Ship/Member: Mingyu/Seokmin Major Tags: Major character death Additional Tags: Hamlet au, Hamlet Seokmin, Laertes Mingyu Permission to remix: Yes
***
“Give me your pardon,” the prince begs, his chest rising and falling. “I’ve done you wrong.”
Then Seokmin proceeds to embark on one of his lengthy soliloquies, performing, as always, for the world at large. His eyes are wide in an obnoxious act of innocence as he pleads to the throne room, to the chandeliers, his brows knitting together in false sincerity, his voice rising. Always so melodramatic. He keeps his hand tight around Mingyu’s in a handshake that he has decided to use for his own benefit, his own advancement. Tight enough that it hurts.
Mingyu keeps his own other hand— his left one, his dominant one, the one that is wrapped around his foil and not Seokmin’s fingers— tight behind his back. Seokmin’s words were at first meant for Mingyu, but by now they are meant only for himself. Still, when the monologue of bullshit comes to a grand closing, Mingyu, his face blank as the black walls of the throne room, replies.
“I do receive your offered love like love, and will not wrong it.”
Seokmin stills for a rare second then smiles his pretty smile, wide and breaking as if he’s close to tears with utter gratitude. Mingyu’s stomach curdles helplessly. There’s been a phantom ache in his side lately. It digs into his liver. He knows the things his dead father has long said about him. The things Seokmin still says about him. Mingyu is rash. He is impetuous. And when he looks at Seokmin, he sees through the ghost of the prince’s act and feels the hatred underneath.
And it burns because, despite all of it, Mingyu wants to be looked at kindly. Once they were playmates. Once Seokmin would have cried into his shoulder, would have let Mingyu stroke his hair and say, Don’t cry, be strong, it isn't your fault. Now Mingyu can’t recognize the man before him and is the worse for it.
“Come, let us begin,” the prince says.
Jeonghan, a fool only for the prince, runs to hand him his mask. Mingyu takes his own from Seungkwan. They take five paces away from each other. The king talks loudly about trumpets and a toast. Seokmin calls over his shoulder, smiling from one side of his mouth rakishly, “I’ll be your foil, Mingyu, in terms of skill. You’ll make a fool out of me yet.”
“You mock me, my lord,” Mingyu says flatly.
But Seokmin’s right. Mingyu knows all the different ways the eight parries or a passata sotto or a flèche might burn in the thighs. What Mingyu isn’t naturally good at, he’s worked towards. It makes what is out of reach— like the way Seokmin smiles at Jeonghan or how he is able to evade any consequences of his own fucking actions— that much more unbearable.
“En garde. Pret. Allez!”
Their foils scrape against each other. He sees Seokmin’s face through the mesh of his mask. Under the cover, Seokmin has retreated to his basest feelings. The flatness of his eyes and the pure hard hatred in his face catches Mingyu off guard, somehow, and Seokmin lunges viper fast and catches the back of his thigh.
“One,” Seokmin says, his teeth bared.
“No,” Mingyu snarls, even though it’s a hit, a very palpable hit, as Soonyoung announces, and Seokmin goes over to Jeonghan beaming to bask in the sun for a bit. The king offers him a cup of wine. Seokmin denies him, eager only to taste further victory.
They start again. Mingyu on the offense now, pushing back against Seokmin too hard, the cloud of his fury making his muscles tight and his aim more malice than accuracy. He lunges and lunges. Seokmin parries, feints, spins and catches Mingyu's shoulder and whoops.
“Another hit!”
“A touch,” Mingyu says, gritting his teeth, “a touch. I confess it.”
The queen toasts his victory and drinks, to the dismay of the king. It’s the poisoned cup. The one meant for Seokmin.
“Oh, come now, then, friend,” Seokmin says loudly, grinning. He’s taken his mask off and his face glows as he pushes his sweat-rumpled curls away from his forehead. Something in him has changed since he’s returned from England. The only thing that hasn’t is how he’s been looking at Mingyu in the last few months. Mocking him, seeing through him as if Mingyu is nothing, as if Mingyu’s own pain and grief amount to dust. “You’re only dallying. You think I can’t tell when you’re holding back? When you’re treating me like a child? You think I don’t know?”
