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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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bend over the puck
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: hockey, wound care, the intricate relationship dynamics between people playing a sports
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt: i think a lot about how robby fabbri and tyler bertuzzi of the detroit red wings grew up playing hockey with each other, got drafted onto different nhl teams and finally ended up on the same team again. you could go down the same route but i'd love an exploration on how history tints a forced rivalry and also the repercussions of said rivalry on the friendship/relationship once they've reunited in the same team n_n
[FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
major tags: N/A
additional tags: hockey, friends to enemies to teammates/friends again, sports as an excuse to further examine relationships n particular characters
Permission to remix: yes!
***
a/n: i actually feel so feral. the brainworms have seized me here is 1k+ of cheolshua as childhood friends turned hockey rivals turned teammates. as someone who’s played comp sport for a majority of my life and sports is something that i consider a big contributor to my development as a Person i’m surprised i haven’t written any sportsfic yet. i know only the barest of things about hockey (what i know is what ive read from fredrick backman’s beartown/us against you + also being an avid fan of the sj sharks for some reason from the 6th-8th grade) nd i wrote everything first before looking up the particular players only to find that their dynamic was eerily similar to the cheolshua i envisioned in my mind . fun fact in this universe i want to write hockey player and figure skater seokhao as well maybe one day i’ll get there.
***
Seungcheol likes to stay at the rink late at night, long after everyone else packs up for the day. His feet are screaming at him to rest, his body aches with years far beyond anything he should be feeling at the tender age of 27, and his shirt completely soaked through with sweat, but this is when he feels the most alive.
The ice is a fearsome beast. It’s also where Seungcheol chooses to make his home.
He supposes it says a lot about who he is, fundamentally, as a person — the willingness to return and tend to your craft every day, no matter how many times you get cut up by its sharp teeth.
Hockey is a hungry sport. It demands a certain kind of devotion, the kind that eats away at your youth only to spit you back out once it’s gotten sick of how you taste, looking for its next prey, the next generation of players that are always younger. Always faster. Always better.
(If you’re smart enough, you start to wonder where the time’s gone. If you’re like Seungcheol, you start to look for more of it. You try to make deals with the devil, because there are no nice gods, and when that doesn’t work, you claw your way towards the top, sweating blood along the way. Anything to extend your time on the ice and ignore the years left behind you. Anything to stretch out the ones still in front of you, as best you can.)
Seungcheol skates around idly, shifting his stick from hand to hand as he haphazardly lines the pucks up. He’s practicing his slapshot today, the sting of being unable to make the shot in scrimmage earlier during practice still fresh in his mind. The red cross of the goal winks at him from a good ten yards away, mocking him.
Seungcheol takes a deep breath. Winds up, and lets the pucks fly. It sounds like gunfire.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
He makes every single shot.
“Didn’t think I’d find anyone here,” a voice says from the stands. Seungcheol has to squint to see, and even then all he gets is a silhouette backlit by the few lit stadium lights the janitor leaves on for these solo sessions. “Forgot who I was dealing with, for a second.”
Seungcheol skates up slowly to the boards. There’s this humming in his gut. I’d know you anywhere. The whole thing unravels like a dream, one that Seungcheol is faintly aware he’s had before, only because he knows how it ends. Every single time.
Joshua Hong comes into focus, a beanie drawn low over his forehead, hands stuffed haphazardly his pockets. He’s grinning, lopsided. It does funny things to Seungcheol’s stomach.
Maybe this one is different.
“You really haven’t changed, have you?”
Seungcheol would be lying if he said he had.
Where Choi Seungcheol is painfully transparent and simple, Joshua Hong remains a fucking enigma, slippery as the ice that they play on. No matter what Seungcheol does, he just can’t get close.
It’s always been like that, ever since they were young, two bright and brilliant stars, the greatest players of their age.
What are the odds that a town gives birth to two hockey prodigies? One in a million, experts would say. Or something with even slimmer odds than that. It’s highly unlikely — and yet, it happens.
Little Choi Seungcheol, born, bred, and carved for the ice, meets Joshua Hong, a boy who knows nothing about it, who knows nothing about the sacrifice it requires to keep it.
They both grow to love it in their own ways.
Joshua takes to it like a duck takes to water, stays in it because it’s fun and he’s good at it. It starts out as a hobby for him, but as the years go on by, it starts evolving into something more: a ticket out, an escape, a better life. Joshua grabs on tight and never lets go after that.
It takes a little while for Seungcheol to get there, but when he does, it’s just like breathing, a rhythm wired into his bones, etched so deep into his muscles that he cannot forget it. Hockey is all that Seungcheol knows, all that he cares to know, all he wants to do.
