Round 1: Quotes

[hwarium]

Status: Closed This round has closed. It remains open for fills and comments, but prompts are no longer accepted. Seventeen Holidays Round 1: Quotes About The world is full of beautiful words. The tongue has no bones but is strong enough to break a heart. Words start wars and end them, create love and choke it, bring us to laughter and joy and tears. There is no falsehood in words, only in things. Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. If you have a google spreadsheet of Metric/Marina/Mitski/Macklemore lyrics, now's your time to shine. What does Nobel Laureate Louise Glück have in common with the Future of Kpop Lee Chan? I don't know, but we can find out. Examples Junhui + The Archer "Easy they come, easy they go I jump from the train, I ride off alone I never grew up, it's getting so old Help me hold onto you" Taylor Swift - The Archer Verhao; "I loved him from the moment he walked in" Just thinking about all the verhao soft feelings from the last week of November, especially the killer tweet from @literarykpop with the quote: "I laughed and said, ‘Life is easy.’ What I meant was, ‘Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again." - Miranda July 95 line - R18 "Houston, we have a problem." 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 to the art. 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 to something interesting and saucy; Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment and fill in the sections. Feel free to add as much detail as you want! <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Do Not Wants:</strong> None <strong>Prompt:</strong> <blockquote>QUOTE GOES HERE </blockquote> Filling Reply to the original prompt; Change the subject to [FILL], you may add a title or stay chaotic; Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment, fill in the sections, and add your text You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** Filling with art/media Do the same as above, also; Upload your work to any platform (twitter, imgur, youtube, soundcloud, google maps, etc.) Insert the link to your work, done! 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) <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** <img src="INSERT IMAGE URL" width="400px"> <a href="INSERT ANY URL YOU WANT">TEXT THAT DESCRIBES THE LINK</a>

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ABOUT DATES FAQ BAIT LIST FILLS BINGO ROUND 1: QUOTES ROUND 2: ALTERNATE UNIVERSES ROUND 3: SCREENCAPS ROUND 4: WHO, WHERE, WHEN REMIX ROUND

Comments

Example Prompt

[hwarium( as admin)]

Ship/Member: Any, Mingyu
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Kim Mingyu's love language is acts of service, puppy love
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt: The song [Stray Italian Greyhound] just makes me think of Mingyu's approach to love. I don't mind any ship, but I want someone who is initially hostile to be worn down by Mingyu's enthusiasm + gradually falling in love with him. I just want someone to be in love with this best boy!

"This sudden burst of sunlight
And me with my umbrella
Cross-indexing every weatherman's report
I was ready for the down slide
But not for spring to well up
This feeling calls for everything I can't afford" - Vienna Teng, Stray Italian Greyhound

FILL: example

[hwarium( as admin)]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Jihoon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Lee Jihoon has the emotional reservoir of a frozen lake, Enemies to Lovers
Permission to remix: Yes

***

This is where the story goes. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. How was your day? Please imagine 400 words and move on.

// feel free to insert links, author's notes or anything you like.

"such a constellation was he to me"

[hwarium]

Ship/Member: Any (prefer Minghao or Jeonghan as a half of the ship but really, any ship is fine)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.” - from Circe by Madeline Miller

I would love a story about a love that was incredible but brief, something that could only exist in a certain time or place. Bittersweet nostalgia, wistful reminiscences. +++ even better if it was a story being told to a 3rd person a long time later.

Re: "such a constellation was he to me"

[bluerthanbluets]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Soonyoung, Jeonghan/Joshua
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Jeonghan is a nurse, aged-up Minghao, ambiguous timeline and setting
Permission to remix: Yes

***

“Nooo, not this,” Jeonghan laments, but he is smiling. “Not this again, Hao.”

Minghao laughs soundlessly, leaning back into the cushion of his chair. Jeonghan hands him a thermos of his warm tea. Bony hands wrap around it.

“What, what is it?” Joshua asks, eager, leaning closer towards Minghao in his seat.

“No, I don’t want to hear it again. He’s gonna brag about his fairytale love with some superstar or whatever,” Jeonghan says and even when Joshua isn’t looking, can hear, can detect the eyeroll in his whining.

He pushes his plastic chair close to Minghao and says, “Come on, Mr. Xu. Tell me. I haven’t heard it yet. Jeonghan can go air the bedsheets or something.”

Minghao then smiles, regards Joshua kindly. He sets the thermos down in his lap, but Jeonghan catches it and places it on the table in front of them instead. Near the window. The afternoon expands, like a shallow pool of mud.

“I was nineteen, he was twenty,” Minghao begins.

Jeonghan leans into Joshua. And his voice gently follows Minghao’s, as he knows the words by memory, the story by heart: “and such a constellation was he to me.”


*


“He was a dancer. He was an amazing, talented, incredible dancer. And he’s named after a star. And I was studying stars. I was in Brazil when I met him.”


*


The first time Jeonghan hears this story, Minghao is in Dallas. The next time he tells it, he is in Houston. For a time, for more than one retelling, he stuck with New York. At one point, he is in Whidbey Island. Miyagi. One time, in Seoul. In Anshan.

The minor details shift, depending on his setting for this memory, depending on his mood that week. But the big parts of the biggest love story of his life remain the same: Minghao falls in love. Hoshi is a rising dancer, is a star. Their love is brief, but big in all the ways a love so brief can be so colossal.


*


“I was alone and touring at a planetarium when I met him. It was almost closing then and I was already making my way back to the lobby, very slowly, taking it all in, when I saw him. And when he saw me. And in the sacred light that only an empty cavernous place can give, in a little quiet town outside the center of Brazil, we looked at each other and it felt like, I felt like,” he pauses, looks at Joshua.

“It felt like waking up.”


*


“Hoshi. That’s what I want people call me. It means star in Japanese.”

“Oh, so you’re a star,” I said.

“I am. I can tell you’re mocking, but I really am. I’m a dancer, I’m a rising star! One day, I will dance in a magnificent coliseum and everyone will be there to watch me and just me!”

“I’m not mocking.”

“Oh, really? Well, good,” he huffs, playfully, childishly.

“But aren’t we all?”

“Aren’t we all what?”

“Aren’t we all made of starstuff?”

“Starstuff?”

“Carl Sagan,” I said, enjoying the volleying of words.

“Starstuff. That’s a good stage name. Or a name for a turtle,” he says, glancing up at the dome of the planetarium, as if mentally committing the word to memory, or counting the dots above us.

I am drawn to him. “Tell me your real name.”


*


“Oh, he was magical,” Minghao says. This is the part where he describes seeing Hoshi dance for the first time. This is also the part, Jeonghan notes, that never changes. He talks about it like he only saw it last night and not 29 years ago.

“When I met him, I was living a solitary life,” he pauses, glances at Jeonghan.

Jeonghan feels Joshua turn to look at him too. He gives a small nod, touches Minghao’s shoulder.

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. And that week in Brazil, I got lucky to get him. My star.” Minghao sighs, smiles to himself.


*


“Did you know I learned ballet when I was in middle school?”

“Of course I don’t, we only met yesterday, love,” says the star.

Really? Doesn’t feel like it. I stand up, showing off my still lithe legs, folding them, twisting with all the grace I could remember from a whole year of forced practice, and it surely looks terrible, standing like this in the middle of my dirty kitchen in ratty, checked pajamas, but the incredulous grin that appears in his face, the way he strides to meet me, touches me, it was well worth it.

We imagined a future there. How he would teach me grace. How I would watch him dance. How we would look at the same sky in different places as all around the world. How we would hold each other’s hands. And hold each other’s hands.


*


“At a time and place where everyone you meet feels either unsafe or temporary,” I said, licking up a stripe from his chest to his neck, I whispered during his last night, I pleaded, I hoped, “remember me.”

“Soonyoung,” he said, just as I shuddered wetly into his mouth. “Kwon Soonyoung. My name.”


*


“Eeeewww, blech,” Jeonghan teases, “not the gooey parts, old man!”

Minghao giggles, and Jeonghan’s eyes widen at the rare sound of it. Joshua watches, entranced. His hand is over Minghao’s, rubbing them together slightly.

“I will spare you the details, because I still remember it, think about it everyday,” Minghao says, and Jeonghan clucks at his tongue, stands up to grab a blanket. It’s already dusk.

“But of course,” he continues, “there is a place meant for a star in the sky. And he had to go to the next stop of their tour.”

Jeonghan gently drapes the blanket over Minghao and Joshua, already huddled together. He softly touches the back of his hand over Minghao’s neck, to check if he’s cold, and then satisfied he’s warm, settles his own body around Joshua’s.

“He just left?” Joshua asks, holding Jeonghan close.

Minghao glances around, until his eyes settle on the framed photo of a man onstage in what looks like a giant stadium. At its bottom left corner is a signature and a doodle of a star.

“No. He arrived.”


*


“I love him, babe, you were right. He’s amazing,” Joshua whispers.

“Whoa, hello, you talking like that to your boyfriend now? Honeymoon phase is over?”

Joshua cackles. And then says again, I love him, bring me to visit him again.

Later, after Jeonghan clocks out from the house and parks to the side of the road to wait for Joshua as he picks up their laundry, he thinks back to his friend, his patient, Hao, and the photo that had been by his bedside for as long as he had been working for him.

Remembering how delighted he sounded sharing his story to Joshua today, how real his smiles were, how he had giggled, Jeonghan shuddered; he realizes now that the loneliness he once thought he saw in Minghao isn’t true. Freshly broken up, kicked out of his own house, and just starting a career he wasn’t sure was for him, Minghao was the first one who accepted him. Trusted him. Joshua came much, much later.