Seokmin is not a child anymore. He only holds vicious contempt for Mingyu. “No, my lord,” Mingyu growls, then gives no time to Seokmin to pull his mask back on before he charges again.
The more Seokmin whoops and laughs and dances away, the more some third broken foil digs into Mingyu’s side. Seokmin’s bare face is pinballing between joy and irritation, like Mingyu and the quarter-centimeter tip of his foil represent nothing but a small stupid pawn on the chessboard of Seokmin's life. This is no more than a passing distraction.
But Mingyu is more than that. What Seokmin has been handed and has squandered away is what Mingyu can hold between his hands. The driving force of revenge. Seokmin is wasting his chances away in the sun and Mingyu has somewhere been relegated to the eternal shade, still burdened, still willing to fight. Always willing to fight. Mingyu grows sloppy in each desperate lunge, in each compulsive attempt to make Seokmin see how he can injure and maim and draw blood. In each attempt to make Seokmin see him.
As always, it comes to nothing. Seokmin is just out of reach, patronizing, forever laughing.
“Nothing neither way,” Soonyoung announces. “Pull them apart.” Seokmin turns around to face Jeonghan, already drunk off the victory of evasion.
As long as he has lived, Mingyu has held a belief that running away is no bravery. Inaction is cowardice. He cannot be proven wrong. Not here, not now. He won’t allow it. All of his successes in life will amount to nothing if he fails to make the prince look at him, if he is not the final arbitrator in that very prince’s fate. He will put the fear of himself in Seokmin. He pulls his mask off and lets it drop to the floor. No one is looking at him. Everyone is looking at Seokmin.
“Have at you now,” Mingyu says, jagged as he walks forward. Then he slashes his foil along the back of Seokmin’s neck.
Seokmin doesn’t gasp. He stumbles and lets out a breath, a low and surprised huh, his hand going to his wound, his mouth slack in shock.
“Nay, come again,” he says, his voice deep with fury.
Then he turns and comes at Mingyu.
Mingyu thinks of that day so long ago. The banquet. The crown prince in all black, a color most unlike him. The unshed tears that made his eyes glitter, how he kept his anger and his grief coiled tight inside of him. Perhaps he was afraid of it. But when he came to say goodbye to Mingyu, something in his face cracked clean. He was a pretty crier. Maybe things would have turned out differently inside of Seokmin if he hadn’t let his own indecisiveness and his own endless fears poison all his kind and gentle parts. Whose fault was that? His? Or his circumstances?
Regardless, now his face is fixed in fury. In the scuffle he gets his hand on Mingyu’s foil. To their right the queen collapses, but Seokmin keeps coming, finally, finally bent on revenge. A revenge most inconsequential now, but revenge all the same. Mingyu did that. Mingyu pushed him to it. Seokmin lunges and surges forward like the ocean, like the water, endless, and now there’s only him, his eyes blazing.
He holds the blade against Mingyu’s neck. He holds it steady for one, two seconds, staring up at Mingyu, seeing him. Mingyu’s skin prickles against the cold and from the depth of feeling in his prince’s eyes.
Then Seokmin slashes hard, and Mingyu is justly undone by his own blade.
“Treachery,” Seokmin says softly, not knowing the same poison courses through both of them.
“Seokmin,” Mingyu says, stumbling. He drops to his knees and looks up at the prince. The throne room is blurring at its edges. “You’re slain. No medicine in the world will do you good. My own revenge has turned on me.”
He can’t tell, then, what is in Seokmin’s face. If it matters at all. If his own death will matter. But he reaches up towards Seokmin’s hand, desperate, and Seokmin lets him hold it and stares down at him, his brow troubled, his eyes shining as everything around him dims.
“Forgive me, noble prince,” Mingyu whispers. He is glad he will not be alive to see Seokmin’s death. “Neither of us are to blame.”
