Deal With It - Sidemen Fanfiction

Prologue - Seven Minus One

A/N
A lot of this book will be from Josh's point of view so unless specified at the start of the chapter he will be the narrator. This is just to reduce POV swaps in between chapters which I personally find a little irritating sometimes when reading books but let me know if you want to see other people narrating for a while :)

Things had been bad recently. The group recording sessions caused more stress than they were worth. People drifted away and then they came back. Petty squabbles and harmless jokes became more malicious; day long arguments stretched out to fill weeks with heavy silences and muttered insults. It became harder to hold everything together when it started trying to pull itself apart.

I stopped my camera with a drawn out sigh, noting the exhausted, stressed facial expression the final frame caught as my computer played back the last few seconds of footage. I had learnt not to record when there were people shouting downstairs; no matter how many jumpers I wedged against the crack beneath the door, the microphone always seemed to hear the strained insults being thrown across the echoing hallway below my room. Too many times now, I had finished a long section of filming only to discard my efforts as soon as I realised they were unusable. And so I had decided to start saving myself the effort.

It had barely been ten minutes since I started my latest video when voices began rising above the level I could tolerate. Normally, this was my cue to remain upstairs until hunger or some other motivation led to me leaving the security of my own four walls. Sometimes it felt like I was on The Walking Dead, choosing when to leave a secure hiding place and risk the wrath of the walkers around me. This time though, i felt like I had to put my foot down. Kicking away the useless sound barriers from the door, I left the room.

My bare feet on the marble staircase were soundless as I crept towards the kitchen to find out who had got on the wrong side of JJ this time. His voice was never hard to pick out from up in my room but the unfortunate person on the receiving end of his screams was often too quiet for me to hear.

"I wish I could get out of this place!" I heard JJ spit as the fridge door slammed shut and a glass was thrown down on to the counter with a resounding thud, "Do I have to do all the work around here?" As much as I liked to avoid the drama inside the house, even I rolled my eyes at that statement. Seeing as JJ's work consisted solely of his own music career, he could hardly claim to be completing the work of the other six sidemen.

"Well I'm glad I don't live here and have to put up with this every day," came the retort from an exasperated Ethan who leant against the counter, a frown imprinting worry lines across his forehead. I moved my head to see his face fully as it darkened to a shade of purple and he clenched his fists at his side, "We've been carrying you recently Jide."

'Should have known,' I thought to myself bitterly. Amongst the fat jokes and teasing in videos, something always seemed to push Ethan over the edge when it came to JJ. And that was saying something: besides raging at a game of golf, Ethan generally sustained an optimistic outlook on life and was good natured towards almost everyone.

The heated discussion continued to play out before me although it remained unclear what they were actually arguing about. This always seemed to be the case; arguing for the sake of arguing. They tended to get bored and one would storm off, a door would slam and our daily entertainment would finally come to an end. Today, however, my phone decided to put a stop to it.

'One new text'

I bit my lip as the text alert went off in my back pocket and JJ wheeled around to face me. Trying to play it off, I wandered in as if I hadn't been stood there for five minutes. A scowl firmly planted on his face, he narrowed his eyes at me, scanning them across the room as I walked to the fridge and opened the door. I pretended to notice his burning gaze and vaguely attempted a smile.