He had always thought it was lonely, whenever Minghao told his story. It’s only now that he comes to the understanding that it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t his, but Jeonghan’s own loneliness reflected in the glassy eyes of the old man. How he’d imagined him lonely, when in fact, Minghao was happy. Grateful and happy.

As he watches Joshua jogging funnily on his way back to the car, Jeonghan laughs, fond and then thinks, right, finally, thank you, longer, forever more please.

GYUHAN + Carson "the lover wants what he does not have"

[hwarium]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Jeonghan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Pining as self-harm
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

The lover wants what he does not have … There is a dilemma within eros that has been thought crucial by thinkers from Sappho to the present day. Plato turns and returns to it. Four of his dialogues explore what it means to say that desire can only be for what is lacking, not at hand, not present, not in one’s possession nor in one’s being. - from Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

One-sided Mingyu —> Jeonghan. Deep and intense pining for Jeonghan who is 100% unattainable/unavailable (your choice!) and the impossibility of it makes the desire even stronger *___* Could be idolverse (the more Mingyu can’t have something, the more he wants it).

Minghao + Night & Rain + Linkin Park

[hwarium]

Ship/Member: Any w/ Minghao
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I dreamed I was missing
You were so scared
But no one would listen
Cause no one else cared
After my dreaming
I woke with this fear
What am I leaving
When I'm done here?
- Linkin Park Leave Out All the Rest

+

I hurt myself with words I don't mean
The clock goes tic tic toc toc
It tells me everything will be alright
I wish it was a dream
The more I think of you
My eyes close as I fall asleep into your dream
-- Minghao Night & Rain (17_hamzzi trans)

I... will zip my mouth for this but I am very much thinking of how Minghao wrote this song after he woke up to an empty dorm and felt a surge of loneliness. Feel free to go anywhere with this!!

[FILL] I've never been perfect / but neither have you

[klav]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Junhui
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: alternate universe - science fiction, nightmares
Permission to remix: Yes

// OOOF sorry this is long + strayed from the original prompt, but thank you hwa for the excuse to loop Linkin Park while writing <33

***

Minghao misses grass.

He’s dreaming of it again, spiky and soft underneath his body when he lays in the meadow behind his parent’s house. Its heavy, summery smell. How the shadows of each blade stretch sunwards at the end of a long, lazy afternoon.

In the dream he always hums. Some lullaby he can’t remember the words to anymore. The notes crescendo until they shake his whole chest with a shuddering vibration, like he’s screaming with his mouth closed.

The earth starts shaking, too. Humming along. He digs both hands into the dirt, ripping up inelegant tufts of grass. A crack emerges beside his head. It elongates with an awful creaking noise, disseminating a hot and sulfurous fog, robbing the air of its sweetness. Minghao rolls sideways, feeling his heartbeat rabbit away.

The ground beneath him crumbles anyway. Minghao’s shoes inexplicably fall off. His nails leave gouges in the dirt, but he loses purchase and falls—falls—

Wakes up. Cold, sweating, curled into the fetal position with the blanket splattered on the floor.

No matter how many times he nightmares, waking up is the worst part.

Minghao lies flat on his back and takes deep breaths. A silvery glow of light under his door means that it’s too early to rise. He feels his own forehead, wipes the sweat away with the back of his palm. Suddenly he can’t bear the dark.

He clears his throat. “Computer, main lights.”

Warm orange lines alight along the ceiling. Minghao sits up and pushes open his observation window, through which he has a tiny glimpse of the stars. Ursa Major II is known for its gas giants and spectacular frost line, where enormous, multifaceted crystals hang suspended in a row. Like a naturally-occurring art gallery.

Minghao can’t see any of that shit. Just darkness and faraway pinpricks of light.

He slams the window closed, shivering, feeling lonely in a horribly abstract way. A ship of twelve hundred people is nothing compared to the vastness of space. If something were to happen here, he’d never see Earth again. He’d never feel the sun on his face in the idyllic farmlands of his hometown, he’d never weave another grassy flower crown for his little neighbor, he’d never...

Numbers on the clock flip and catch his eye. 4:13am. Minghao is jittery with this homesickness, this late-blooming form of spacial anxiety which he thought he quashed during cadet training. Three weeks after his inaugural launch, why does he still feel like this?

There’s nothing to do but wait until Beta Shift, when his work begins. Minghao tugs on his shoes without changing out of his black sleeping suit. He’ll walk, familiarize himself better with the ship, and hopefully clear his head.

His mood lifts as he rounds the corner out of the dormitory wing. Here the lights are white but dim, sliding along silver molding like phosphorescent snakes. There’s no one else wandering around at this time—in the middle of Alpha Shift—and he enjoys a quiet so profound that he can hear the ship’s engine humming far below his feet.

Minghao means to veer into the cafeteria, but a shadow catches his eye. Hoping for one of the friendly lab cats, he follows it, only to emerge in front of a massive observatory window with a curved sill wide enough to seat several people. A man is lounging in the shadow of a passing planet. Its glittering green rings reflect bulbous shapes off of the man’s bare feet. He’s wearing the same standard black suit that Minghao has on and nothing else.

Curiosity compels Minghao a few steps closer—then bites him in the ass.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you.”

Junhui turns with a comical expression of surprise. A box of rambutan sits on his thighs, and the shock of seeing such a bloodred, ordinary thing makes Minghao freeze.

“It’s me,” Junhui smiles.

His hands continue working over a rambutan like this is a perfectly normal mid-morning activity. Spiky clumps fall back into the box. He pops the pit into his mouth and sucks the meat clean, pursing his lips and hollowing his cheeks like he’s in a goddamn porno.

Minghao almost walks away from the sheer impropriety of it all. But he has to know— “Where did you get those?”

Junhui spits out the pit like he’s kissing it goodbye. “The cafeteria. Do you want any?”

“I was just headed to…” Minghao looks down at himself, still vaguely nightmare-sweaty. Looks back at the tropical fruit. “Actually. Yeah, I want some. Scoot over.”

If someone had told Minghao two years ago that he’d be splitting rambutan with Wen Junhui, he would’ve laughed in their face. Junhui? That air-headed idiot who somehow cheated his way into the top spot of every cadet class, beating Minghao by a fraction of a point? Yeah fucking right. Minghao was more likely to make a voodoo doll of Junhui and shave its head.

Being in deep space together has changed things. They aren’t friendly—at least, Minghao isn’t, and he’s never figured out if Junhui’s relentless flirting is mean-spirited or just a distraction tactic. But they can work on the same bridge without tasering each other. Sometimes, there are group dinners with the captain. Mutual nods of acknowledgement.

Junhui usually ruins it with a joke or a cheesy pick-up line.

Minghao rolls a rambutan between his palms, enjoying its spiky nonsensical body, before peeling it. He works quickly, juice dripping down his thumb. It feels like they’re breaking an unwritten rule. He can imagine Seungkwan making a severe face. Guys, I’m sorry, but eating in the middle of the night is discouraged by the Space Federation. You might upset your stomachs.

“Good, huh?” Junhui plucks shedded skins from the box and begins stacking them beside his hip. Anyone else would sound smug, but Junhui just sounds delighted.

Minghao makes a noise of agreement. “I don’t want to hear whatever nefarious crimes you committed to get these fresh, but yeah, they’re good.”

Junhui laughs. They fall into an unusually camaradic silence, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with green bokeh lights rolling slowly over their faces, shucking rambutans. A heavy peace falls over Minghao. Between the rhythmic motions and the soothing, sweet flesh, he forgets his dream altogether.

Until Junhui says, “Soooo, why are you up this early?”

Minghao accidentally scrapes his teeth against a pit. “No reason. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh, no!” Junhui lowers his fruit. “I have a few sleeping pills if you want one. Old school melatonin, nothing synthetic, but they really helped me before launch.”

It’s hard to tell if he’s being genuine—that’s always been the issue between them. Minghao doesn’t trust sweet words. In this dramatic lighting, though, with their voices pitched lower, things feel almost… intimate. He can see straight through Junhui, to an earnest childishness underneath.

“Sure,” Minghao says slowly. “That would be great.”

Junhui smiles. His lips are slick and shiny with juice, and something in Minghao’s stomach swoops when he notices.

Then Junhui’s smile falls away. The change in his expression is so sudden and jarring that Minghao blinks, stupidly, unprepared for Junhui to spit a pit at him.

It ricochets off his chest and skitters across the floor. Junhui throws his head back laughing, all caution tossed to the fucking wind, and despite himself, Minghao stutters out a laugh, too.

From shock. Not amusement, of course.

“Gross.” Minghao wipes a hand over his shirt and bites back the smile threatening to conquer his face. He has to pretend to be unaffected or Junhui will win, somehow. “Are you gonna pick it up?”

“Of course.” Junhui bends backwards to snatch the pit. “I won’t litter, that’s rude.”

“But spitting on me isn’t rude.”

“Not when it made you laugh.” Junhui knocks their knees together and does a weird, macho voice. “Anything for you!”

Minghao rolls his eyes and braces himself for what he expects to follow: a follow-up compliment that will take things too far, Junhui’s rakish smile, the blush that will inevitably pinken his ears and make him scurry back to his room. But it doesn’t come. Junhui simply begins peeling another rambutan. His hands are sticky-loud and his eyes, though sleepy, watch Minghao with a certain heaviness.

“Why do you always do that?” Minghao blurts out. “Make fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you.”

“Yes, you are. When you say all these nice things.”

Junhui shrugs. “I say them because they’re true.”

