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Round 2: Alternate Universes
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Status: Closed
Seventeen Holidays
About
Sometimes its the characters that move us, but sometimes we fall in love with the the world behind the story. Something transformative occurs when we place the characters we love in an unfamiliar world, like the light has shone on a new side and we're seeing them anew. Run to the classics; revisit the magic of Harry Potter, the heart-punch of a Pacific Rim drift, the warmth of a Coffee Shop AU. Or maybe dig your fingers into a story that blew your mind - Battle Royale, The Raven Cycle, Interstellar - or demand better from a book that let you down (The Poppy War fin- mmph). Perhaps! You might combine two of your fandoms for maximum joy (Haikyuu and Tennis adjacent mutuals, I'm looking at you.) The possibilities are literally endless. Do it for the aesthetic, do it for the drama. Examples
Wonhui x MDZS/Untamed
Wonwoo as Lan Wanji, Jun as Wei Wuxian (Minghao as Jiang Cheng?). I want a cast that feels betrayed and shocked at Junhui's demise but then gradually learning his reasons behind it.
Mingyu/Seungkwan Debating AU
Imagine them as third speakers in the high school circuit. Rivals! Mortal Enemies! Prepared case summaries derailing into personal attacks, and then when their coach calls them out on it they become passive aggressive e.g. "there are major flaws in the opposition's arguments..."
Jeonghan as Mal from Inception
Any Jeonghan ship will do. I just want him to chaotically haunt a person while being sexy about it.
Rules
How it works
Prompting
Filling
Filling with art/media
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 ABOUT  DATES  FAQ  BAIT LIST |
[banging pots and pans] PACRIM
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt: Anything to do with a pacrim universe, some particularly tasty dynamic options being:
- old copilots reunited to drift once again
- steady copilots who suddenly find themselves losing drift compatibility
- mechanic/jeager pilot
- getting the shovel talk from your bf/gf's copilot
- fresh faced newbie who's drift compatible with someone who's resigned themselves to never drifting
- that magical moment when two people discover they can drift together
- that horrified moment when two people discover they can drift together
- moving on after the loss of a copilot/ finding a new copilot
but feel free to go anywhere in this universe!
Here is some information on the film, if you've never seen it! I love this movie, it's tropey and looks cool and doesn't take itself too seriously for a monsters vs. robots movie.
[FILL] home is an extension of the body
Major Tags: past character death
Additional Tags: grief/mourning, injury recovery
Permission to remix: Yes
***
Even after four months, standing up for five minutes is almost too much to bear. Hansol’s fingers wrap around the walker so tightly they turn pale, whiter than seafoam and trembling just as hard. He’s never been so frustrated in his life.
The doctor says it’s a miracle he’ll be able to walk normally again someday. The doctor says it’s a miracle he’s alive at all. He should’ve died out at sea, body lifeless and swollen and sunk to the ocean floor, to decay where the light can never reach. Tidal Reaper an impressive name for a jaeger and an even more fitting one for a coffin.
Three months ago they told him they were never able to recover Seungkwan’s body.
Hansol grits his teeth, struggling to plaster on the brightest smile he can manage when he makes eye contact with the doctor. From her expression, he’s not fooling anyone. “Hansol-ssi, are you sure you’re feeling up to this?” she asks him gently, hands hovering around him like she’s afraid he’ll fall. “There’s no shame in trying again tomorrow.”
“I’m fine,” he insists, irrationally upset at the way his voice quivers. His body never does what he wants it to, anymore. An ever-present reminder of the weakness that has become a fact of life, ever since that day when he’d seen the kaiju coming too late and he’d felt real, bone-chilling fear for the first time, paralyzed by the knowledge that there was nothing he could do—only watch.
“What do they have in the cafeteria today?” he asks, inching the walker forward, little by little. “Anything special?”
“Baek-jjamppong,” the doctor answers. She steps back to give him some breathing room. “It’ll be good on a cold day like this.”
Hansol nods, exhaling harshly through his nose, lips curling back in a grin that looks too wild in the mirror. “Anything else? Fresh fruit?”
The doctor hesitates, long enough for him to drag himself halfway across the room. “A shipment of oranges came in from Jeju today,” she finally tells him.
She darts forward to catch him when he stumbles on an invisible crack in the linoleum, but Hansol clings stubbornly to the walker, pulling himself upright with all the tremulous strength remaining in his hands. Suddenly the smile comes easily for once. “Then I definitely have to go get one,” he says, pushing the walker over the bump in the open doorway.
--
To catch a glimpse of Soonyoung before was rare. They were just so busy, the both of them, Soonyoung always on his feet running around fixing everyone else’s problems and Hansol preoccupied with dealing with his own. Now he sees Soonyoung almost every day.
“I can’t believe it took me nearly dying for you to finally visit me,” he’d joked once, in the beginning, but the look on Soonyoung’s face made him regret it immediately.
“Don’t joke about things like that,” said Soonyoung, serious in a way he rarely ever was. Sober, and so, so sad. The depths of his mourning Hansol finally understood.
