at all.”
“It’s interesting! You’re so American when you talk about it. Just like all the movies me and Yujin watch.” Gyuvin stares at him, and then a lightbulb goes off over his head. “Can I see pictures when you weren’t blond?”
And then Gyuvin spends the next hour until everyone else comes home looking at pictures of Ricky with red hair, chains around his neck and earrings dangling, and he is so immensely jealous of the American soil that got to witness this version of Quanrui Shen.
—
The problem with having secrets is that they’re meant to be told, and Gyuvin can keep it in no longer.
So he ends up spilling it all to Hao one morning, while Hao does his morning skincare and Hanbin brushes his teeth, and Gyuvin sits on the counter and watches.
“Basically, I accidentally discovered fanfiction, but people write fanfiction about us, and I read one about me and Ricky and now I physically can’t stop reading them and I think I’m starting to develop a crush on Ricky because of it and the timing is so bad and the circumstances are terrible and I don’t know what to do.”
Hanbin and Hao stare at him, silently, unmoving, and the silence is so severe that Gyuvin wishes he’d told any of the others. But Hanbin and Hao seemed the least dangerous.
Jiwoong is, unfortunately, too old to understand what fanfiction even is. Matthew would’ve exposed Gyuvin to the rest of the group with a storytime, Taerae would’ve told Matthew, Gunwook would’ve told Yujin, and Yujin probably would’ve gone ahead and told Ricky himself.
Hao and Hanbin might severely judge him, but that seems to be far better than the others, right?
“What does discovered fanfiction mean? Like you didn’t know it existed prior to this?”
“I knew it existed. I’d just never read it. Especially about myself.”
“You like Ricky?”
“I can't stop thinking about his hair and his hands and his past relationships and I kind of always wanna be around him so… I think I do.”
“I hate gay people, though.” Hao tells him this with a completely straight face, and Gyuvin kicks him in the knee from where he’s sitting.
“You hate gay people?” Gyuvin stares at Hanbin and Hao’s matching pajamas. “The call is coming from inside the house, Hao.”
And then Hao shoves him off the sink. “If you like him, tell him. What’s the worst that can happen, anyways?”
“Right back at you, Hao.” Gyuvin wiggles his eyebrows, Hao almost throws his toothbrush at him, and Hanbin chokes on his mouthwash, and then Gyuvin hauls ass and runs out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
—
Over the past weeks, since Gyuvin went ham on running his hands through Ricky’s hair, they’ve evolved into being closer, physically. Ricky’s formed a new habit of sitting on the floor in front of Gyuvin, and (not) subtly leaning back, until Gyuvin takes a hint and starts playing with his hair again.
They’re too embarrassed to be more open about it, so the most Ricky will do is sit next to Gyuvin, legs crossed so their knees touch on the couch, and Gyuvin will play with Ricky’s sleeves where they lay on both of their knees.
—
Matthew is the first to notice, when they're having their weekly movie night. (Every Friday, they pick a movie, rotating who gets to pick. Ricky loves horror. Gyuvin hates romance. They're a good match.)
“Why are you guys so close?” Matthew is smiling, but there is something threatening about it. His teeth look especially sharp today, like Venom.
“We aren't.” Ricky’s a good actor, Gyuvin will give him that.
“You are almost in his lap.” Yujin is the one that says this, and for the first time in his life since he’s met Yujin, Gyuvin has feelings towards him that aren't complete love. He squints at him, hoping he’ll take a hint. “What? Gyuvin, why are you looking at me like that? I’m just saying! You're, like, basically in his lap right now.”
He doesn't take the hint.
And then Gyuvin looks down, and– well, they're not– they're definitely closer than a couple of bros would be.
(Gyuvin’s knee is piled on top of Ricky’s, so far that Gyuvin himself is tilted a little bit to the side, and Ricky’s hand is possessively on top of both of their knees.)
Well. Gyuvin might as well own it, right?
So he lies his head on Ricky’s shoulder, which is a more than a little uncomfortable given their position right now, and– he absolutely fucking milks it.
“We aren't that close. What are you guys talking about?” Gyuvin even adds the head tilt to his scrunched eyebrows, which is a lot harder to do with Ricky’s shoulders of steel in his way, and he just prays and hopes and dreams that Ricky will back him up.