“But—um. Not to be rude, we’re just, not exactly friends?” Minghao feels silly even as he says it, thinking of how many hours they’ve spent side-by-side in a classroom raising their hands at the exact same time. Thinking of their matching uniforms. “Well, we’re not close.”

“I don’t want things to be that way,” Junhui says, and his earnestness is like a phaser beam right through Minghao’s chest. “We’re not kids anymore.”

Oh, the irony of being told to grow up by Wen Junhui!

So Minghao nods. The least he can do is accept that. He doesn’t know what to say in response, and as he looks at Junhui, their eye contact takes on a life of its own, becoming charged and gravitational. It feels like Junhui is warming up his very soul with those dark, beckoning eyes. Like their rivalrous tension is fizzling into a new shape.

Minghao panics. He flicks a discarded peel into Junhui’s lap. It’s a declaration of war. Junhui’s eyes go wide as the sky. He grins, teeth glinting green as he turns and lobs the peel back into Minghao’s shoulder.

Thirty seconds later they’re pelting each other with damp handfuls of rambutan skin. A pit goes down Junhui’s shirt and Minghao bursts out laughing.

“Truce!” Junhui collapses across the windowsill, his legs curled like noodles, looking as disheveled as he did after combat classes. “I give up! Have mercy, Xiao Hao, these are my pajamas.”

The laughter falls out of Minghao’s mouth and dies. He stiffens up, one foot sliding to the tile floor instinctively, as if to run away. No one’s called him that since his first year of cadet training. To hear it now makes his chest tingle with nostalgia. He’s not sure if he likes the feeling.

Junhui cheerfully collects the remains of their weaponry and forms the spiky flesh into an amorphous blob. The nostalgia in Minghao simmers into something warmer, more affectionate.

If there were more nights like this, peeling themselves raw in the dark, he thinks he could grow to like the parts of Junhui he once envied: his wit, his easy purity, his independence. His honesty. Maybe Junhui has been truthful all along in his affections, and Minghao was too petty and prideful to notice. That’s a big, sobering thought to have before breakfast.

“I accept your defeat,” Minghao says after a belated pause. “And since you lost, you owe me more fruit.”

Innocently, Junhui nudges the half-empty box of rambutan closer with one foot.

Minghao shakes his head. “I want lychee. Same time next week.”

As Minghao speaks, the ship finally slides fully beyond the green, ringed planet. A dark frontier commandeers the window. Endless faraway stars and silver clouds of dust swirl together into a gorgeous background. Minghao's heart leaps.

Junhui smiles. He leans back into the curved sill, gilded by the dim light of a thousand galaxies. “Deal! Maybe you can fix your sleep schedule by then. I’ll bring you a melatonin during Gamma Shift tonight.”

“What about your sleep schedule?”

“Oh,” Junhui says very seriously. “I don’t sleep.”

Minghao rolls his eyes. Junhui laughs and laughs. They’re both late to Beta Shift, but Minghao is gorged on sweets and laughter and the heady, blossoming sense of waking up.

what if this were our last

[latespring]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: established relationship (if you'd like)
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

If this were the last slow curling
Of your fingers in my palm
If this were the last I felt you breathing
How would I carry on?

This is from Vienna Teng's The Last Snowfall. Feel free to take it anywhere, though I think it fits well to someone musing about the temporary nature of relationships (particularly relating around idol life and disbandment).

FILL: (verkwan) this is not the last

[hwarium]

Ship/Member: Seungkwan-centric, Seungkwan & Vernon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Permission to remix: Yes

***

This is not the last snowfall
Not our last embrace
But if I were that kind of grateful
What would I try to say?

Seungkwan doesn’t cry, when they drop the news.

He doesn’t cry because it’s been a long time coming, a whisper in the hallway, a cancelled schedule. It was Jeonghan going on hiatus and Seungcheol going to Daegu and Minghao spending half the year in China. It was Wonwoo coming back from the military service and going straight to a film set. And even before then it was the debut of a new boy group, the one with Lee Gun as leader. They had all celebrated and cheered and Chan beamed bright at the showcase, but somewhere in Seungkwan’s heart there was a little voice that said: so this is the beginning of the end.

Seungkwan doesn’t cry because he had cried, before.

At the end of their first Japan tour, drunk on Asahi beer and warm sake, a feeling had just welled up and Seungkwan buried his face in Mingyu’s shoulder, letting the sweater soak away his tears. He doesn’t know why he cried then. It was just the giddy high of adrenaline and success mixing in his heart, stewing as they shuffled away from the stage, the noise of fans shut out by van doors. It had simmered in his lungs as they drove to dinner, and as the food came and drinks were poured out, that feeling had settled in his stomach, leaving his heart empty with a vague sense of, this too, will pass.

At that moment he had sniffled and Mingyu pushed him away, palm on forehead and mouth in a pout. It was easy, to laugh then and push back, to tussle Mingyu’s hair and forget about the half formed thoughts that were taking shape.

Seungkwan had felt it again when they were filming HIT, when they all stood up on the pedestals, towering like Greek statues, shoulders back and proud like Gods at the dawning of the world. When they sang, he saw the awed looks on the crew, the cameramen, the directors and the assistants, the make-up and hair staff, the company managers, the lunch deliverymen. He heard the harmony of the other twelve together with his own voice, and felt the shudder in his bones when the sound echoed through the warehouse.

When Seungkwan looked down, his knees bucked at the height. Seeing the small space on which he stood, a thought flashed through his mind — what if I fell —

---

Later that day, Chan had suddenly turned to him and said, “Hyung, you’re crying.”

Seungkwan jerked his hands to his eyes, surprised.

He doesn’t know why he cried then either. He thinks of that moment, that pride of being part of a team that worked so hard, to stay together. He didn’t know how to describe what he was feeling, so he just said —

“I want all 13 of us to last a really long time.”

---

When the news drops, Seungkwan does not cry because Seungcheol is not crying (if Seungcheol had been —).

It says something, how Seungcheol was the first person he looks to, even after all these years.

The second person he looks at, is Hansol. Seungkwan searches his expression but there is nothing to read. Hansol is still and solemn, face pristine as fresh snow and just as quiet. He was looking forwards and something in Seungkwan flares, indignant and disbelieving. He reaches out his hand, fingers curling in Hansol’s palm, wishing for him to curl back, for Hansol’s hand to turn into his like sunflowers facing the sun.

Hansol’s hand does not move, but his face does. He turns to Seungkwan, lips tight, and he nods, once.

Seungkwan wants to yell then, to make a sound that could ease the pressure inside him, but the silence is overbearing and chokes it in his throat. There are a thousand thoughts in this room right now and all he can think about was Hansol’s face. He doesn’t know why he was angry, deep down he knows he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t what he’s angry at, only that in this moment, he is overwhelmed with the bitter selfishness of wanting his own emotions reflected on Hansol.

I want you to cry — Seungkwan thinks. Except he knows Hansol won’t cry, not over something like this. To Hansol there was no devastation in truth. His mind moved like water, he accepted all changes that came his way, and he never faulted anyone for their mistakes, always looking towards the future, at the next step. Seungkwan wants to cry, but right now he can’t. He would feel better if Hansol cried.

I want to fight you — because there would be a satisfaction in pushing Hansol, for his hands to speak when his mouth could not. He did not need to find the words to make Hansol hurt and feel. Seungkwan wanted to see the emotion on Hansol’s face, to see his own face on Hansol’s eyes. He wanted to fight and tussle like they were 17 again (Seventeen again) —

This could be the last time all thirteen of them stood in the same room together. What if it was the last time? If there was never a next time, if everything changes and there would never be a next, this.

I want you to say something to me — Seungkwan thinks. His mouth opens, but before he makes a sound, Hansol is pulling him in by his wrist, his arms opening to encircle Seungkwan’s shoulders in an embrace. Seungkwan squeezes his eyes shut and smells Hansol’s cologne, feels Hansol’s breathing in his ear, and he lets himself cry.

"and I knew that you turned it on for everyone you met"

[klav]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Any or Mingyu/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

And yeah I've let you use me from that day that we first met
But I'm not done yet
Falling for you
Fool's gold
- Fool's Gold, One Direction

I think this fits entertainment verse well (idols, rival models, sports teammates?) but open for interpretation

[FILL] that's not the way it feels

[yilinges]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Jeonghan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: ice hockey au, the winter Olympics, rejection
Permission to remix: Yes

Here are two things Kim Mingyu knows: Yoon Jeonghan is the best ice hockey winger in South Korea and being the best ice hockey winger in South Korea is like being the best fish in the Gobi Desert. So, when the Winter Olympics come to Pyeongchang and the South Korean men’s national team slips into the games with host privileges and gloriously unburdened by merit, things get tense.

Being the big fish in the tiniest pond suits Jeonghan. He has their team wrapped around his twice-broken little finger. He’s not the captain - their first-line left defenceman is – but he is adored beyond all reasonable team dynamics. In the locker room, everyone turns to him when he walks in through the doors. Mingyu has never seen him carry his own equipment bag. He only has to open his mouth as he comes to the bench between shifts and someone’s already pouring Gatorade into it. More than often, all of those people are Mingyu. Being aware of your own embarrassing behaviour doesn’t exactly stop you from doing it.

At the Olympics, though, it becomes painfully, humiliatingly, obvious how much they lack and how far out of their depth they are. They play three games, and the highlight of the whole thing is that the practically inevitable eight-to-nothing loss comes at the hand of Switzerland, while they only lose four-nothing to Canada. Looking at Jeonghan during the Group A preliminaries hurts. It’s like someone went into photoshop and dialled his saturation to minimum. He’s quiet and shies away from all attention, refuses to speak to the press in anything but Korean. He comes to the rink, wears his skates for the required three periods, and disappears back to the Olympic Village, leaving a desolate locker room behind. Seungcheol, with the C stitched on the chest of his jersey, tries his best to inspire, but it’s more apparent than ever that the only reason he wears the C is because Jeonghan refused it.

