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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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no subject
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: infidelity, triangulation of desire, missed connections
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt: just thinking about this photoshoot. anything vaguely inspired by wong kar wai's in the mood for love would be fun.
[FILL] looking through a dusty window pane
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: In the mood for love au, infidelity, missed connections, ambiguous relationships
Permission to remix: Yes
***
Are you still at work?
I’ll be late tonight, then.
I’ll see you in the morning, maybe.
It was a series of near misses. He nearly met Jisoo because they were trying to rent the same room. He asked the landlady if there was a place open. “Oh,” she said, patting her bouffant hair distractedly, “but I’m afraid it’s already been rented out! In fact, you just missed him.”
He gave her half-lowered eyes and a slight bow. “Very sorry to bother you, then.”
“Wait, wait!” Those eyes always seemed to work. “Well, how many of you?”
“Just me,” he said. “And a friend.”
She gave him a twice-over. She must’ve trusted what she saw in him. He’d always been aware of himself. Of the way he could make his own face a sort of gentle begging.
All of next week, the movers kept switching their furniture. He stood half in the doorway, his head nearly level with the ceiling light fixtures, listening to the accented Korean down the hall trying to stretch patience with the occasional cloying laugh, muffled within the bustle of the movers and the landlady who seemed ever-eager to help. “Mind that mirror,” the voice said. “Oh, not on top of the radio, please! Those shoes aren’t mine— they must be next door’s.”
The neighbor made an appearance only once or twice. Once in the mirror the movers were carrying in. Once cut-off by the doorjamb, anxious in profile, turned slightly towards the inside of the room. It was like slotting puzzle pieces together, trying to understand what he looked like, who he was. He had a full mouth, sleepy doe eyes. When the movers were gone they left behind more evidence of his life, but his door opened on the second buzz, and even in the false yellow evening light, half-swallowed by the dust motes of moving boxes, his face was breathtaking.
“Excuse me, but are the martial arts serials yours?”
“Oh!” The neighbor took the box and held it close. He had a single silver ring on his pinky finger and he wore a red satin shirt that seemed to stick to his skin. “They’re my husband’s.”
“He reads martial arts serials?”
“I don’t know why I lied,” the neighbor said, looking up through his lashes. “They’re mine.”
“I always loved those serials,” Mingyu said, tilting his head, making sure his eyes caught the light. “Hated to miss an episode. Once, I even thought of writing one.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I suppose I could never get started. But I have a collection, too. Feel free to borrow from it.”
The neighbor’s eyes shifted somehow. “Not now. But maybe another time. My name is Hong Jisoo. What should I call you?”
“Mingyu.”
“Mingyu,” Jisoo repeated, his mouth lifting into almost a smile. There was something deeply hidden about him. He was gripping his own poise white-knuckled, his back straight as a post, his neck long and swanlike. Mingyu held his gaze until he looked down at the box again. And then it became, somehow, another miss. A disconnect that was unbridgeable.
“Will I see you at dinner?”
“Maybe,” Jisoo said, his mouth curling up into another not-smile.
He arrived a half-hour after everyone else, when the baduk games had already started. He whispered into Mingyu’s ear, one elbow on the table, one hand hovering above Mingyu’s shoulder, “There’s a friend here for you. He said his name was Jeonghan.”
He pressed himself back against the doorjamb when Mingyu turned to leave like he was fighting against a magnetic pull. Their arms brushed over the threshold of the dining room.
***
Have you spoken to your husband yet?
Then we shouldn’t meet anymore—
Okay, then. After tonight.
“I’m sorry to take you out to dinner,” Jisoo said. He was staring into his tea, which was dark as syrup in the dim scarlet restaurant decor. “You might think it strange, but— I wanted to ask you something. The necklace you were wearing the other day. Where did you buy it?”
“Why?”
“You looked very elegant in it. Don’t laugh! You did. I’d love to get one for my husband—”
“Well, I’d have to ask my— I’d have to ask Jeonghan. He bought it for me. From abroad. They’re not available here.”
“Well,” Jisoo said, his smile disappearing, “never mind.”
“Actually,” Mingyu said, stirring his tea, “I wanted to ask you something, too.”
“Yes?”
“Where did you buy your tie?”
Jisoo glanced down. It was a red silk tie. “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” he said, sounding surprised. “My husband— well, Seungcheol buys all my ties. He bought it on a business trip abroad. They’re not sold here.”
“What a coincidence,” Mingyu said. He couldn’t look at Jisoo anymore. “Actually, Jeonghan has one just like it.”
He heard Jisoo’s spoon clink against the cup.
“Seungcheol has a necklace just like yours, too.”
“I know,” Mingyu said, pressing his palm into his jaw, staring at the cheap plastic laminate of the menu. He could almost see his own distorted reflection. “I’ve seen it. I thought I was the only one who knew.”
“Sometimes you look very sad when you think no one’s looking at you,” Jisoo said softly.
***
I have a lot to do here.
Forget it! Talk to you later.
No need to pick me up.
“Oh, Jeonghan didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He left his shift early tonight.”
It began to rain on the way home from the office, but he didn’t notice at first. He trembled against a wall and finished fitting the situation together. It felt like trying to take a picture of his own reflection in a window.
