Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills and comments, but prompts are no longer accepted.
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
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- 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).
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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!
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
Filling with art/media
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[FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
major tags: character death (implied), ghosts
additional tags: N/A
permission to remix: yes!
***
Jihoon is being haunted.
Perhaps haunted is too strong a word, in the same way that ghost is too strong a word for the spirit that roams his halls.
He knows it exists because he caught it once, flickering, by the lamplight. Jihoon had held his breath, enraptured, watching the trinkets he’d kept on the mantle move around — first, haltingly, as if it was unsure of what exactly it was allowed to touch, and then stronger, surer, with increasing delight. The fire in the fireplace roared, burning bright, and the room had come alive with the warmth of it all.
And so it continues like this: every day, at half past seven, when the sky is bleeding orange and yellow, just before the sun goes to sleep, a key trembles in the drawing room. Dust gets shaken off a portrait, its wooden frame creaking in protest. The music box is wound, and the song it plays is ever so pretty and trilling. It is a spectacle, and it is wonderful.
It has been a while since his house has felt like a home.
In these terrible and lovely moments, time does not flow, and Jihoon can pretend.
Then, as always, the clock strikes eight. The room returns to what it was before. His ghost becomes nothing more than a silhouette of dust, a feathering of shadows, the barest of whispers, but the more it happens, the more Jihoon begins to wonder. Something about it feels startlingly familiar.
His first thought is, No way. Then, Do I know you?
(The ghost cannot reply, but if it could, it would say something like this: You do.)
--
He tells Soonyoung one day about his guest. It flies out of his mouth without meaning to, and by the time he’s let it out in the world, the words have found their mark. His secret is no longer entirely his, and for that, Jihoon feels contrite.
“You’ve gone mad,” Soonyoung says flatly, and then proceeds to tug at his boyfriend’s sleeves. “I told you we should’ve let him stay with us, especially after all that’s happened this past year.”
“Jihoon’s not mad.” Wonwoo murmurs, his hand resting on Soonyoung’s waist in attempt to calm him down. The other man sends an apologetic glance Jihoon’s way, though he’s not sure who Wonwoo is more sorry for, Soonyoung or him. “He’s just lonely.”
Jihoon bristles at the implication. “I am not—“
Soonyoung and Wonwoo look at each other, in the way that couples do, with gazes that hold way too much meaning to be properly conveyed through their eyes. It is a silent conversation between two partners. There is no room for Jihoon in this dance. Their exchange lasts no longer than a second, but Jihoon aches. Someone used to look at him like that once.
“Never mind,” He mutters. “Forget I ever said anything at all.”
--
Jihoon lives in a giant mansion at the edge of town, complete with a large, sprawling estate that is incredibly easy to get lost in and even easier to keep people out. He thinks it simple, really, no matter how complicated Soonyoung and Wonwoo make it out to be: he wants to be by himself because he wasn’t, once. It is this loss that he feels, keening, inside of him.
It is not the loneliness that is hard for him to bear. It is the grief of knowledge that holds him at knifepoint. That he knows what it is like to wake up to a warm bed and even warmer arms, that he knows exactly how laughter can fill these halls, that he knows how it feels to love and to be loved with his entire being. He feels torn open at the seams, his chest bloodied and excavated. He knows that he will never get to experience it again.
How can he? No one gets that lucky twice.
Perhaps more importantly, the question is, how do you live when the better part of you has already died?
The answer is this: he does not. Jihoon spends the rest of his days carving out an existence. He feeds the horses, tends to the gardens, spends another day feeling like a stranger, his hand trailing the walls of his very large house.
“Why don’t you just get married?” The new townsfolk ask often, when they learn of him. It is always the cure that they deem fit to prescribe. A bachelor living all alone must always need a wife, someone to sand his sharp edges down, to make domestic and soft and tender. A muse, to help him through the nights, a guiding light to help him navigate his lyrical genius and make sense of all the music. Someone to come home to.
For Jihoon, that person has already come and gone in his life. Fleeting, blinding, but memorable, and his name was Lee Seokmin.
It has always been Seokmin, really.
--
Jihoon stares at the piano in the drawing room, and looks at his timepiece. It’s almost a quarter till his ghost makes its daily appearance.
He draws a shaky breath and hopes that he’s right.
He takes his time to lovingly dust off all the keys. He apologizes in his head, ashamed at how long it has taken him to return to the thing he used to love the most in the world. The music sheets flutter as he sets them down, endless scores and nameless compositions that have only existed, here in the drawing room.
Jihoon sits down on the piano bench. He closes his eyes, strains to listen. It must be time now. He thinks he hears the sound of twinkling chimes, an echo of laughter, feels more than sees warmth wash over the room.
“I wrote this for you,” Jihoon says, throat tight, heart full. He begins to play the keys, fingers dancing on their own accord, his muscles responding effortlessly to memory. A culmination of years upon years of careful practice. Of devotion. Of love.
He thinks of a boy who makes a wonderful substitute for the sun. There’s a sweet tang of citrus in the air, though that’s impossible — the tangerine season is long gone by now, drowned by the cold winter months, waiting for a spring resurrection.
The piano bench creaks as Jihoon continues to play, the way it does when someone tries to join him on it, even though the thing is tiny and just about to fall apart. Even after all these years, it stands. Something buried deep in Jihoon’s chest begins to unfurl. Something in him sings.
A breeze kisses the nape of his neck, tender, just the way that Seokmin used to.
Maybe Jihoon imagines that, too.
***
a/n: fun fact 1122 word count which is also wozzi birthday, and completely coincidental. i saw the prose poem and this immediately came to mind (this being a victorian ghost haunting lonely musician au?? not entirely sure it's accurate but is a result of watching lots of history/period pieces as of late). i'm not really used to writing woozi but as fellow a infj i wanted to take up the challenge, esp since 2021 is all about trying new things. thank u for prompting T___T
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
bonus shoutout to seokmin sun and spring metaphors ("He thinks of a boy who makes a wonderful substitute for the sun.") i'll perish!! thank u so much for writing this!!
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
i'll have u know that line/section u quoted from was my absolute favorite to write so i thank u immensely for pointing it out. thank u for reading n commenting wahh
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere
The answer is this: he does not.
God...GOD this was so heartachingly beautiful. seokhoon is so wonderfully entwined and tender and to see them at the other end, through jihoon's lonely eyes is so very painful and yet you wrote it so tenderly the pain feels understated. i love the way you work through jihoon's grief, the way your soonwoo are tuned to each other only soonwoo can be, the way seokmin is...a warm (?) ghost. thank you!!
Re: [FILL] there's a ghost in the room somewhere