Their last game is the one against Canada and after it’s over, and they glide in a line to shake hands, not even the Canadians are jubilant. Probably, Mingyu thinks, looking one of them square in the eyes and smiling brightly in defiance, it feels like taking candy from a baby. On their birthday.

“Good game,” he says, practiced, to the Canadian captain, some AHL burnout who he doesn’t recognise because the NHL wouldn’t let their players attend the Games. In front of him, he sees Jeonghan breeze past all of them, muttering something distinctly not-English and heading straight towards the tunnel. Being angry at Jeonghan feels like doing something forbidden, but the sudden fury blinds him.
Mingyu showers and dresses quickly, keeping an eye on Jeonghan all the while. Their Games are over and they have nothing to show for it, and he will not let Jeonghan abandon them to stew in their quiet misery. He’s ready to leave as soon as Jeonghan heads towards the door with nothing more than a quick wave of his hand.

“I’m coming with you,” Mingyu says, catching the door Jeonghan opens and following him out basically nipping at his heels. Jeonghan throws a sullen look over his shoulder, eyes half-hidden behind still-wet hair. He’s carrying his own equipment bag now.

“I’m not in the mood, Mingyu,” he says. His voice is hoarse and dull from uselessly screaming like a batshit banshee all throughout the game. For all his withdrawnness off-ice, on-ice he’s as loud and bossy as he always is. He’s just usually not playing against people with a hundred times the salary and resources he has.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been in the mood to watch you bail out on us every day for a week. We don’t always get what we want.”

“What do you want?” Jeonghan hisses once they make it through the crowded tunnels and into the really bleak back hallways of the rink. He drops his bag from his shoulder and spins around to face Mingyu, even though sans skates, he’s almost a head shorter. “From me? Right now? What do you want me to say?”

“You don’t need to say anything. I don’t need bullshit platitudes; I need you to be there. This whole stupid team spins around you and you know it, and you love it, so you can’t bail the moment things don’t go your way, you asshole.”

Jeonghan is still pale, but now there are flushes of livid red on his high cheekbones.

“I don’t know where this elaborate fantasy you have of me came from, but I’m not your mother or your boyfriend or your fucking captain. Back off. No one on this team fawns over me except you. I’ve never asked you for any of the favours you’ve done for me, and I don’t owe you shit outside the ice just because you have a fucking crush.”

It feels like the floor being yanked out from underneath his feet. Like Jeonghan has quick-turned on his skates and sprayed him with ice. His ears are ringing with panic.

For a moment, there is only the empty hallway, the barely-there light, the humiliation burning through every vein of Mingyu’s body. And then Jeonghan, fuck him, softens. Mingyu’s been through a lot of embarrassment in the last week but he will not survive Yoon Jeonghan’s pity.

“Mingyu-“

“Don’t,” Mingyu chokes out, trying to walk around him. His hands are shaking so badly he has trouble holding onto the strap of his own bag.

“Hey, hey,” Jeonghan soothes, grabbing his wrist and stopping him, “I’m sorry. That was cruel.” What is left unsaid is the But I meant it, “Here,” he slips a hand under Mingyu’s shoulder strap and Mingyu’s bag is on Jeonghan’s shoulder before he can react. Jeonghan makes an exaggerated little oof noise at the weight. Defencemen’s pads are so much denser than a forward’s. The panic loses its icy hot edge.

“I can’t go back there,” Jeonghan tells him, tilting his head towards where they came from, “Let’s just walk for a bit, okay?”
The thing is, Mingyu shouldn’t. Obviously, he shouldn’t. Clearly, whatever he thought -- Well. He was wrong. Jeonghan has made that clear, and whatever this is, is just him doing damage control out of pity. Mingyu shouldn’t stay. He should take his bag, wish Jeonghan a happy rest of the Games, leave and make use of a few of the hundred thousand free condoms available in the Olympic Village with someone he won’t ever have to see again unless they medal and are shown on the big screens.

Jeonghan starts walking again, Mingyu’s bag on one shoulder, his own on the other. His steps are slow, questioning.

Mingyu exhales and follows.

// i'm pretty sure this is deeply against the intended vibe of the prompt but ice hockey is the only thing i know anything about. perhaps... the one falling for fool's gold.... is jeonghan.

[klav]

Ship/Member: Any, ot3s welcome
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Future Fic, Ambiguous Relationships (if you're so inclined)
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back. - Richard Siken

FILL: here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed

[deadwine]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Minghao/Wonwoo
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: canon compliant, future fic, post break-up, early disbandment
Permission to remix: Yes
***

Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.-Richard Siken

Mingyu pieces himself together by rewriting the songs that broke him.

A solo trip to Paris. An apartment more than an hour away from Gangnam. A day at the Met when he happens to be in New York. A personal Netflix subscription. On a rare weekend when the agency lets him off, he visits Minseo and she brings out the box he left on her doorstep the night he ran away.

Some scars fade with time.

Pieces taken out of old costumes and stage props begged off of the visual department almost tint him fonder now than he was then. Residuals of the clutter from his bedside tables and spare items of makeup don’t jog much of his memory but they do provide Minseo an opening to call him a hoarder. There’s a smaller bag inside, soft to the touch but heavy. They turn it upside down and its contents scatter over the tiled floor. Minseo watches knowingly— helplessly— as Mingyu gathers it all up, packs it into his car and leaves.

Others, not so much.

He lets the past back into his bed, unraveling the thread holding the bag together and unscrewing the cap on the things that bubble up to his throat— regret regret regret— things he's kept bottled for years.

The Fujifilm is great for taking pictures of people, of happy crowds, Mingyu remembers the salesperson telling him, outstanding for its contrast and colours. The images scattered across his bed are muted, bare; Seokmin’s smile hollowed out on a paper half a decade worn are proof these have nothing to do with happiness. The only reason the corners of the prints don’t blur like he was told they would is because Minseo tends to tragedy with far more care than he does.

Mingyu notes, with bitterness, there are some impressions even time and disuse can’t palliate. There is no mistaking the brightness with which Minghao and Wonwoo bloom onto his work— his sheets, his reels, his polaroids, the unseen fissures of flesh where his skin stretched thinnest, splinter-happy pleasure points. Lenses would change as would the size of their apartments and the price that audiences paid to recast them inhuman but Minghao and Wonwoo glowed unwavering until the spark burnt itself into Mingyu’s eyes—

— love streaming out the wrong way.

The longest distance between two bodies is time but the years he’s traveled have not shed the weight of twelve broken hearts, far heavier to carry than his own and a Mingyu who lived his entire life spelling these hearts whole forgets: the black sky and the lights and the scene at the bottom of the stairwell. Wonwoo greying out of his life and Minghao’s crimson storm. He forgets didn’t you realise we were on the verge of something big and how could you ever think this was worth more than our labour.

But Mingyu’s hands— one holding the body of the camera and the other on the shutter, an eye fixed on the viewfinder, a breath away from freezing time— have not yet learned reason. They don’t know of Mingyu crying, phone clutched to his ears as Minghao’s quiet— final— you have to know this is happening because you left reverberates across his parent’s living room as the evening news blares in the background, something about yet another boygroup that ran out of fume too soon. They know not of Wonwoo’s silence like a beloved channel on the radio gone quiet after ten years— until a hushed wedding, an invitation left behind at the door of a building Mingyu haunted, Seokmin’s trembling fingers pressing it into Mingyu’s palm.

The Fujifilm knows a Kim Mingyu in love, still. It paints Wonwoo blue, Minghao red.

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member:Any (Seungcheol/Any? but don't mind!)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: could be magical? but open to interpretation!
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Go and open the door.
Even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there’ll be
a draught.

- The Door by Miroslav Holub

[FILL] THE DOOR

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Seungcheol
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Magical Realism
Permission to remix: Please ask

***


The Door

- Seungcheol centric
- 400 words (exactly hehe)
- G
- Magical Realism

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28438941

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Any (although if you were to ask I'd say Seokmin would make a very sexy Highwayman)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: unhappy ending ? ? if you feel comfy!
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

- The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

[FILL]

[nightsofsilver]

Ship Member: Dk x Joshua
Major Tags: None apply
Additional Tags: strangers to lovers, angst, wanderlust, unhappy ending
Permission to remix: No

The Highwayman: 3.5k
(The fic is too long to post the whole thing on dreamwidth so here is the ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534779/chapters/69924945)

It was a quiet evening, far fewer patrons than usual filling the tables of the Stag’s Hoof Inn, but perhaps that was because of the storm raging outside, howling winds and crashes of thunder barely kept at bay by thick wooden walls and the glow of the hearth. Joshua yawns, looking down and realizing that he has been wiping the same spot on the bar counter for the last five minutes. He shuffles to the side, moving the cloth in his hand in slow, circular motions. There is a sudden creak and gust of wind blows through the inn, candles flickering and casting dancing shadows upon the wall. A man walks through the inn’s door, fighting against the wind to close it behind himself. As the figure approaches the bar Joshua sees that it’s not a man, but a boy, seemingly no older than Joshua himself. The boy stops in front of Joshua and clears his throat.

“How much for a hot meal and a warm bed to sleep in?” he asks. Joshua looks him up and down; the boy’s bedraggled cloak sticks to his scrawny frame and his boots are caked in mud.

“Five mun.”

The boy pulls a small pouch out and pours out a few coins into his palm. It looks to be almost half of the money in his pouch.