Now, there’s nothing but open delight on his face when Hansol shuffles into the cafeteria. That, and a tint of surprise at the edges. For a moment, Hansol’s overwhelmed by immense pride. Soonyoung’s praise is not cheaply given, and the part of Hansol that once desperately sought his approval in everything has apparently lived on from his teenage years.
“You should’ve told me you were walking,” he chides Hansol lightly, guiding him to the table he’d been sitting at with Seokmin. He helps Hansol lower himself onto the bench carefully. Hansol lets out a sigh of relief. “I would’ve come to get you.”
“It wasn’t planned,” says Hansol, “but I heard there were Jeju oranges today. Did you save me one?”
“Did he,” says Seokmin, teasing. “He guarded the oranges like a watchdog. Snapped at anyone who tried to take more than one.”
Soonyoung splutters. “Did not! I just wanted to make sure there were some left for Hansol. No one needs to take that many oranges at once, especially not Kim Mingyu.”
Hansol laughs. “Are they good?”
“Super sweet,” Seokmin declares, fingers already quickly stripping one of its skin. He breaks it into sections and passes one to Hansol with a, “Looking fresh, Hansollie.”
Because it’s Seokmin, Hansol knows he means it. The orange, when he bites into it, is just as sweet as promised. “Thanks, hyung.”
Soonyoung continues the conversation from earlier, bringing Hansol in like he’d been there from the start. But he keeps a firm grip on Hansol’s hand, as if to hold him down from floating away. Hansol doesn’t mind, even if it makes it harder to eat the oranges. It’s grounding, in a way, to be held so tightly and so quietly. Soonyoung never treats him like he’s fragile but he always reminds Hansol that he’s there.
--
They’d tried drifting together once, actually. Back when Hansol was a new recruit as green as grass and Soonyoung was much closer to becoming a full-fledged Ranger. It went well. More than well, in fact. They were compatible to a level that some people would never reach with anyone in their lifetimes, no matter how hard they tried. Good enough to be partners, for real.
But it paled in comparison to Soonyoung’s drift scores with Wonwoo. The innate understanding they seemed to share, naturally attuned to each other beyond comprehension. Hansol remembers watching them spar, someone who he’s long since forgotten standing next to him and whistling. Nothing quite like best friends since childhood, they’d said, and Hansol had thought, well, duh.
“I was actually so mad at him, at first,” Soonyoung tells him one day. The sun has long since set, unwilling to wait for the end of Soonyoung’s workday. Hansol isn’t nearly as impatient. Having Soonyoung visit late at night is better than not having him visit at all. “He didn’t even want to be a pilot, he just came chasing after me.”
Please don’t tell me you’re sorry, Hansol had said, the first time Soonyoung had come to see him after they’d told him Seungkwan was dead.
I wasn’t going to, Soonyoung had replied, quietly, but he’d sat next to Hansol and held his hand the whole day. He didn’t say it, but Soonyoung was probably the only person who could’ve told Hansol I know how you feel without it being a lie.
Today, Hansol dares to say, “He loved you a lot.”
“He did,” Soonyoung agrees, his smile small, dreamy, tinged with nostalgia. Like only half of him is present right now, the other half floating on the edge of a memory. “So stupid. I loved everything about being a pilot, but he only did it for me. Said I’d get myself killed if he wasn’t there to watch out for me.”
Hansol nods, knowing. It wasn’t like that for him and Seungkwan. They both loved it the same—one of the many reasons why they matched so well. He gets it, though. You don’t have to love the vessel you’re in, only the person in it with you.
“Did you ever think of going back, after?”
“A few times,” Soonyoung admits. “But I don’t think I could handle having another crazy person in my head if it’s not him.”
Outside, the moon’s reflection is rendered into squiggles by the gentle push and pull of the waves. Soonyoung asks him, occasionally, if he’d like to open the window for some fresh air, but Hansol always refuses. The smell of the sea makes him sick these days.
“Why’d you join J-Tech?” he asks.
Soonyoung laughs. “Crazy, isn’t it? The jaegers took everything from me and I still can’t get enough of them. Love ‘em so much I could hate myself for it.”
Crazy, but oh, how Hansol understands. “Wonwoo-hyung wouldn’t want that,” he says quietly. “He’d want you to love what you love.”
“I know, Hansollie,” says Soonyoung, rubbing a thumb over the back of Hansol’s hand. Somehow Hansol the one that’s being comforted. “I know.”
Something in his chest loosens at that. The same old sorrow still has its ugly claws wrapped tight around his neck, throat closing up whenever he thinks about Seungkwan. Because Hansol only wants to remember him as he was, happy or sad or angry but always looking forward with the knowledge that they would carry on together, but all he can see at night is Seungkwan in the worst moment, in pain, right before the end. It feels like the worst disservice to him. Hansol could hate himself for it.
But maybe today he can talk about it.
“He saw it before I did,” Hansol says, for the first time. “Twisted around right in time to take the hit for me. Just as stupid, isn’t he, hyung? So selfless.”
