nyxsteaparty

[nyxsteaparty]

#⠀YOU⠀X⠀HIM⠀:⠀NOW⠀TRENDING⠀!

IN WHICH you don’t know who started it — but now everyone is convinced you’re dating him. how does he feel about these allegations?⠀(pre–relationship).

~300 words each saja boy, mostly for my own enjoyment, my characterization only :3

𝐉𝐈𝐍𝐔

ㅤㅤㅤㅤhe’s absolutely mortified, and there’s almost something pretty about the way he absolutely panics. absolute ‘oh no they found out! wait, there was nothing to find ’ energy. it started with a photo of him leaning toward you — only to whisper, he swears on it. he didn’t mean to stand to close, to have his eyes linger on you for far too long. but he did, and now there’s a hashtag of a mash of your names together, and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of edited photos. he doesn’t even understand how the fans noticed. he surely didn’t.

now it’s all he can think about. the first post he saw, he physically dropped his phone. it hit the ground like a brick, heavy, loud, and disruptive. the others pause. “.. you okay?” abby had asked, eyebrow raised like he’s more curious than concerned. jinu hummed affirmatively bending strangely to pick up the phone with a forced smile on his face and an urgency of someone who was being chased by a serial killer. “fine. totally fine.” he’s the complete opposite of fine.

how is he supposed to face you after seeing all of those tweets? he doesn’t know. but what he does know that his latest search history has been .. weird. weird enough that if anyone opened up his safari they would immediately know what was plaguing his mind.

‘how to delete trending hashtags?’

‘did (name) notice jinu looking at her??’

‘signs that they think about me romantically’

he tries to forget about all the shipping. try to look at you in a platonic light again. but the universe had other plans. he can’t open any of his devices without being bombarded with those posts. an au where you two are exes getting back together, a slideshow of nearly every picture of you two near each other’s proximity. there’s even a whole poll deciding who fell first. and eighty–eight percent of the people who voted went ahead and voted for jinu.

he wants to argue and deny everything, he really does. but then he looks over at your way and, oh, the place where his heart should be flutters in the stupidest way possible. in a way a demon like him probably shouldn’t be able to feel. oh, he thinks. they’re right.

𝐀𝐁𝐁𝐘

ㅤㅤㅤㅤhe named the damn ship. as if he wasn’t already the biggest contributer to it — no, he named it too. like it was his own child. instead of something normal like ‘abby(name)’, it’s something way worse. everything abby does near your proximity just makes the ship grow and expand it’s fandom even more.

tugging you away from paparazzi, making you wear his beanie out in public just because it ‘looked better on you’ — and your staff doesn’t help, posting pictures of the two of you behind the scenes (though you’re just talking, you know, like normal friends do). most are blurry, yes, but the fans have eagle vision.

he thinks it’s funny. cute, even. you brought it up once. as a joke — “we’re trending again. gonna feed into it?” he blinks like he’s gaining consciousness for the first time. “should i? no, yeah, we should.” you think he’s just joking. you realize that you’re dead wrong when he brought out his phone and wrapped an arm around your shoulder — suddenly your hashtag blows up because someone decided to actually post the selfie. if he had a pr team, they would hate abby’s guts. or abs.

no, he has no shame. his likes are public (because he isn’t aware you can make it private) and embarrassingly filled with gym content, fan edits of him, and posts about the two of you. if the fanbase didn’t exist — there’s still abby to show love and support to your pairing. it’s gotten to the point that he thinks you’re playing dumb, because everyone and their mothers knew how hard he tries to make you laugh.

because deep inside, he’s glad that everyone agrees that you’re cute together. if anyone’ll have you, it has to be him.

𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

ㅤㅤㅤㅤof course it’s trending. he made it trend. the moment fans started noticing your interactions, he leaned into it — just slightly. not enough for you to question him, but enough for hardcore fans to notice immediately and go batshit crazy. your manager rubbed her head and mumbled something about ‘pr nightmares’, but does romance care? no, romance only romances.

he times things so perfectly that you have to admit that if you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were in a ‘secret relationship’ too. you’d post a selfie of you wearing red and suddenly he’s posting “red looks good on you ♡” on his twitter. he’s so .. subtle in a not–so–subtle way. when confronted in interviews, he gives vague answers. “they’re very dear to me.” he once said, head leaning on the palm of his head. “like family?”, “like the moon is to the tide.” he’s always been smooth like that.

he knows exactly what he’s doing and lives for the thrill of it. except — well .. sometimes, he forgets it’s supposed to be for show. romance enjoys the attention, the fan’s screams. but most of all, romance loves the way your mouth twitches as you try not to smile at an overly corny pick–up like he used, the way you shove him playfully backstage after another interview.

the fans say you’re a visual match made in heaven. he agrees. not because you’re pretty (you are), or because it benefits his image (he could care less, really) — but because he likes the idea of being paired with you, someone who grounds him.

“you’re not actually into all this shipping stuff, are you?” you scoff, bumping his shoulder with yours. he chuckles. “aren’t you? i already planned out our entire marriage.” the thought of it is .. dangerous. but so is he.

𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘

ㅤㅤㅤㅤhe never really acknowledges it. but he’s seen the it. the little fancams slowed to hell and back just to show the two of you making eye contact for a split second. the fans catch everything. it unsettles him how right they might be. mystery never intended to give them material. it’s just the way he looks at you. but he’s confused — not because he doesn’t know where the ship stemmed from, but because they were only noticing his behaviour recently.

you ask him about it one day, phone showcasing a video of you in the center, with him staring (question mark? can’t really see his eyes) in the background. he takes one glance, “pictures.”, he answered with a shrug. he plays dumb really well — too well. you genuinely thought he just didn’t know what shipping is. but he totally does. “you feed the fire.” he tilts his head innocently. “didn’t know there was a fire. a lie. he figured out how incognito mode works just to read fanfics of you two. out of curiosity at first, but then it became a small habit he gained.

but you don’t know any of that, obviously. what you do know is that he stands unusually close to you at events now, and you swear you can feel his hand on the small of your back to guide you whenever you happen to walk in the same direction. he doesn’t exactly bark like they say he does (not in front of you, anyway), but he can and will growl. there’s something animalistic and protective about the way he hovers like second nature — like right beside you is where he’s supposed to be.

mystery stays completely unbothered. if the fans want to talk, let them. if they just so happen to post ship edits of you two with his new favourite love song, that’s fine. great, even. at least the world already knows you’re his.

𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘

ㅤㅤㅤㅤhe hates it, he needs every video, picture and post deleted and burned to ashes. there could be a video of you handing him a water bottle and there’d be a comment saying that he’s, quote, ‘down bad’. down bad for what? hydration? every time those videos happen to unfortunately come up his for you page he instantly groans like it’s instinctive. baby just doesn’t get it. he looks like he tolerates you at best. that’s if he even looks your way. (that’s what he tells himself.)

he has a private account where he just .. watches. videos he’d see slowly went from mukbangs to that horrid mishmash of your names. he views them. not because he enjoys seeing them .. but for research purposes. he has to know what to avoid, right? “.. you’re not even my type.” he said mid–watch, to no one but himself. why is he talking to himself? fuck. he shuts off his phone and throws it across the bed. it lands on a pillow, still playing that edit of you that got two million likes.

this revelation starts to affect how he talks to you. or, more accurately, how he doesn’t. baby doesn’t talk to you for two days. three. for preventative measures, of course. he doesn’t do ‘crushes’ — it’s some social construct he stopped believing in the moment he became a demon. except he’s dodging you like you’re garlic and he’s a stereotypical vampire. the only thing he can say in your presence is a lame, “your shoelaces are untied.” while you’re wearing something that doesn’t even have them.

you still checked. he’s doomed. and worst of all, it’s public knowledge now. fuck the imaginary shoelaces, it was whatever he had left of his soul that came undone.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ⠀ㅤㅤㅤ©ㅤ@ nyxsteaparty .