“Take a seat,” Joshua says, motioning to the mostly empty bar.

“I’ll go and see about getting you something to eat.”

“Thank you.”

The boy shrugs off his jacket and places it on the seat next is himself. The entrance of the mysterious stranger had him feeling far more awake than a few minutes ago and Joshua grins at the thought of all the stories of far off villages the boy could probably tell him as heads through the doors leading back to the kitchen. He finds his father leaning against the back wall, puffing on an old wooden pipe.

“We have a new guest father,” Joshua says, “and he wants a hot meal.”

His father sighs around the pipe in his mouth. Turning towards the small fireplace set into the wall he grabs an iron poker and stokes the hot coals. He then nods at Joshua, “Tell him it’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

Joshua retreats back to the front of the inn, pleased to see the boy looking a little more dry and warm than when he had first laid eyes on him.

“Thirsty?” Joshua asks, the boy’s gaze darting up from where it had been firmly fixed on the wooden counter.

He licks his lips, “Yes.” Joshua grins, picking up a clean cup and filling it up with a dark-colored, frothy drink.

“Here, try some of our homemade apple cider.”

The boy takes his first sip hesitantly, eyes going wide. He takes another sip, longer this time.

“Wow, this is great!” Joshua puffs out his chest proudly.

“Thank you, I made it myself.”

“Well it’s the best apple cider I’ve ever tasted uh…”

“Joshua, my name is Joshua.”

The boy nods, “My name is Seokmin. And like I said, delicious. Not that I’ve actually had apple cider before,” Seokmin confesses with a sheepish grin. Joshua is about to reply but is cut off by the appearance of his father from out of the doorway to the kitchens. He lays a steaming plate and a bowl of rice down in front of Seokmin, inclining his head politely before walking towards one of the few occupied tables in the inn. Seokmin eagerly digs into the food and Joshua returns to his position at the end of the bar. Drowsiness quickly settles over him again due to proximity to the hearth and it is quiet for the rest of the evening, their patrons slipping out the door or down the hall to the rooms as the hearth’s flames dim down to glowing coals. When Joshua finally curls up under the covers the howling winds seem to have ceased, the night sky finally at peace.

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Seungcheol/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Is this what you always want me for?
I miss you, I miss you so far
And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard
– Cemetary Drive, My Chemical Romance

pick me, choose me, love me

[deadwine]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: complicated relationships, post-breakup?
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.
Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?
I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.
-Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara

[FILL]

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Minghao
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: ambiguous relationship, post/pre-breakup, open ending, character study
Permission to remix: Yes

***

Here, again. Two boys. A brief recap.

One boy: heart like a broken compass, walks without looking down at the ground, headed every way but true north.

The other: face like a map. All the roads toward his center apparent in his eyes. You are here.

“You should stop following me around,” Minghao said to Mingyu, once, avoiding the hurt or simply not stopping to read it. “What are you? A dog?”

They were sitting in a diner. They’d gotten lost somewhere in Argentina and they’d had the same fight as always. They’d forgotten what they were looking for. They’d forgotten that things tended to break down by the side of the road sooner or later.

The problem with maps was that you had to really look at them to find them useful.



How to understand your map:

Really it’s not so difficult. Lay it out on the sun-trapped hood of your car, feel it hot under your hands like a bruise, hot like all the frustration you felt when you realized you took a wrong turn or maybe two wrong turns or maybe you shouldn’t have left your goddamn house in the first place.

Trace the miles with your finger, gently. Don’t mind the sweat filming over your eyes and making a haze of the world. Be patient. Locate the pulse again.

Remember nights spent looking up at stars.

“Same old sky,” Mingyu had said, warm next to you, solid like the earth against the back of your head. “But doesn’t it feel different? When you’re here, it always looks different to me. Or maybe I’m just seeing things.”

Remember what you said.

Did you say: “I think the stars look brand new when you’re near me, too?”

Did you say: “They’re not as bright as I remember because you’re always so hungry, so hungry that you're stealing their light?”

Did you say: “Mingyu, I will always lose myself in that endless sky. Forgive me, forgive me!”



“Why is this so difficult for us,” Mingyu said in the diner. “Look at me.”

Minghao never looked at maps. He never stopped to ask for directions, either.

“Minghao,” Mingyu said, his voice raw, his eyes terrible and knowing. He knew and he still tried. It was almost embarrassing in its simplicity. It was too easy for the roads to never lead home. “Don’t you know what I need?”


***

i'd trust you to kill me

[deadwine]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Junhui, Seokmin/Jeonghan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

And when I find that a knife's sticking out of my side
I'll pull it out without questioning why
-Fireworks by Mitski

(was thinking MCU thoughts: of Gamora asking Quill to kill her in Infinity War for Junhao...a Black Widow-led Hydra takeover in Winter Soldier for Seokhan?)

[Fill] : If it's you, it's alright

[thisisrose]

Ship/Member: tentative Seokmin/Jeonghan
Major Tags: Main Character Death
Additional Tags: first person pov
Permission to remix: Please ask

***

Pain.

Turning, turning, turning—what?

You? But we were friends, for a time I'd thought we were something more, but now standing here—falling to my knees and kneeling here—we clearly aren't. We clearly weren't.

Maybe you meant more to me than I meant to you. Maybe you only put up with me because I amused you. Maybe you only put up with me because it made you look good.

Look great.

Look like you had a heart. What heart? There's no heart in you, nothing there but an empty hole of a soul. Nothing more to you than beautiful hair and good looks.

You meant more to me than I meant to you. You were my gaming partner and singing partner and wearing-matching-jewellery-because-we-can partner, and yet if I'm to die it'll be by your hands, it'll be your choice—

Taking decisions away from me even now.

I fall further down onto my hands and hold the knife in my side tightly. Maybe help will get here first. Maybe someone will help me first.

You crouch. Your breath whispering over my face as you whisper my name.

Your voice is beautiful, it has always been beautiful, and if it's the last thing I hear than at least it's grace will ease my passing. At least the sound of your words, my name—

It's all I ever wanted to hear you say. My name. Not like this. Murmured, but not like this.
Broken, but not in sorrow, not in agony. In tears, but tears of joy, tears of pleasure, not tears of pain.

I open my eyes and stare at you.
Why did you have to do this?

Why? Didn't you know that I'd follow you to the ends of the earth? Didn't you know that for you I'd move mountains and defy Gods? Don't you know?

Maybe you meant more to me than I meant to you.

But if dying at your side—no matter that it's not the exact way in which I'd meant those words then I said them first—is my destiny, then it's my destiny.

You smile, your lips tilting into that oh so familiar shape, lighting up your face, and I know. I know that if you hadn't of killed me today you would have done it another day.

I have loved you.
I know.

I pull out the knife. My blood seeps into the snow and you bend to kiss me.

Maybe I did mean as much to you as you meant to me.



//

Title from song of same name by Standing Egg
I was going for a Marvelish Seokhan? Jeonghan as Natasha but Seokmin as?? I couldn't quite pin that one down. Clint maybe. But feel free to think of it as whatever fits best in your head.

[heartspound]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Any, it can be OT3
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

How do I love you?
Oh, this way and that way.
Oh, happily. Perhaps
I may elaborate by

demonstration? Like
this, and
like this and

no more words now

— How do I love you?, Mary Oliver

[FILL] No More Words

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Wonwoo or ot13 - whatever you want
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Love Languages
Permission to remix: Please ask

***
- <1k
- Drabble
- G

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28506366

pining, yearning, longing, wishing

[klav]

Ship/Member: Any; preferably Minghao or Joshua centric
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Language barriers and unfulfilled love if you'd like!
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and sigh.
- W.B. Yeats

[Fill] : Your body can stand almost anything it's your mind that you have to convince

[thisisrose]

Ship/Member: Loosely Minghao/Joshua
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Stroke (I didn't mean to it just happened, i'm so sorry), idolsona so strong that it overrides the i'm not well instinct, potential depression, possible end of career
Permission to remix: Please ask

***


All around the table, glasses hit the wood, a cheer rose up—elation.
Elation. Oh if it could be an emotion that he could feel, but the space where his emotions should be was a numb and blank void. Emotions.

It had become such a habit to suppress the ones that wouldn't do much good that Joshua couldn't exactly remember what they were supposed to feel like. How should love taste when it wasn't something you forced down your throat like bile before an interview or something you sobbed into a pillow case while you put on loud music and pretended you were getting off?

Seokmin insisted that he was just tired, that nothing was wrong, and Joshua wanted to believe him, but if it wasn't his emotion chip malfunctioning then it was his language chip. He hadn't understood the past fifteen minutes of conversation. Technically he knew the words, and the rises and falls of the conversation were familiar, but the meaning wasn't coming through, there was a disconnect.
He knew he should pay more attention, that there was a likelihood that a camera would focus in on him or that someone would ask him a direct question, but he couldn't bring himself to do so.

He looked across the table, Minghao was drinking something fruity, the colour staining his already lipstick stained bottom lip and Joshua inhaled again.
Jeonghan put some pieces of meat and veg onto his plate with a quick look before laughing loudly at something that Chan had said, and Joshua picked up his chopsticks. He couldn't feel for what he should be feeling, but he didn't want to worry Jeonghan, that was just like poking a bear. He'd get Seungkwan on his case and between the two of them he'd be bundled off to a doctor's appointment before he could even form the words 'I'm fine'.

He knew he loved them, knew that there was some sort of strong emotional connection, but he couldn't reach for it. Couldn't register it or anything else apart from 'get up, get dressed, preform, sleep' rinse and repeat, every day.
Nodding and smiling at something that Soonyoung had said loudly in his direction, Joshua took a drink and swallowed his mouthful of meat. He was going to be okay.