Joshua’s natural talent is enviable, but it is Seungcheol’s tireless hard work that helps him keep up. The both of them only have eyes on each other, anyways. They’re leagues above all the rest.
Of course they have a history together. How could they not?
“Your new teammate, Joshua Hong.” Jihoon says gruffly, shoving forward a boy Seungcheol thought he left behind on the ice years ago. “Just picked him up from the Blues.”
Seungcheol feels slightly unhinged, eyes greedily drinking in the familiar crease in between Joshua’s brows, gentle slope of his lips, those wretched kind eyes. All these years spent looking at Joshua through a screen. It still fails to do him justice.
“Some of you should be more familiar with him than others.” Jihoon aims this barb directly at him, Seungcheol knows it. “He’s one of the best forwards the game has ever seen. We’re lucky to have him.”
Someone hoots. “Shit, Jihoon, he’s lucky to have us.” There’s a stomping of feet and a roar of approval at that one, raucous laughter in the air.
“Well,” their manager says with an awkward tilt of the lips, “don’t maim him or anything. We’ll test him out on the ice this afternoon.”
When Jihoon leaves, the locker room is dead silent, holding its breath. Everyone’s looking at them because their history has been retold and replayed a million times by every big media outlet, cruelly publicized and wrung out and strung up for everyone to see.
Once upon a time, it was just those two against the world. After an unforgivable betrayal, four world cups (two apiece), and several career-threatening injuries, they’re back to where they started, nine years later, on the same team.
Joshua stares at Seungcheol and he feels eighteen all over again, the years they’ve spent apart crumbling away instantaneously. Some things never change. He still can’t tell what Joshua’s thinking, can’t get into his head. He loathes to think what Joshua sees. Seungcheol’s always been incredibly easy to read.
He gets up, throws a towel over his shoulder. Ignores the stunned breath that Joshua takes and offers him a hand. “Welcome to the team.”
“I thought you hated me,” Joshua says honestly, breath billowing in the cold of the rink.
Seungcheol lets out a low bark of laughter. “Don’t tell me you believe everything you see on TV.”
Joshua studies Seungcheol for a little longer, lips quirked up in a smile. Seungcheol consciously straightens up, stops leaning on his stick for support.
“So, are you just gonna stand there, or are you going to show me, Mr. Greatest Power Forward of All Time?”
Seungcheol grins. He’s not exactly sure what this means for them, starting over like this again, but hockey is a language they both know like the back of their hand. This, they can do. It’s what they’ve been doing all these years, after all.
It’s just hockey.
“Thought you’d never ask.” And off he goes.
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
thank you so much for writing this, I enjoyed it so much because it held something about cheolsoo that matched with the prompt, but also shone a light on something about canon cheolsoo that's going to make me think for a bit.
- it's amazing how you crafted the arc of a relationship in so little words, and yet it'll stay with me for a little longer
- 'It demands a certain kind of devotion, the kind that eats away at your youth only to spit you back out once it’s gotten sick of how you taste' > I loved this description of hockey, I was more academic than sports, but I relate to this so much, when Seungcheol chased the martyrdom of it
- the contrast between seungcheol's hard work and perseverance and joshua's innate talent!! yahh!! (it reminded me of how SC was the oldest trainee and josh came later, yet they are of the same age -- gosh, I can think about that small town to big stage r'ship all night (WITH RIVALRIES)
once again, thank you!!
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
as always your prose is stunningly breathtaking, and wow, cheolsoo were SUCH a good choice for this particular narrative arc
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
also fun fact i used to work at SAP for a brief bit so i guess there's an additional connection 2 hockey / the sharks
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
i agree! i think trades are so common n discussed so blithely (“oh, so and so’s here now” or “so and so went to X’s team”) but exploring what that trade does to an individual, the history behind a player, the entire uprooting that these players need to go through for the better of their franchises is so fascinating... i had so much writing that, even if it was for just a little bit!! i didn’t even think about team dynamics and how joshua will have to balance everything — learning how his teammates play etc — and fight for play time all the while .. it can be extremely stressful so having cheol as a familiar face can b rather reassuring even if their relationship has been ambiguous at best. the trope of rivals putting aside their differences to achieve a common goal has got SO much potential here i’m bonking myself just thinking about it..aGH THANK U SO MUCH AGAIN IVE GOT [MUCH TO THINK ABOUT] n hopefully im able to make this a longer thing in the future!!!
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot
This line especially kills me: You try to make deals with the devil, because there are no nice gods, and when that doesn’t work, you claw your way towards the top, sweating blood along the way. - I feel like this was such a powerful line and it says so much about the type of person Cheol is, and hints (maybe) at the history they had.
God, this was just so, so good!
Re: [FILL] if you’re open, take the shot