The Long and Winding Road || A Vhope FF ||✔️

Chapter 15

It wasn’t a compulsion that Hoseok gave into very often--at least, not when he wasn’t embroiled in some kind of scandal, anyway, but still. Sometimes Hoseok couldn’t help but look at comments on articles about him, or search his name on Twitter, just to see what would pop up.

Some of it was weird (especially when Hoseok searched for the name fans had given him so he wouldn’t see the odder artwork of himself--it was cute how they did that like he wouldn’t be able to figure it out eventually, and thoughtful in a strange way) but most of it was generally good.

Hoseok had resisted searching for his name for the entire month that he had been at Taehyung’s house. Part of it was because he didn’t have time--he was either out doing chores, or cooking with Taehyung, or talking with Taehyung, or playing with Yeontan, which were very pressing matters—but most of it was because he didn’t want to.

Being with Taehyung was like living in a bubble where nothing could hurt him. He wanted to stay there.

But the thing about bubbles was that sooner rather than later they popped, leaving you exposed to the elements. So Hoseok knew that it would be better if he popped his own bubble himself, and dealt with the fallout.

So he logged onto his secret twitter account--the one where he had fifteen followers rather than the two million he had amassed on his main--and typed his name into the search bar.

The later he went back into his mentions, the nastier people became. Around the time when Dispatch had released the photos, there was an explosion of people calling him every name under the sun, and curing Hyosung to boot, along with people arguing for him.

He scrolled through all those comments, forcing himself to read every single one even though every negative tweet felt like a tiny electric charge of pain, before there was mostly silence.

And then, there was the tweet, from a one @021894zjhs whose picture was some art of him in chibi form with a giant heart shaped smile, I miss Hobi oppa and nothing else.

For some reason, that hurt worse than every comment calling Hoseok a horrible person.

Hoseok loved his fans--he really did. He wouldn’t be anywhere without them. He loved perform, and he loved dancing, and even though life got hard sometimes, he really was living a dream based on their good graces alone.

He hadn’t thought much about them missing him, not after everything that had happened. So the fact that someone said that, and he read it, it hurt somehow.

Hoseok stared at that tweet for a while, wishing that this wasn’t so hard. That things hadn’t been so bad.

He wasn’t sure how long he would’ve stayed there, moping, before Yeontan came and sat on the bed next to him, licking his face. Hoseok laughed at the sensation, unable to help it.

Taehyung crawled up to Hoseok, not soon after, because of course he was there too.

“You look sad,” Taehyung said finally. “What is it?”

Hoseok pressed the button on the side of his phone, making the screen go black. “It’s nothing,” he said, and leaned in to kiss Taehyung’s nose.

Taehyung leaned back to look at him more intently, his eyes so serious, before crowding in close again. “If you say so,” Taehyung said, and kissed him on the mouth.

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Even Taehyung--who basically lived on food that was given to him, Hoseok found--had to go to the grocery store eventually. They decided to go at the halfway mark of Hoseok’s stay, because Taehyung was running out of necessities, fast.