[FILL] his will is not his own
Major Tags: Major character death
Additional Tags: Hamlet au, Hamlet Seokmin, Laertes Mingyu
Permission to remix: Yes
***
“Give me your pardon,” the prince begs, his chest rising and falling. “I’ve done you wrong.”
Then Seokmin proceeds to embark on one of his lengthy soliloquies, performing, as always, for the world at large. His eyes are wide in an obnoxious act of innocence as he pleads to the throne room, to the chandeliers, his brows knitting together in false sincerity, his voice rising. Always so melodramatic. He keeps his hand tight around Mingyu’s in a handshake that he has decided to use for his own benefit, his own advancement. Tight enough that it hurts.
Mingyu keeps his own other hand— his left one, his dominant one, the one that is wrapped around his foil and not Seokmin’s fingers— tight behind his back. Seokmin’s words were at first meant for Mingyu, but by now they are meant only for himself. Still, when the monologue of bullshit comes to a grand closing, Mingyu, his face blank as the black walls of the throne room, replies.
“I do receive your offered love like love, and will not wrong it.”
Seokmin stills for a rare second then smiles his pretty smile, wide and breaking as if he’s close to tears with utter gratitude. Mingyu’s stomach curdles helplessly. There’s been a phantom ache in his side lately. It digs into his liver. He knows the things his dead father has long said about him. The things Seokmin still says about him. Mingyu is rash. He is impetuous. And when he looks at Seokmin, he sees through the ghost of the prince’s act and feels the hatred underneath.
And it burns because, despite all of it, Mingyu wants to be looked at kindly. Once they were playmates. Once Seokmin would have cried into his shoulder, would have let Mingyu stroke his hair and say, Don’t cry, be strong, it isn't your fault. Now Mingyu can’t recognize the man before him and is the worse for it.
“Come, let us begin,” the prince says.
Jeonghan, a fool only for the prince, runs to hand him his mask. Mingyu takes his own from Seungkwan. They take five paces away from each other. The king talks loudly about trumpets and a toast. Seokmin calls over his shoulder, smiling from one side of his mouth rakishly, “I’ll be your foil, Mingyu, in terms of skill. You’ll make a fool out of me yet.”
“You mock me, my lord,” Mingyu says flatly.
But Seokmin’s right. Mingyu knows all the different ways the eight parries or a passata sotto or a flèche might burn in the thighs. What Mingyu isn’t naturally good at, he’s worked towards. It makes what is out of reach— like the way Seokmin smiles at Jeonghan or how he is able to evade any consequences of his own fucking actions— that much more unbearable.
“En garde. Pret. Allez!”
Their foils scrape against each other. He sees Seokmin’s face through the mesh of his mask. Under the cover, Seokmin has retreated to his basest feelings. The flatness of his eyes and the pure hard hatred in his face catches Mingyu off guard, somehow, and Seokmin lunges viper fast and catches the back of his thigh.
“One,” Seokmin says, his teeth bared.
“No,” Mingyu snarls, even though it’s a hit, a very palpable hit, as Soonyoung announces, and Seokmin goes over to Jeonghan beaming to bask in the sun for a bit. The king offers him a cup of wine. Seokmin denies him, eager only to taste further victory.
They start again. Mingyu on the offense now, pushing back against Seokmin too hard, the cloud of his fury making his muscles tight and his aim more malice than accuracy. He lunges and lunges. Seokmin parries, feints, spins and catches Mingyu's shoulder and whoops.
“Another hit!”
“A touch,” Mingyu says, gritting his teeth, “a touch. I confess it.”
The queen toasts his victory and drinks, to the dismay of the king. It’s the poisoned cup. The one meant for Seokmin.
“Oh, come now, then, friend,” Seokmin says loudly, grinning. He’s taken his mask off and his face glows as he pushes his sweat-rumpled curls away from his forehead. Something in him has changed since he’s returned from England. The only thing that hasn’t is how he’s been looking at Mingyu in the last few months. Mocking him, seeing through him as if Mingyu is nothing, as if Mingyu’s own pain and grief amount to dust. “You’re only dallying. You think I can’t tell when you’re holding back? When you’re treating me like a child? You think I don’t know?”