Probably.

If he could get a few months sleep.

Maybe when the members went on military leave.

Oh but Jihoon had already written them songs and there were chorographies that Jun and Minghao knew already to go along with them. Joshua felt his smile grow more brittle. There was nothing wrong with him.
He just wanted to sleep.

In a cave.

For potentially a long long time.

Minghao drank more of the fruity alcohol and looked up, meeting his eyes. His eyebrows furrowed in concern, and Joshua couldn't summon the requisite facial muscles to make him relax. Couldn't summon much of anything.
Minghao's lips formed words.
Words that Joshua knew but not words that he understood.
He tried for a reassuring smile but the furrow between Minghao's eyes only deepened and Jeonghan's arm wound itself around his waist, murmuring something into his ear.

Joshua blinked.

Jeonghan kept murmuring, the cadence shifting higher and lower and higher and then— "Joshua? Look at me."
Joshua turned his head slowly, and Jeonghan searched his face, murmuring something else but Joshua couldn't make sense of it. He should know what he was saying. He knew he should.

Jeonghan's cadence shifted again, "–Can you hear me?"
Joshua blinked and nodded. He thought he might be worrying Jeonghan. He didn't want to worry Jeonghan. He tried to smile, to reassure, but Jeonghan's eyes widened, and he stood, pulling Joshua up with him and steering him out of the room.

What about the filming?

They'd been filming, hadn't they?

Hadn't they?



There was a nurse, or a doctor, talking at him and shining a light into his eyes, pulling back to write something down on a chart before kneeling down and asking him something. Over and over and over in different ways with different voices until—
"Sir? Can you tell me your name?"
Joshua met the nurse's eyes and nodded. He could.
Surely.
They smiled encouragingly and Joshua inhaled, "Joshua Hong."
The nurse winced and wrote something else down.
"Joshua? Can you understand me?"
Joshua nodded.
"Okay. You're having a stroke. But it's going to be alright, we're going to make you feel better. I need you to take a breath—"
But work?

But they had a concert?

They had a concert, didn't they?







Didn't they?










He was sat up in bed, exhausted, tube pulling at his wrist. He hated hospital.
"Hyung?"
Joshua looked up. Minghao was standing in his doorway with grapes.
"Hao?"
Minghao's eyes were watery, "You gave us all a fright."
"I'm sorry?"
"No, no, it's not your fault–" Minghao took a step towards the bed and Joshua nodded to the chair– "You're on leave, have they told you?"
"No. Nobody's told me much of anything."
"You had a stroke. Jeonghan-hyung figured it out and got you to an ambulance before they'd even stopped the cameras."
"When?" Joshua had a black hole in his brain and Minghao swallowed.
"Last week, hyung."
"Oh."
"I'm so sorry—"
"What for, Hao-hao?" Emotion pulled at Joshua's gut, sharp and strong, he reached out, wincing, for Minghao's hand and he gripped tightly, "You didn't do anything."
"I should have—"
"Done nothing. Nobody could have prevented this, hm? Come here, give me a hug."
Minghao hugged him carefully, tears seeping into Joshua's collar and Joshua patted his back, holding tight long past when he should have let go, relief and pain and sadness and love, bright, fluttering love, warring for a place in his chest.

"You mightn't ever be able to preform again, hyung." Minghao whispered and Joshua hummed.
Relief won.
"The Lord doesn't close one door without opening another, Minghao-ya."
And Joshua thought he might know what that door was.





///

mmm I don't know what that was? And I have No idea if it filled your prompt? But it was certainly inspired by it, so I think that works.

cooking as a love language

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Any or Seokmin/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

You laughed when I marked cookbooks with the same care as notes in the lab but for me it was the same: the same details of love – dissolving, filtering, collecting until truth is so small it fits on the tongue.
- Anne Michaels

Re: cooking as a love language

[lovelinings]

Ship/Member: seoksoon (seokmin/soonyoung)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: fluff, i havent written in Years, ambiguous modern non-idol au, weak ending sorry
Permission to remix: yes~~

***

Seokmin’s hands were steady as he wrote across the top of his lined sheet of paper. Chocolate Chip Cookies, in his best brush lettering, the way he used to do it on his college history notes. He’d gotten more compliments on his artful notes than he did on the actual classwork. He supposed he should have more attention to the events than making sure he’d written The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in pretty letters. He did think it was pretty funny that he’d written them in a fancy orange and yellow gradient, though.

He sighed and slid the paper aside, unsatisfied with his first attempt. It could be neater. And maybe, instead of just writing it in black, he could use a tan marker and dot it with brown chips. That would be nice to look at. He set his black pen aside and started searching through his box for the right color.

“Oooh, are you gonna make this recipe?” Soonyoung asked, appearing over his boyfriend’s shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Seokmin’s neck, making him jolt and smear a streak of marker across the top of the page. “Oops. My bad. I like the way you wrote it on the other paper though!”

“I want it to be cool, though,” Seokmin stressed, sliding the messed paper away. “And no, I’m not making the cookies now. You ate the last of my chocolate chips.”

“Oops,” Soonyoung said again, perching himself on top of the counter rather than sitting in one of the available chairs. “I needed them. For energy. After my dance class last week.”

“Chocolate is a bad energy source and you know it,” Seokmin scolded, carefully writing out his title again.

“You weren’t home to cook for me,” Soonyoung said dramatically. “There was nothing I could do.”

Seokmin finished the word Chocolate and paused, inspecting his work. “Wait, should I write ‘chocolate chip’ in brown, and then make just the word ‘cookie’ look like… a cookie?”

Soonyoung hopped off the counter and squinted down at the letters. “It looks fine like this though? Why does it need to be so cool, anyways? Or handwritten, for that matter? You can just keep the recipe on your phone.”

“I know that,” Seokmin replied, re-capping the marker. “It’s just… I don’t know. It feels more special this way, I guess. It’s not even my own recipe or anything, just my favorite one. And writing it down like this means I can save it for the future. For like. Our kids, or something. I don’t know. It’s stupid.” He slumped down on the table with a sigh.

“Nooooo,” Soonyoung crowed, draping himself on top of the other man. “It’s not stupid when you put it like that! I just didn’t understand. I’m sorry. It’s cute that you want to save it for the future. Like, you saying that made my heart beat ten times faster. I love you~~~”

“I love you too,” Seokmin said softly. “Can you let me up now?”

“Yes. As long as we can go buy more chocolate chips and make these later. And also if you show me how to do the fancy letters. I wanna make cool sign-up posters for my dance classes.”

what did my fingers do before they held him?

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: end of a relationship or post-breakup?
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
but then he’s still left with his hands.
- Richard Siken

[FILL]: The Ghost of Your Hand in Mine

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Seungcheol/Jeonghan
Major Tags: Angst
Additional Tags: End of Relationship
Permission to remix: Please ask

<1k
Teen and up
This is just a bit depressing and I'm sorry about it

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529703

[icarusundone]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Oh, I can't
Stop you putting roots in my dreamland
- Ivy, Taylor Swift

i think this fits a trc au well, but also the idea of home revolving more around people and less around a physical place

[heartspound]

Ship/Member: Soonyoung/Wonwoo
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Pining
Do Not Wants: NSFW/Explicit content

Prompt:

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping.
- Variation on the Word Sleep, Margaret Atwood

this is something that has been in my mind since I saw this tweet. could be any setting, go as wild as you'd like with this one!

you must have been very lonely

[bluerthanbluets]

Ship/Member: Soonyoung/Wonwoo
Major Tags: ambiguous apocalyptic setting
Additional Tags: Pining
Permission to remix: Yes

***

Soonyoung would say it’s just a crush, but since the city started crumbling bit by bit when the new decade turned, he had decided to stray out of anything mild and ordinary, and just accept things, feelings included, as they are. The world is ending! Soonyoung can be in love!

Besides, there is absolutely nothing mild or ordinary in Soonyoung. Especially when he’s crushing. Or in love. Whichever.

“It’s pretty here, right?” Soonyoung goes, stretching his arms wide to denote the empty and cavernous space in the underground parking space of this condominium. There are three cars left here, and miraculously, a light that still hasn’t gone out.

“Over here!” He calls, skipping towards the part of the area with the light on.

Wonwoo hushes him.

“Yeah, just go yelling that we’re here so the other thieves can join us,” he says, truly tired and limping.

Soonyoung frowns, stares at him.

“You’re not okay,” he says. And it must be the trick of light, of the very minimal lightbulb, but Wonwoo softens.

“It’s just a sprain.”

“I can make a mean tourniquet. Do you want me to try?” Soonyoung is asking just as he is eagerly stripping his jacket off his body to reveal nothing but a thin, black tank top.

“Soonyoung, it’s okay,” Wonwoo rushes to say before Soonyoung hears him gasp. “I’m just tired so I can’t balance well on my other leg. It’s fine, really. Sit down here.”

Just as Soonyoung lowers himself, they hear the sound of something dropping, and then it takes two, three, four seconds before they feel the floor shake. They have no view of the city where they are crouched on the floor so they can’t exactly tell what’s happening outside, which might be just as well, as it brings terrible memories to Soonyoung and he must be trembling a little, because Wonwoo comes closer.

“It’s okay. It should be safe here,” he says, breath fanning over Soonyoung’s ear. And it’s embarrassing really, how they are at the threat of being bombed, but Soonyoung’s ears and neck redden like a warning.

“Of course,” Soonyoung goes, loud again. “I found it!”

