Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
About
"Someone will remember us, I say, even in another time."
"How inconvenient to be made of desire."
"It's me, hi, I'm the problem its me."
Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. For this round, every prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, do whatever. Steal from a literary classic, or copy WeVerse drama.
🛑 HOLD UP
If this is your first time on 17hols please check out our About Page which contains helpful information and links to pages explaining dreamwidth and HTML. We are a prompting fest where all the action happens in the comment section.
Rules
- Sign up is not required.
- Fills have a minimum of 400 words for prose, haiku-length for poetry (3 lines), and 400px by 400px for art (memes are also art). Other mediums are fine too!
- There is no maximum cap.
- Tag and provide content warnings at your discretion, but a good guide are the Ao3 four (Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage) and this list of common CWs (cr: SportsFest).
- NSFW/Explicit content should be tagged
- NSFW art should not be visible, please provide a link and a warning. You may crop the artwork and embed a SFW preview.
How it works
Prompting
- Click on [Post a New Comment] at the bottom of this post;
- Change the subject;
- Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment and edit the sections. Feel free to add as much detail as you want!
Need ideas? Check out our 2021 and 2022 Quote rounds.
Filling
- Reply to the original prompt;
- You must change the subject to [FILL] - this is to help the mods track. Feel free to add a title
- Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment, edit the sections, and add your text.
You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection.
Remixing
- Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above;
- Change the subject to [REMIX].
Art/media
- Upload your work to any platform (twitter, imgur, youtube, soundcloud, google maps, etc.)
- Using the same HTML code as above, copy the link into your fill or remix. That's it!
- Optionally, you can embed a picture into your comment. Please use the following code instead.
(To explain, the HTML resizes your picture to 400x400px so that it fits on most screens. Users can view the full size if they click on it. You can also add a link to your work on twitter so that others can share it, or to any other website you want)
On dreamwidth, you can't edit a comment once someone has replied to it.
Navigation
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
[FILL] succession of shelters
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Homesickness
Permission to remix: Yes
***
it begins with mingyu buying an apartment.
it begins with him grinning and seungkwan making a joke at his expense, everybody teaming up to tease without reason because that’s what they do with mingyu. it begins with joshua looking around and realizing something irreparable is changing, adulthood’s strings yanking each of them a little farther away from each other.
he tries to think about when he begins feeling that way. inadequate, guilty of half-belonging, fingers gasping for something to hold on.
(maybe it begins when he decides he wants to learn how to sing. maybe it begins the second he decides to board a plane across the ocean, always looking back, always worried about his next step.)
—
his mom calls after the news start to go around the parents. seungcheol and chan investing in real state, wonwoo acquiring a condo, jeonghan buying a fucking farm. seventeen still a group, but several of them finally moving out of the dorms to live by themselves.
she mentions the rise of housing prices there, lists a couple of neighbourhoods she thinks it’s smart to start investing.
he doesn’t know how to tell her this isn’t what he wants.
—
at dance practice, seokmin and mingyu argue with each other until it’s not pretending anymore. jeonghan watches from afar, body tense and eyes alert for the right time to better deescalate. joshua gets the choreography wrong too many times and soonyoung almost snaps at him, voice tense with frustration. joshua calls to order food and the ahjumma pretends she doesn’t understand one of the korean dishes he has trouble pronouncing, and the entire conversation is so horribly passive aggressive that he hangs up halfway through ordering.
—
visiting los angeles has the opposite effect of what he expected. the city is emotionally hot and cold, kind to him for one moment then hurtful for the next two beats; bumpy streets and air too humid, but a weather so beautiful he has never seem a sky more cerulean blue. food portions are big enough for two, excessive in a way he doesn’t enjoy - but the burgers are perfectly oily and grilled, and for a dozen of minutes he enjoys the grease all over his fingers.
he takes his mom and minghao out for dinner, and he can barely look at her in the eye when she talks about the recent house she toured in, how it’s big and perfect and has other places available nearby, too. she’s excited about it; joshua feels a pang of hurt by the way he is not making a decision, by not telling her what he has been thinking for the past couple of months.
minghao clocks in pretty fast; they have been bandmates for nine years, known each other for more than a decade. he goes along with joshua’s narrative the entire dinner. he is graceful about it in a way only minghao can be, quiet and contemplative, kind in all of his behavior. on the way back to the hotel, he doesn’t press joshua to talk about it.
instead, minghao draws him a bath. he stays in his room until joshua falls asleep, thumb going back and fort at the base of his neck, knots tender to the touch. he sings a lullaby in chinese, something about a little girl walking around the beach, and joshua’s throat closes up.
he tastes the los angeles air and it’s familiar, heavy and slightly salty, but he is homesick, homesick, homesick.
