Work Text:
Minho doesn’t search his name online.
Not on Naver, not on Google, not on any SNS platform. In his young and dumb days, he would. Often. Any idols who claim they’ve never searched themselves are lying, after all. But to last in the industry, you must either learn to maintain healthy boundaries or develop a healthy enough ego to not care what strangers say about you online.
Minho went down the first path, and thus: he doesn’t search his name online.
So it’s Taemin’s fault that he reads the fanfiction.
minkey is surging up the fic charts, Taemin sends to the members’ group chat, totally unprompted. He follows this message with, great results from the propaganda campaign and then a link to what Minho presumes is a fanfiction website.
The notifications flash across Minho’s phone screen, interrupting the football highlights reel Minho is watching during his cool-down jog. He removes his phone from the treadmill’s charging station, swiping the screen with his sweaty thumb to pause the sports clips and navigate to the group chat.
Kibum replies before Minho manages to type anything.
My Dear Kibumie: The audacity of you sending this when you haven’t responded to any of the last dozen messages about actually important stuff
My Dear Taeminie: i’m still thinking about the song options, we’re not meeting until next week anyway
My Dear Kibumie: Also don’t call it a propaganda campaign, it’s just normal fanservice for promotions
My Dear Taeminie: sure hyung all part of the job
My Dear Kibumie: I like it better when you pretend to forget this group chat exists
What do you mean surging up the fic charts?
My Dear Kibumie: Don’t encourage him
My Dear Taeminie: the fans have been busy writing lately! just look
My Dear Kibumie: Don’t look
My Dear Jinki Hyung: Why are we talking about fanfiction at six in the morning
Minho doesn’t look, not at first. He finishes his cool-down, wipes the treadmill clean, and hits the showers. After he’s changed clothes and sat down with his post-workout snack, he opens the group chat again. Taemin’s link glows blue, hovering above Kibum’s admonishment.
It’s a bad habit, but Minho always wants to do whatever Kibum says he shouldn’t. He looks.
Minho knows about fanfiction, of course. In his young and dumb days, he used to check the fanfiction websites too during his vanity searches. Sometimes. He scanned the summaries, curious about what people might write about him but too tired to actually read any when he also had homework and work-work to attend. Just the summaries were enough. He quickly got the idea that some of the stories were just fun scenarios with little-to-no relation to his actual life, some were wish-fulfillment fantasies, and some were explicit fantasies.
From what he remembers, there weren’t many stories about him and Kibum back then.
That’s changed.
Minho scrolls through the recently posted fanfictions while Jinjoo trims his hair, skimming the details of each. There’s a mix of different stories, but it’s his and Kibum’s names that appear most often.
Kibum is a chef, and Minho is a food critic—someone wrote what looks like an entire novel about that. They are rival tennis players—that one isn’t very long and the story description sounds like it’s more about them fucking than playing. Minho skips further down the webpage, conscious of Jinjoo standing behind him.
Kibum and Minho are university film students arguing about a big class project. Kibum is himself but Minho is a manager who keeps nagging him. Minho is a gangster and kidnaps Kibum for a job but they get into unspecified trouble and need to team up. A story description that is vaguely familiar lyrics or maybe poetry instead of a summary. Minho and Kibum are both themselves and right after Minho finishes his military service, they—Minho frowns at the screen. He doesn’t know what that word means, but he is 80% certain it’s a kink thing.
“Are you looking at fics about yourself?” Jinjoo asks. The only reason why Minho doesn’t jump is Jinjoo’s scissors hovering near his ears.
“Taeminie sent it,” he says, turning his phone screen off. “I was curious.”
“Isn’t that kind of weird for you? I’d be so embarrassed.”
“No, it’s all pretend. And it’s a good sign if people like you enough to spend time writing about you.”
“Hm.” Jinjoo exchanges her scissors for a wide-tooth comb and creates a new part in Minho’s hair. “And that’s why I never became an idol. I hate being perceived.”
Minho laughs. He’s gone to karaoke with Jinjoo before, so he knows she has zero sense of rhythm and the voice of a very enthusiastic crow. Jinjoo knows it too.
“Sure, noona. Anyway, it’s not a big deal to me. It’d probably be more embarrassing for them if they knew I saw it.”
“Probably. My older sister used to write fic. Not about you guys, she liked that Slam Dunk anime. She practically throttled me when she caught me snooping on her account.”
After his hair is done—lightly permed and dyed a dark auburn—Minho has relative privacy in the passenger seat of his manager’s car. The morning traffic is stop-and-go, so Hyunjun has to focus on the road in between gulping down his second coffee of the day.
Minho re-opens Taemin’s link. Even in the short time since he last opened it, a few more fanfictions have been posted, including another with him and Kibum. The fans really have been busy writing.
He scrolls through the descriptions again. The stories all vary a lot in length and tone and how much they sound related to anything Minho or Kibum broadcast. But also, a lot of them share a common feature, something besides using their names: Minho and Kibum don’t get along at first, and then they do.
And that—that’s kind of nice. It shouldn’t surprise him to see it since that’s the main narrative they offer to the public. It’s an easy story for them to tell, especially since it’s true. But it’s nice to see it recognized again and again. Kibum and Minho worked really hard to get along. For years, it felt like one step forward, two steps back. Now, though, they are in a really good place, secure enough to talk a little about the journey on camera.
Maybe it’s stupid, but their relationship now is one of his proudest achievements.
“Traffic’s even more shit than usual,” Hyunjun says. He’s zooming out on his phone’s map, their route highlighted in angry red. “It’s a good thing we left early because it’s going to take an extra twenty minutes. I’ll let the assistant PD know she can still expect us by nine A.M., unless it gets worse.”