Wonwoo grins, chuckles without a sound, and then leans to the wall behind him. Closes his eyes, sighs quietly.

“You should rest. I’ll take first watch.”

And it has been such a long time, Soonyoung thinks. Been so long since he hasn’t done this by himself. Since he’s had someone to watch over in the night. After Wonwoo found him two days ago, all the goons killed or had run off, the first thing he said was, “You’re alone?”

Soonyoung just nods.

“How long?” He asked, not looking at Soonyoung as he checked the pockets of the dead men.

And Soonyoung can’t say since it started, because that would mean saying to this hot dude that well, all he had in life is now gone, obliterated. At the end of it all, Soonyoung believed in the power of utterance, because to admit, From day one is to claim the irrefutability of the matter, meaning to say, everyone I love and know are dead, as in gone forever, as in not coming back, as in I am alone in this world and this is a fact.

Well, just until.

He watches Wonwoo sleeping, his head cradled awkwardly by his right shoulder that Soonyoung knows will hurt when he wakes later. His glasses had slipped slightly over the bridge of his nose and his cheeks and neck are marred with dirt but Wonwoo still looks so, so handsome, even in this dying light, in this dying world.

Soonyoung looks away and watches for anything in the dark.

And then, in what little light there is left from the solitary bulb above them, Soonyoung stills when he sees Wonwoo’s hand reach over to hold his. Clammy from the cold and exhaustion after they crawled for hours underground if only to reach this building.

“You must have been very lonely,” Wonwoo whispers, and if Soonyoung hears it, he only laces their fingers together.

Later, when Wonwoo wakes, Soonyoung is asleep on the floor with just his shirt on. And his left leg is wrapped in an honestly terribly looking tourniquet.

Wonwoo doesn’t take it off, winces through the pain, and watches over Soonyoung until morning.

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/any or Seokmin/any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

We want to stop. We can’t.
Is there an acceptable result? Do we mean something when we talk?
Is it enough that we are shuddering
from the sound?
– Richard Siken

[FILL] take root, my love

[moonfleur]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Jihoon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Yearning
Permission to remix: Please Ask

***

Mingyu doesn't know when this started, this fragile, tentative thing they do. Jihoon's breath is quiet when he breathes into the space between them, soft and even, just centimeters from his own and Mingyu wishes he had the courage to close the distance.

Jihoon is a comfortable warmth where he's curled up against his chest, an arm thrown carelessly over Mingyu's waist like a line cast out into the ocean waiting to reel him in. And Mingyu knows he would let him, would bite the bait, and let Jihoon pull him up and out of safe waters.

It's been happening more often now, especially with the weight of comeback season pressing down on all of them, but on Jihoon most of all. He slips into Mingyu's room, something Mingyu likens to a force of habit, a relic of the days they used to room together and it meant nothing if they occasionally spent the nights in each other's beds.

But this is different.

This is Jihoon choosing him, choosing to spend the night in an apartment that is no longer his own, in a room that is no longer his own. He never asks and Mingyu never questions it, just pulls back the comforter for Jihoon to climb in, even on the days he still smells like smoke and energy drinks. Even if it’s four in the morning and Mingyu's been asleep for three hours.

Sometimes they talk, exchanging whispers under the cover of darkness, like maybe if they can't see it, this scared beast of a thing between them, it isn't really there. On those nights, Jihoon will press in closer, fingers a death grip on Mingyu's waist as he lays out his troubles against the skin of Mingyu's chest and Mingyu wakes up with bruises on his hips he wishes were left in another way entirely.

On other nights they don't speak at all. On those nights, Jihoon is a wraith, completely silent, spent from the long hours in the studio and using his voice for other things. On those nights, Mingyu finds he holds onto Jihoon tighter, leans in closer, like he needs to hear Jihoon's breath, feel the way his heart beats underneath Mingyu's palm for him to believe Jihoon is actually there.

Tonight is one of those nights.

Jihoon had slid under the covers while Mingyu had been asleep, pressing himself against Mingyu's back like he'd wanted to mold himself to him. That had woken him and he had turned to pull Jihoon closer, to brush fingers through freshly washed hair until Jihoon had finally fallen asleep.

It is a painful thing to want something you're not sure you can have, and he knows he should be grateful. He is grateful. That Jihoon chose him, that he still chooses him, over and over. But he wants more, wants to be more, to mean more. But he knows that what they have now is shaky, tentative, and Mingyu is too afraid that if he gives it a name it will get up and walk away.

Mingyu wants. But he loves Jihoon more. And if this is all that Jihoon is willing to give him right now, these tender moments only they can bear witness to, then he will take it and he will wait until the day the spotlight on them starts to wane and they can come out from this hiding place they've created out of thin plaster walls, blankets and darkness.

He traces the lines of Jihoon's with his eyes, badly illuminated by the thin sliver of light shining in through the gap in his curtains. Commits to memory the dips and curves of his face like he hasn't done it a million times before, like he doesn't already know it by heart. He whispers his love into the space between them, nothing more than a breath, a seed he hopes will take root and bloom.

He smiles into Jihoon's hair when he curls closer, like he heard him, like this is his answer to Mingyu's silent confession.

He will wait.


///


I hope you will excuse me using this prompt to write semi-pretentious yearning and undefined relationships :')

i, too, am a romantic

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Outsider POV
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

In the interview, they asked if you believe in love at first sight. You said I think I have to. You didn’t say we are all one hard storm away from dissolving, vanishing into the frenzied dusk. But I get it. I know what it is to walk into the mouth of an unfamiliar morning and feel everything.
– Hanif Abdurraqib

FILL: soonwoo; love like a hurricane

[hwarium]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Soonyoung
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Permission to remix: Yes

***

In the interview, they asked if I believe in love at first sight.

I didn’t.

But this interview was for the people who believed in love. For those who believe that we believe in love. Perhaps it’s because we embody it in some form, packaged in our music and our smiles and our bright suits that never quite fit, but must.

There’s a tautology here, to receive love when we show it. But we show what we know of this imperfect thing, polishing the fragments we come across. And somehow, others can fill in that space, finish the puzzle, and read the picture in its completion. There will always be another era of this, after this.

That answer was too long. It was an answer that swam in my head when I showered, wavered in the unfamiliar weight of a hotel morning, meandered into the room after a bottle of wine. It was not the kind of answer for this kind of conversation.

So I smiled and said that I would believe in it when it happens to me. Then I gave the microphone to you.

You whined and said, Wonwoo, I thought you were a romantic.

I thought of three things to say back to you. I thought of what you could say back. What people will think, of things we say.

Didn’t say, because three seconds is all it takes for a broadcast mistake in front of a camera ready to strangle the sin from our mouths.

So I shrugged and looked back at the interviewer. I thought about the moment our hands touched when I handed you the microphone. I thought about all the histories where our hands have touched.

They asked you if you believe in love at first sight.

You said, I think I have to. And then you laughed, loud and boisterous and confident in the way I never could be. You never laughed to compensate for silence. I would rather swallow my world to force wordlessness, than to have my clumsiness forgiven.

They asked you what you meant. Of course, because you never realised when some things only made sense to you. You assume that everyone will spare you their patience. I suppose that is how you survive.

You looked at me and I wanted to tell you, don’t look at me. Not like that, not here.

You looked at me and said, I want it to happen to me.

I raised my eyebrow then. Said something wry and witty to move on to the next question. But I left my thoughts unspoken, and the thoughts lingered with me.

You believe that it will happen to you. That one day you will wake up and find your heart dissolved by a storm. I know what it’s like to wake up to an empty apartment and feel the absence of everything, like the ghost of a should be.

I get it. You always wanted the hurricane.

I saw the hurricane coming.

//

absolutely inspired by the full poem, this legendary thread of hoshi facts, and all those meme tweets about the svt interview dichotomy

[icarusundone]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: repression, pining
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

To feel anything
deranges you. To be seen
feeling anything strips you
naked.
- Red Doc> by Anne Carson

[FILL] 無人知曉

[kisoap]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Jun
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: idolverse, pining
Permission to remix: Yes

***

Wonwoo lays on his stomach, the left side of his mouth pressed against the hotel pillow. He watches Jun tap away at a game on his phone, plugged into his charger, the main theme coming through faintly over the speakers. He hadn't stopped playing it all tour, and Wonwoo caught himself humming the melody yesterday morning while brushing his teeth. He'd paused momentarily, spit out the toothpaste frothing at the corners of his mouth, and then continued brushing vigorously in the newfound silence.

Wonwoo purposefully waits until Jun's eyebrows are drawn up in concentration at the screen to ask. "What do you think the fans like about me?" The words come out distorted from the awful position he's in.

"Hmm?" Jun echoes, distracted. "What are you – ah! I lost!" He kicks his feet from where they're tucked under the covers, dislodging the precarious stack of clothes at the edge of his bed that he'd claimed fifteen minutes ago wouldn't fall over.

Wonwoo closes his eyes, suddenly feeling like sleeping. He hears the rustle of Jun extracting himself from his blankets and when he looks, Jun's crouched over his fallen clothes pile, gathering them up in his arms to tuck nicely into one of those shelves next to the TV console. "Are you only asking because you want a compliment?" he teases as he refolds a pair of jeans.

"No," Wonwoo replies, more seriously than warranted. "I –"

At a schedule earlier that week, he'd drawn Jun's name in lots to speak about his good points. "It's okay," Jun'd said with a brilliant grin when Wonwoo looked at him at a loss. His fingers were cold and clammy in Wonwoo's. "I can't think of anything, either." Wonwoo couldn't look him in the eye even as he complimented him with a premeditated insincerity after minutes of thought.