—
in the end, it’s jun who drags him out on the last day at the tour. joshua tries to wiggle out of it, claiming to be tired after performing the day before, but he can’t say no to jun. not when he is trying, not when he is sacrificing his alone time to curb joshua’s loneliness.
the conversation is stilted; joshua feels tired, stretched around his edges after having performed for two days straight. he knows it makes jun a little nervous; he hates dragged-out silences, can’t stand still even if his life depended on it. he fidgets; reaches for his phone four or five times.
joshua doesn’t have the energy to soothe him. sometimes it goes like this, with the people you care about. sometimes there is nothing to fill the space but the knowledge of love, languid and invisible, but still warm.
(to someone on the outside it would not be obvious, but joshua has trained eyes and trained hands and trained everything for him, for all of them. because this is how jun loves -
oh, here is a restaurant i want us to go. yes, i know it’s good, i went there myself once and ordered the stew and even asked if it has peanuts in case vernon wanted to come. yes it is delicious. let’s go, please let’s go, i want to show you something i love so you can love it too. so you can get your mind off things that are bothering you and you won’t say. hey, try this dish. i made it myself with my bare hands, this is how i cure homesickness. no, i’m not doing this just for you. yes, i would just like to share.)
—
when they land back in korea seungcheol and jeonghan follow joshua back to the dorms instead of their own apartments. they speak with him the entire ride back and joshua wants to strangle them, ditch the manager’s van and take a taxi to a hotel; he kicks jeonghan at least four times on purpose, and jeonghan kicks him back.
seungcheol orders bulgogi and puts on a stupid movie that nobody pays attention, and their legs tangle over the sofa and joshua’s chest eases a little. he can see on jeonghan’s leg the purple blooming and he presses against it, and jeonghan yelps. seungcheol’s laughter is booming; beautiful and loud and never ending. jeonghan bites his cheek.
it’s a horrible mistake, but they fall asleep over the sofa: jeonghan’s head over his shoulders and seungcheol all over him, warm all over, hands demanding even in dream -
and it’s coming home, coming home, coming home.
—
the truth is:
joshua feels ashamed of feeling this way, almost as if he is looking down on where he came from, almost as if he is rejecting a part of himself. he tries to rationalize and justify himself, but in the end - it’s not about the tiredness of moving. it’s not about getting used to a new timezone, or even finding work all over again.
it’s about going to a convenience store near his apartment at two am. it’s about walking around seoul at night without being afraid, all corners in his neighborhood memorized. being babied by the old lady who sells fishcakes in hongdae and finds him handsome, being fifteen minutes away from jeonghan or seungcheol, being able to go inside a place with a face mask and not be looked weird, about laughing so hard in the presence of his friends that it hurts to breathe. it’s about how california is now more memory than home.
and seoul -
seoul is seoul. it’s not exactly comfortable, a little prickly around its edges. but he looks at it and it looks back at him, in the eyes of jihoon, in that obnoxious luxurious bakery seungkwan enjoys. he doesn’t think the city loves him in the way he loves the city, but he is part of it, now, and that’s something. it has to be something. he begs for it to be something.
he closes his eyes, a headache blooming at the base of his skull. there are close to twenty tabs open on his laptop, all google drive pictures of a luxurious condo near hansol’s apartment, everything already decorated and ready to go. there is a room built for a wine cellar inside, and enough space for six or seven people on the extra rooms.
he opens his kakaotalk, and sends the pictures to his mother.
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
(Anonymous) 2022-12-27 10:02 pm (UTC)(link)Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
he doesn’t think the city loves him in the way he loves the city, but he is part of it, now, and that’s something. it has to be something. he begs for it to be something.
That feeling of needing somewhere to belong but the things that anchor you are changing… so good!
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
and also: i love how this is a study in a setting as a character, yes, but in people as a place, too: people as home—minghao knowing to soothe joshua, jun drawing him out of his funk and shua recognizing that for what it is, jeonghan and cheol offering their company.
thank you so much for sharing đź’—
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters
Re: [FILL] succession of shelters