He felt the way he did usually, late nights at work, staring into the dark while his cigarette exhaled blue smoke above his head. He was somewhere far away until he saw Jisoo ascending the stairs with a thermos of noodles. A sinewy silhouette that was one with the night until it emerged into the pale streetlight, shadow pinpricked with violent raindrops.
Jisoo’s tan suit jacket instantly soaked a dark brown, same as his eyes. He wiped at his face like he was wiping tears away. Delicately. Mingyu jogged forward and took his jacket off to hold it above both of their heads as they walked, and Jisoo looked up at him once with gratitude that bordered on awe.
“My husband’s on business,” he said when they were inside. Mingyu had heard the landlady gossiping about the husband. How often he was away. How sad it was to see Jisoo so lonely. Jisoo was valiantly trying not to shiver as he brushed his wet hair off his face. “That’s why I’m at the noodle stall so often.”
“I’m quite alone myself, lately,” Mingyu said, leaning on the wall.
Jisoo looked at him, his eyebrows lifting in an expression that could’ve been either sympathy or careful curiosity. He stepped further into his apartment. The space of the doorway behind him grew.
“Would you like to come in and share my food?”
Mingyu borrowed a towel and dried his hair. They ate sitting on the bedcovers, alternating the same set of chopsticks. The baduk games started up ten minutes in and didn’t let up, and they could hear the landlady’s gossip, constant as the rain. They put the empty thermos aside and talked about martial arts serials and began planning their very own.
At ten-thirty, Mingyu braced his hand against the door frame and watched Jisoo lean and scout the hallway, face sharpened tight by expectant tension. When Jisoo turned to look at him and shake his head, his nose almost touched Mingyu’s lips.
At midnight, Mingyu said they should get some rest. Jisoo stretched out on the bedcovers, and Mingyu sat on the floor next to the bed.
Once, Jisoo sat up on an elbow. He reached out slowly towards Mingyu like he wanted to touch his cheek, reached close enough that Mingyu could almost feel the heat radiating from him.
But he drew back soon, like it was an accident. Mingyu saw it all in the mirror that sat in front of him. He couldn’t sleep. His heart was racing.
At dawn, Jisoo finally touched him gently on the shoulder.
“You should go,” he said into his ear, soft enough that it made Mingyu shiver.
***
I didn’t think you’d come.
We won’t be like them.
Sometimes when they went out together they’d practice imagining how it had started. One time Jisoo tried caging Mingyu against a wall. “Seungcheol’s assertive,” he said, inches away from Mingyu’s mouth, the implication being that he, himself, was not.
One time Mingyu instructed him to ask why he’d called at the office.
“Why did you call me at the office today,” Jisoo asked across the diner table.
“I had nothing to do. I wanted to hear your voice,” Mingyu said, trying for coy.
He sounded ridiculous. They both dissolved into laughter.
“Jeonghan’s a smooth talker,” Mingyu explained. “I’m not.”
He was very different from Jeonghan. He expressed his love in his own reaching desperate way. One night Jisoo didn’t come out for dinner. The landlady said he was sick, and had a craving for sesame syrup.
Mingyu spent an hour making it, half-thinking it would be some kind of friendly gesture. But when he brought the thermos to Jisoo’s room and knelt on the ground by his bed and fed it to him carefully and brushed his damp hair away from his flushed eyes, it didn’t feel very casual anymore.
None of it did.
“Before, I couldn’t understand how it had started,” Jisoo said one night, staring at the puddles on the street. The gate they were walking next to cast irregular stripes of indigo shadow on his face, obscuring him even further. “It seemed impossible.”
He looked up and seemed to shrink into himself.
“I don’t want to become them.”
In the taxi he wouldn’t look at Mingyu. If anyone had looked through the window they might have seen two strangers who happened to be sitting next to each other.
But inside the car, when their hands brushed, Jisoo didn’t move away. He let them have that final moment.
He didn’t look at Mingyu, and he didn’t try to read all the things behind Mingyu’s face. The things that Mingyu might whisper into a ruined temple wall six years later, cover the breach with mud, hide away the one true thing that had slipped through their fingers like their own shadows.
***
Re: [FILL] looking through a dusty window pane
> i really liked He pressed himself back against the doorjamb when Mingyu turned to leave like he was fighting against a magnetic pull. Their arms brushed over the threshold of the dining room. missed connections translating into physicality??? my brain is going a little haywire??
> and then He expressed his love in his own reaching desperate way. KIM MINGYU ACTS OF SERVICE???? absolutely catatonic i cant believe youve done this to me
> He didn’t look at Mingyu, and he didn’t try to read all the things behind Mingyu’s face. The things that Mingyu might whisper into a ruined temple wall six years later, cover the breach with mud, hide away the one true thing that had slipped through their fingers like their own shadows. IM UNHINGED!!! ur prose is so stunningly gorgeous i know i say this a lot but its true... it rlly pulls everything u have going on here into this super tight cohesive narrative and im always so impressed by how much u can say without using that many words at all. thank u so much for writing this!!
Re: [FILL] looking through a dusty window pane
Re: [FILL] looking through a dusty window pane
you have convinced me that i must wrangle myself into watching a wong kar wai film asap with your words aaah. thank you!!
Re: [FILL] looking through a dusty window pane