“Thanks, Hyunjun-ah.”
Minho checks the time. An extra twenty minutes means he has about another forty minutes in the car. He should catch up on his emails.
But first, he finds the fanfiction where gangster him and kidnapped Kibum have to work together. It sounds like the kind of film he’d watch. And, well, he’s curious. He’ll just have a little look since he’s stuck in the car and then check his email inbox.
Soon, however, Hyunjun parks the car, and Minho is on chapter three.
“What are you looking at?”
Minho glances over his phone. Kibum stands in the bedroom doorway, massaging a pale purple night cream into his face. His hair, like Minho’s, is still damp from the shower.
“One of Taeminie’s fanfictions.”
Kibum snorts. “You say that like he wrote it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I told you not to look.”
“Too bad. Now hold on, I’m on the last chapter, and it’s getting crazy. I need to see how they are going to wrap everything up so soon.”
Kibum huffs and vanishes back into the bathroom to finish his skincare routine. Minho flexes his toes underneath the bedcovers as his eyes dart across the phone screen. Gangster Minho and no-longer-kidnapped Kibum are confronting Kibum’s evil chaebol uncle who set up the entire abduction. Minho gets shot in the chest, and Kibum is applying pressure on the wound, and the uncle is getting away and Minho is trying to tell Kibum sorry and thank you but Kibum won’t listen and—
Minho flicks his thumb, but the screen just bumps uselessly against the bottom.
“What the hell?”
“What?” Kibum calls over the running sink.
“The story just stopped in the middle of the climax.”
“So it’s unfinished. Fic’s not like publishing a novel—you don’t have to post it all at once. They are probably updating it whenever they have time.”
Minho groans, stretching his limbs out against the mattress. His ass aches a little, a pleasant throb left over from earlier. “It stopped at the worst possible spot. The Minho character is literally bleeding out on a warehouse floor.”
The sink cuts off, and Kibum re-emerges, skin glistening. “Just check back later, they’ll probably finish it. But leave a nice comment now.”
“Even though it’s not done yet?”
“You spent all day reading it, didn’t you? It’s good manners to at least say thanks.”
That makes sense. Minho raises the phone screen up to his face once more, finding the button to post a comment. People can do it anonymously without an account, so he types out a short, encouraging message and clicks post. Then he passes the phone to Kibum to plug in since he’s still standing.
“Why do you know so much?”
“I used to read fic when we were younger. Not about SHINee, other stuff. I was broke and bored, and it was free and gay.”
Minho casts his mind backward. He does remember that Kibum spent a lot of time staring at his phone when they had downtime, which he never understood. It took so long for cell phones to load anything back then that Minho hardly ever went online with his. He supposes that if the website basically only had text, the load time wouldn’t be bad.
Kibum turns off the light and gets under the bedcovers with a sigh. “Why are you even reading it? Doesn’t seem like your thing.”
“It’s interesting. Taeminie was right about the fic charts. There really is a lot about us now. A load more than I would’ve thought, even after all that content we filmed together.”
Kibum makes a noise that’s pure filler.
“Why didn’t you want me looking at it?”
Kibum doesn’t reply. Minho glances over at him, studying what the window illuminates with its dull light. Kibum’s eyes are closed, but he’s holding his body too stiffly to be near sleep.
Minho finds Kibum’s arm under the blanket, turning on his side to curl along it. “Do you think we should…?” he trails. He doesn’t know how exactly to phrase it.
After a moment, eyes still closed, Kibum finishes, “We should tone things down?”
“What? No.”
Kibum’s eyes open. “No?”
“No. Why would we?”
“Well,” Kibum says dryly, “if there is that much minkey fic, we’re probably being too obvious. Time to switch up the public narrative. Frankly, the old man is long overdue to take his turn at member/member fanservice promotions. You and him should do something together.”
That’s true, but Kibum has ventured far away from Minho’s point.
“I was going to say that maybe we should do more. People are reading and writing this stuff because they like it, right? So maybe we could be a little less secretive.” Kibum’s lips part, so Minho hurries to finish. “I don’t mean come out. I just mean maybe we could be more affectionate on camera. Just a bit.”
Kibum turns on his side too, facing Minho. “It’s not that simple. There’s a difference between people telling stories to entertain themselves and people believing or hoping those stories are true.”
“Will you at least think about it?”
“...I’ll think about it.”
Minho reaches out and traces his thumb over Kibum’s scarred eyebrow. His warm breath tickles Minho’s wrist.
When Minho drops his hand to cup Kibum’s cheek, a slow, sleepy smile spreads over Kibum’s face.
“Tell me a bedtime story?” he says. “You must have some ideas.”
Minho thinks for a moment. “Once upon a time, there was a boy named Minho and a boy named Kibum.”
“Never mind, you’re terrible at this.”
Minho pinches his Kibum’s well-moisturized cheek and continues. “Kibum always got mad at Minho for being rowdy and saying dumb stuff, and Minho always got mad at Kibum for having a bad attitude.”
“Of course you’d make yourself sound nicer.”
“It’s my story, isn’t it? Anyway, even though Kibum was prickly and sort of snotty, he was also kind and smart and a hard worker with big dreams. So Minho thought he was cute.”
“You did not like me back then.”
“That’s your story,” Minho says. And a beat later, Kibum’s sleepy eyes widen.
“Wait, really—?”
But he doesn’t get any further because Minho loves when Kibum’s face is soft and open with genuine surprise like this. He kisses him, sliding to join Kibum on his pillow, and Kibum’s hands find his hips, holding tight.
The stories will continue tomorrow.