Seokmin is not a child anymore. He only holds vicious contempt for Mingyu. “No, my lord,” Mingyu growls, then gives no time to Seokmin to pull his mask back on before he charges again.
The more Seokmin whoops and laughs and dances away, the more some third broken foil digs into Mingyu’s side. Seokmin’s bare face is pinballing between joy and irritation, like Mingyu and the quarter-centimeter tip of his foil represent nothing but a small stupid pawn on the chessboard of Seokmin's life. This is no more than a passing distraction.
But Mingyu is more than that. What Seokmin has been handed and has squandered away is what Mingyu can hold between his hands. The driving force of revenge. Seokmin is wasting his chances away in the sun and Mingyu has somewhere been relegated to the eternal shade, still burdened, still willing to fight. Always willing to fight. Mingyu grows sloppy in each desperate lunge, in each compulsive attempt to make Seokmin see how he can injure and maim and draw blood. In each attempt to make Seokmin see him.
As always, it comes to nothing. Seokmin is just out of reach, patronizing, forever laughing.
“Nothing neither way,” Soonyoung announces. “Pull them apart.” Seokmin turns around to face Jeonghan, already drunk off the victory of evasion.
As long as he has lived, Mingyu has held a belief that running away is no bravery. Inaction is cowardice. He cannot be proven wrong. Not here, not now. He won’t allow it. All of his successes in life will amount to nothing if he fails to make the prince look at him, if he is not the final arbitrator in that very prince’s fate. He will put the fear of himself in Seokmin. He pulls his mask off and lets it drop to the floor. No one is looking at him. Everyone is looking at Seokmin.
“Have at you now,” Mingyu says, jagged as he walks forward. Then he slashes his foil along the back of Seokmin’s neck.
Seokmin doesn’t gasp. He stumbles and lets out a breath, a low and surprised huh, his hand going to his wound, his mouth slack in shock.
“Nay, come again,” he says, his voice deep with fury.
Then he turns and comes at Mingyu.
Mingyu thinks of that day so long ago. The banquet. The crown prince in all black, a color most unlike him. The unshed tears that made his eyes glitter, how he kept his anger and his grief coiled tight inside of him. Perhaps he was afraid of it. But when he came to say goodbye to Mingyu, something in his face cracked clean. He was a pretty crier. Maybe things would have turned out differently inside of Seokmin if he hadn’t let his own indecisiveness and his own endless fears poison all his kind and gentle parts. Whose fault was that? His? Or his circumstances?
Regardless, now his face is fixed in fury. In the scuffle he gets his hand on Mingyu’s foil. To their right the queen collapses, but Seokmin keeps coming, finally, finally bent on revenge. A revenge most inconsequential now, but revenge all the same. Mingyu did that. Mingyu pushed him to it. Seokmin lunges and surges forward like the ocean, like the water, endless, and now there’s only him, his eyes blazing.
He holds the blade against Mingyu’s neck. He holds it steady for one, two seconds, staring up at Mingyu, seeing him. Mingyu’s skin prickles against the cold and from the depth of feeling in his prince’s eyes.
Then Seokmin slashes hard, and Mingyu is justly undone by his own blade.
“Treachery,” Seokmin says softly, not knowing the same poison courses through both of them.
“Seokmin,” Mingyu says, stumbling. He drops to his knees and looks up at the prince. The throne room is blurring at its edges. “You’re slain. No medicine in the world will do you good. My own revenge has turned on me.”
He can’t tell, then, what is in Seokmin’s face. If it matters at all. If his own death will matter. But he reaches up towards Seokmin’s hand, desperate, and Seokmin lets him hold it and stares down at him, his brow troubled, his eyes shining as everything around him dims.
“Forgive me, noble prince,” Mingyu whispers. He is glad he will not be alive to see Seokmin’s death. “Neither of us are to blame.”
***