“Yeah, we're always like this.” Thank God. Thank Ricky. Gyuvin could kiss him right now. Ricky pauses before he opens his mouth, and Gyuvin braces himself for the absolute chaos that is about to ensue from whatever leaves his mouth. “Are you guys just saying this because I’m Chinese? And you guys are all Korean? I can't believe you would do this to someone just because they're not from the same country as you.”
Cue the groaning, the immediate defending and apologies, and the as quick as possible moving on to pick a movie.
They end up watching a movie where the guy dies at the end. Gyuvin is glad for his position now, because he can hide his face in Ricky’s shoulder, and cry his heart out.
“I didn't know,” Taerae sniffles. “It looked like a cute coming of age movie. I didn't expect him to die.”
And then they have to go to sleep, but Ricky pulls at Gyuvin’s sleeve when he tries to get up, and they both end up conveniently alone while everyone else goes to sleep.
Until Hao pokes his head in.
“Don't do anything weird, okay? This is a communal couch. If anything, do it in your own room.” He pauses. “We can always wash bedsheets. Not so
much leather couches.”
Gyuvin dies of mortification. Ricky’s ears turn bright red. Neither of them say anything.
“Should we go on a drive?” Ricky asks him this, Gyuvin’s left hand in his hair, the other in Ricky's hand.
“You can drive?”
“You haven't seen my license?” Ricky reaches into his wallet, and of course he pulls out the most attractive, godly, unreal picture of himself Gyuvin has ever seen, printed onto a cheap piece of plastic.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Like it?” Ricky's smirking again, pokes Gyuvin in the cheek, and watches Gyuvin’s whole being become about three degrees hotter than it previously had been.
—
Gyuvin definitely has the fattest crush on Ricky that anyone has ever had, in the history of all crushes that have ever existed. He knows this, as he watches Ricky’s eyes when he drives, as he stares at the bracelets that bump into each other when he makes a turn, and when he sees the way Ricky’s blond hair looks in the moonlight.
(Gyuvin wonders if Ricky's shampoo has glitter in it. That's how pretty the moon makes it look.)
And then they sit on the roof of the car, and stare at the stars, hours past midnight.
“Why are we out here?” Gyuvin asks him this, and tries not to stare at his hair again. Or his hands. Or his rings. Or his broad shoulders.
“You're staring so hard. I don't know. I just wanted to show you the stars, I guess.”
For someone who’s always evoking the foreigner card, Ricky has a surprisingly sweet way with words.
“I mean, I’m already a star, but y’know. The natural kind, too.”
…Never mind.
“Ricky.”
“Mhm.”
“I think I like you.”
Silence.
“Ricky?”
“I heard you.” Pause. “Let me think.”
“Okay.”
It’s very nerve wracking, actually. Gyuvin doesn't really mind being kindly rejected, but he might have to rethink things if Ricky is really mean to him about it.
“Why?” Ricky is looking at him now, and the stars in his eyes rival those behind him.
“Why what?”
“Why do you like me?”
“Do you want the honest answer or the poetic one?”
Ricky stares at him. “Honest first, please.”
“I read fanfiction about us and then I realized I like you.”
“You read… fanfiction… about us… and you realized you liked me…?”
“Yes…”
“You're the stupidest person I think I’ve ever met.”
—
They go home, a couple hours later. And then realize they forgot to bring house keys, and they have to wait around on the porch while Ricky calls Hao and very politely asks him to open the door for them.
(A new trick, Gyuvin has realized, is that Ricky will speak Chinese whenever he wants something from Hao. It pulls at the cultural heart strings, apparently.)
Gyuvin does wince at the tone of Hao's words, which he can hear from all the way over here, and at Ricky's lips, pressed together, and his eyes almost closed like a defense tactic, while he takes the scolding like a child.
And then Gyuvin hears shuffling as Hao finally comes downstairs, at five in the morning, and he’s also on the verge of falling asleep, leaning against Ricky.
And his broad shoulders.
And then Ricky grabs his face and presses a kiss to his lips, one that lasts about half a second and lets Gyuvin process absolutely nothing, and Gyuvin’s brain is on fire, sparking and lighting up.
“What- why?”
“It’s not like we’ll be able to do that inside, will we?” Ricky steps to the side, hands crossed behind his back, now a good foot away from Gyuvin, and Gyuvin wonders if he’s losing his mind a little bit.
And as if Hao had waited for the moment for Ricky to say his line, just so he could have the last word, Hao opens the door, leaning against the door frame, and his eyes are so murderous that neither of them can look each other in the eyes anymore.