Jun cuts him off there unintentionally. "I mean," he half-laughs, wet hair still sticking together in spikes at the nape of his neck. He rubs the back of it, thinking, and then Wonwoo has to look away. "What's there not to like about you, Wonwoo?"

***

"I think I'm taller than Jun," Wonwoo says to no one in particular in between rehearsals.

"Oh, really?" They're on a water break, and Jun pulls himself up from where he'd been pressing an ice pack against his lower back over his hoodie. There's an almost-black stain where the condensation bled through the forest green cotton. He puffs out his chest as he approaches Wonwoo. "Are you sure about that?" he challenges in a voice that sounds like he's trying to imitate some character. No one ever can guess who though, so it just sounds like Jun. "Should we settle this, once and for all?"

Wonwoo grew up wanting so badly to be tall. He’d never admitted this aloud, and it manifested itself in weird, lingering habits instead. Claiming he was taller than people he thought he had a chance at being taller than just happened to be one of them. Now he stands back-to-back with Jun facing the mirror, and the residual cold from where Jun had held that ice pack seeps through his own t-shirt, damp with drying sweat. Wonwoo clenches his fists by his sides to hold in the shiver.

In truth, the things Wonwoo wanted most desperately he swallowed down so deep that they could not be removed from his person, surgically or otherwise. “It’s Junhui,” announces Mingyu from over by the water cooler. He’s barely interested, which means it has to be objective.

“Are you sure it’s not because of my hair?” Jun asks. He’d filmed something in the morning and had to go to the shop at dawn to get his hair done. It’s been eighteen hours since then, and Wonwoo caught him napping on the sofa in the recording studio with the crown of his head pressed into the armrest in a way that he’s convinced couldn’t be comfortable. He guides Wonwoo by the shoulders anyway, squinting carefully at their reflections.

“I didn’t think you’d try to discount your own victory,” Wonwoo says to the Jun in the mirror. “You sounded like you really wanted to win.”

Jun shrugs. He smiles toothily at the Wonwoo standing next to him, but Wonwoo can’t tell what for. “Only if it’s fair-and-square.”

Without even realizing it, this moment had gone and lodged itself in Wonwoo's throat, to be thought of intimately from then on every time he swallowed. “You can’t help being taller than other people, Jun-ah,” he manages.

***

There's a pool at their hotel in Osaka. It's a moot point because there's a pool in most of the hotels they stay in, and Wonwoo can't swim. He ends up in the shallow end anyway, since it's cold outside and the water's heated and twenty minutes ago, Jun had looked at him over the towel slung over his shoulder at the door of their hotel room and asked while checking the time on his phone if he wanted to go too, Vernon said it's nice?

"Did they ever test you on how long you could hold your breath back in junior high?" Jun asks Wonwoo after being eliminated from a game of pool dodgeball. They'd watched the others in silence for a bit, their distant shouts echoing against the tiles, Jun dipping his head in the water to push back his hair.

Wonwoo snorts. Where his own face was still dry, there were water droplets still caught on Jun's long eyelashes. "What kind of school did you go to?" he jokes dryly.

"Hey!" protests Jun. "You've really never tried it before?"

"I don't like the feeling," Wonwoo starts while lowering himself neck-deep into the water, "when water gets stuck in my ears."

Jun pulls on his own earlobes subconsciously. "Oh," he grins sheepishly.

On the other end, Mingyu wipes out and falls backwards into the water, and there's a deafening eruption of laughter. "Should we try it now?" Wonwoo asks without tearing his gaze away from the rest of them.

"Really?" Jun leans closer to him. The pool water laps against Wonwoo's chest from the movement. "Okay, okay. Ready? Three, two –"

They push their faces below the water. Suddenly the yelling from the other side of the pool is distorted and funneled away, like they've entered another universe parallel to their own.

Jun's got his eyes screwed shut, knees balled to his chest, cheeks full of air like a pufferfish. His hair's long enough now that the ends of it float on the surface around his head like kelp. There's a pool filter to his other side that spits bubbles onto the shoulder farther away from Wonwoo.

Tinted blue and suspended in a rip of gravity, the water suddenly buoys all these swallowed words out from Wonwoo's throat. "I like you," he mouths before he can lose his courage. These admissions float to the surface, inconsequential for now. "I've liked you for a long time."

Jun unfurls himself then, his eyes still closed, before pushing up for air. Wonwoo watches him go with lungs burning. A human heart was anatomically not meant to feel this full to bursting, caged in the thoracic cavity. And then Wonwoo follows suit, and resurfaces.

til then i can try again

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/any or Chan/any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: ambition and what it costs, the mortifying ordeal of being known
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

my body's made of crushed little stars.

love languages but make it emo

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any (perhaps Jeonghan/Any?)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

loving,
in your language,
means i tear chunks from you like some half-starved bird;
in my language,
means i tear them from myself.

we talk all night.

-Jack Veasey, Resolution

i have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Junhui-centric
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: cryptid, horror, magical realism, whatever, go crazy!
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster?
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

A monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.
- Ocean Vuong

Sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness we don’t expect from them.
- Herta Muller

[FILL] i have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine + would you walk into hell...

[virgomoon]

Ship/Member: Wen Junhui/Xu Minghao
Additional Tags: ambiguities (in everything), LOTR-inspired lore but not really, sorry for the tree stuff i love trees
Word Count: 766
Permission to remix: After asking

For surjamukhi and deadwine . I kept thinking of both your prompts together and this is the result of that, sorry that it's neither here nor there.

***

When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster?
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

I am someone who did not die when I should have died.
-Anne Carson

They say there’s a man on the moon, and that he’s lonely.

Junhui begs to differ.

There might be someone on the moon, but it’s certainly not necessarily a man. It could be entwives. And what if there are men and then in that case doesn't no one have to be lonely?

He says as much to Minghao, who comes to visit him every night when there’s no risk of anyone in town discovering them. He says as much to Minghao, who with his beautiful locks he lets Jun braid sometimes, and his laughter sparkling like the stream nearby Jun feels blessed to hear, and with his eyes that smile whenever intent upon Jun when he’s speaking – Minghao with his self, so Minghao. He says as much to Minghao, who laughs like startlingly clear water, like the clarity that comes after quiet settling after snowfall. He laughs and calls Jun a fool.

“Well so I am! So is everyone else in this town. And so are you, coming to visit me like this.”

Minghao’s eyes soften. Jun often feels there should be a limit to how one human can express infinite tenderness, but they never fail to surprise him anyway. Humans and their strange ways.

“Am I a fool for keeping you company, then?”

Jun falters. Flusters. “Well, hm. I didn’t mean that, you see –”

“Oh I do,” Minghao stands up, Jun rushes back to hide amidst the leaves. “I do see, even though you are constantly hiding in the leaves. Even though you leave me gifts of flowers beside my favourite tree thinking I don’t notice. Even though you call me a fool and then tell me in a hundred and more ways how you care for me.”

Jun hums. Minghao settles down on the ground again after a moment, going back to gazing at the full moon as they had been. There’s a curious wait wherein no one says anything, and then leaves rustle, something brambly sounds, and a curious wooden figure now sits beside Minghao, stonestill. Minghao puts his hand out.

Jun takes it. “You humans are so very strange.”

“Says the tree-man.”

“Excuse you! Just a regular ent, thank you. Or entish, rather. I wouldn’t know. It’d be better if I was human anyway.”

“Would it?”

Jun considers this. Though their conversation reaches this familiar impasse every time, Minghao loves prompting him like this. Neither would admit how comforting traversing the same expanse is.

“Have you seen Paulownia?”

“You know as well as I they have been banned here for decades.”

“Hm. Strange lot, you humans.”

“You say that each time! They’re invasive!”

“Just like you lot. Well, hm,” Jun lies down, chewing on the dumpling Minghao brings him dutifully, even though they don’t taste like anything to him. “Humans often plant a tree when a child is born. They used to plant Paulownia here when a female child was born, to sell the wood when she came of age. Plant a tree, plant a life, whatever. Unmoving trees are strange to me.”

“Says the strange one.”

“But,” he goes on ignoring this boy, encased in moonshine, “different humans plant different trees. Somewhere they are planting apple trees. Somewhere pear. Apparently they believe it will help them decide how long their child lives. But what if someone poisons the tree!”

“Um.”

“It’s a possibility, isn’t it! Aren’t you lot going around murdering everything?”

“And that is your enchanting story of why you wish to be human?”

“The Empress tree,” he turns to Minghao, who is always startled at the green, burning light in those deep brown eyes. “grows everywhere. It grows anywhere. And yet its wood is called golden. You humans hate it, and yet it has so much value.

“If I was human, I would be able to do so much than hide between the trees…” He touches Minghao’s hair. “You who are like the Paulownia can do so much more.”

Minghao leans into his palm. “You don’t make any sense. That tree is only invasive because it’s not in the place it’s supposed to be.”

“And you aren’t?”

They lock eyes. “I could never be any tree, or ent or half entish.” He could never belong to this world.

“And I never some half-baked story the people in these town cook up.”

Minghao snorts. “You have to admit ‘The Man on the Moon’ has a ring to it. Unless you don’t stop climbing trees and forming impressive silhouettes against the moon that story will continue. And what more can you do, how long can you be here? You who have no one else.”

“For now, we can gaze at the moon.”

abject permanence

[florulentae]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: Canon
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants:: N/A
Prompt: Not the weight of the body but the fact of the body. Not the shape of the body but the needs of the body. How inconvenient to be made of desire. Even now, want rises up in me like a hot oil. I want so much that it scares me. I don’t know what I’m made of; I wish I did. —Abject Permanence, Larissa Pham