Soonyoung moves to hug him then, as best as he can with the hospital bed in the way. His arms rest heavy around Hansol’s shoulders. Hansol thinks he should be crying, but instead he just feels empty. What they don’t tell you about letting another crazy person into your head is that it feels like half of you’s been stripped away once they’ve left it.
“I want to go home,” he says, barely aware that he’s saying it, focused as he is on the feeling of Soonyoung’s arms holding him down. When he says home, though, it’s not Seoul or New York he thinks of first, but Jeju. An old house, baby pictures along the wall, cliffs hanging over the sea. A home he’s never seen before, a home he only knows through Seungkwan. A home nonetheless.
“I’ll take you home,” Soonyoung says softly, “I promise.”
You don’t even know which one I’m talking about, Hansol wants to tell him, but suddenly his vision is swimming with fatigue and all he can see is Soonyoung’s face, looking so sad. Funny, Hansol thinks, I’ve only seen him that sad once before. Then his eyes are slipping shut and he can no longer fight the pull of sleep, unable to think about anything at all.
Vaguely he registers the press of Soonyoung’s lips against his forehead.
--
When he wakes from the deepest, most restful sleep he’s had in months, the sunlight glints off of Soonyoung’s ring where his hand is still curled around Hansol’s. Hansol watches him sleep with his cheek pillowed against the edge of the bed, drool leaking out of the corner of his lips. Shoulders rising and falling in a steady motion, even and cyclical. As familiar as the way his hand fits in Hansol’s.
The air smells faintly of oranges. Slowly, Hansol gets up and opens the window.
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
the line where i started crying: "You don’t have to love the vessel you’re in, only the person in it with you."
the line where i started crying harder: "An old house, baby pictures along the wall, cliffs hanging over the sea. A home he’s never seen before, a home he only knows through Seungkwan. A home nonetheless."
I'LL TAKE YOU HOME HE SAID ;______; this piece plays so well to the soulmateism of the past pairings but also the unexpected understanding between two people who are very different... u really crafted the history so well. it's really really good ty for sharing!!
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
and then again at >Like only half of him is present right now, the other half floating on the edge of a memory.
the details about hansol and soonyoung having tried drifting once+closing with the sea were so great, thank you for sharing <3 it hit some of my absolute favorite things that you can do with the pacrim universe, esp the little bits of memories not their own were incredible
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
going to quote u with certain lines that i love the most and will try to refrain from throwing this whole thing back at u
> “Hansol-ssi, are you sure you’re feeling up to this?” she asks him gently, hands hovering around him like she’s afraid he’ll fall. “There’s no shame in trying again tomorrow.” plus the paragraph after it "his body never does what he wants it to, anymore" makes me feel hansol's pain on some other level... just the idea that he's so lost w/o seungkwan/dealing with the loss that he feels so magnificently deep but also having to live w the fact that he's the one that survived and everyone else watching him constantly, n treating him like he's fragile. it would have hurt less if u stabbed me
> slight 218 moment. yes
> "Hansol doesn’t mind, even if it makes it harder to eat the oranges. It’s grounding, in a way, to be held so tightly and so quietly. Soonyoung never treats him like he’s fragile but he always reminds Hansol that he’s there." screaming into my fist . not u writing love simply, just how it exists (physically) but me knowing it is There (emotionally)
> think someone else brought this up but "You don’t have to love the vessel you’re in, only the person in it with you." ouchies
> also "Because Hansol only wants to remember him as he was, happy or sad or angry but always looking forward with the knowledge that they would carry on together, but all he can see at night is Seungkwan in the worst moment, in pain, right before the end. It feels like the worst disservice to him. Hansol could hate himself for it." OUCHIES
i loved everything about this i could probably talk on and on about it for hours the way u crafted YEARNING ACHING LOVING (and the eventual loss) in so few words [about reading in between the walls] absolutely astounds me hui... ur truly a genius..not to mention soonsol dynamics (with tip of the hat to verkwan/snwu past) made me go insane. there is something very dear to me about the idea that someone else understands u and truly Sees ur pain/suffering and is gentle enough to take it away without being cruel about it. ty for writing
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
- AH i did want 2 play w survivor's guilt a little bit but i was worried abt making it too heavyhanded so i just tried 2 Imply it... v happy it came thru a little!
- youve hooked me onto 218 bros i adore them <3___<3
- thank u for picking out those lines!! all 3 of these i kinda had to Sit there and rewrite a couple times and squint at it to see if it was properly saying what i wanted it to say so i am glad they hit
thank u so much for reading and leaving such a kind comment, i'm really happy you liked this <3
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body
i don't know the source but your world-building is so clever in this, through Soonyoung's story about Wonwoo and Vernon's about Seungkwan as well as Vernon's POV of Soonyoung initially. I love the solace soonsol find in each other, how their scenes are painful but not as acute as i expected them to be- tempered by the other's company. aah thank you so much for this!
Re: [FILL] home is an extension of the body