Status: CLOSED
This round has closed. It remains open for fills and comments, but prompts are no longer accepted.
Seventeen Holidays
Round 4: Who, Where, When
About
Sounds like a Cluedo accusation or bad homework from a Creative Writing class, but don’t let the simplicity of this theme fool you. Places can shape a character’s behaviour, time can be telling of intention. The combination of both raises a question that can only be answered by the filler - what are they doing?
Examples
Jeongcheol burnout
Who: Seungcheol /& Jeonghan
Where: In the company van, Jakarta
When: After the concert, 191116
What is home to Joshua Hong?
Who: Joshua/Any
Where: Gas station in Nevada
When: 2am
Seokhan Reincarnation
Who: Seokmin/Jeonghan + a Hoshi cameo please
Where: A space ship orbiting Jupiter
When: Their third lifetime
Rules
- Sign up is not required.
- Fills have a minimum of 400 words for prose, haiku-length for poetry (3 lines), and 400px by 400px for art (memes are also art). Other mediums are fine too!
- 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).
- NSFW/Explicit content should be tagged
- NSFW art should not be visible. Please provide a link to the art. You may crop the artwork and embed a SFW preview.
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
- Do the same as above, also;
- Upload your work to any platform (twitter, imgur, youtube, soundcloud, google maps, etc.)
- Insert the link to your work, done!
- Optionally, you can embed a picture into your comment. Please use the following code instead.
(To explain, the HTML resizes your picture to 400x400px so that it fits on most screens, users can view the full size if they click on it. You can also add a link to your work on twitter so that others can share it, or to any other website you want)
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to speak your grief
Additional Tags: nostalgia and grief, letting go
Do Not Wants: None
Who: Wonwoo
Where: at the Wind Telephone, Otsuchi, Japan
When: Sunrise
[FILL]: Until You Smile
Major Tags: Major Character Death
Additional Tags: Survivor Guilt, Yearning, Angst
Permission to remix: Please ask
- 1.1k
- Teen and Up
- Please check the tags !
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29296713
[FILL] to tame the beast we call grief
Major Tags: major character death (implied)
Additional Tags: grief, heartache, coming to terms with loss, studio ghibli au if u squint
Permission to remix: please ask
***
Le vent se lève!
Il faut tenter de vivre!
— Paul Valéry
(TRANSLATION: The wind is rising! We must try to live!)
—
“Um, hi.”
Wonwoo feels stupid. He’s talking into a telephone in a phone booth with no destination.
They said it would help, except Wonwoo doesn’t really know who “they” are. Only that it would help. And he doesn’t know how exactly it’s supposed to help either but he thinks it probably has to do with the act of talking to someone. Talking to anyone, really.
Wonwoo doesn’t do much of that anymore, just keeps himself curled tightly shut so that nothing gets in or out. It’s not that he wants it to be like that. It’s easier this way, that’s all.
He’s stopped trying to decipher who exactly he’s trying to convince with that a while back. Better not to think about it.
“Hey.” Wonwoo tries again, but the rest of words get stuck in his throat, burrs sticking stubbornly, scratching his esophagus on their way out.
The things he’s never said, the things he’s always wanted to say: they all share the same fate anyways, soft hopeful things, fluttering around trapped inside his ribcage.
He used to tie them down with weights, his thoughts. He used to hold them down tightly, used to draw them close and keep them, lock and key, all bundled up and tidied away. Then Soonyoung had gone and lifted the gates, encouraging Wonwoo to set them free and showed him how to put them outside his body for the entire world to see. Coaxed them out of Wonwoo, one by one, bit by bit.
Wonwoo-yah, tell me about your day.
I like the way you think. I wish the world could hear what you have to say.
Say that again? Come on, no, really, I want to try and understand it, don’t laugh at me!
An ache spears his chest. An open wound, as fresh as the day he got it. Wonwoo wipes at his cheeks, horrified to find them already wet with tears.
Being in love felt like a dream, this wondrous beacon of light, everything warm tinted and rosy-hued.
Being without his love is terrifying.
Everyday Wonwoo wakes up and forgets where he is, and for one wonderful moment, he’s still in that dream. Then time trips him up by the ankles. Lets reality smother him, for the memories come flooding back. Wonwoo wakes up in the dark with a body so heavy and a heart so full of grief that instinctively, immediately, he knows that he is alone. So horribly, terribly alone.
He looks down, phone in hand, another listlessly flipping through the memo pad, looking at everybody else’s words for their loved ones. Unable to form his own.
His shoulders slump.
It’s supposed to help, but it doesn’t. Not for him, anyways. He’s struck by a familiar shame, the kind that comes up when things that are supposed to work for everyone else never seem to work for you.
Loneliness comes bubbling to the surface again, sharp and sticky and cloying. So palpable that Wonwoo can feel it between his fingers, insistent against his shoulders. It continues to drive that wedge that sits between him and the rest of the world a little bit deeper.
Wonwoo hangs up and goes home.
The line swings wildly. It’s the only sign that he was ever there at all.
—
Here’s the thing about grief: no one ever teaches you how to handle it.
—
Hansol had slipped the brochure into Wonwoo’s hands, eyes gentle, voice even gentler. “It’ll be good for you,” he says, finally, when Wonwoo meets his gaze.
For the briefest of moments, there is nothing but the sharp sting of betrayal. I would have never expected you, out of all people —
Then the relief comes pouring in, heavy, so unbelievably heavy that Wonwoo nearly buckles under the weight of it all. It’s a relief that comes from a place of recognition. Of being known. Of being seen, despite all the mourning and hurting and bleeding from the inside out. That someone cares enough to try and help, no matter how miserable Wonwoo has made them in the tidal wave of his grief, no matter how impossible Wonwoo has made it to be around him these days.
Hansol is looking at Wonwoo carefully, teeth worrying his bottom lip, gauging his reaction. Hansol has never treated Wonwoo like a fragile thing to be fixed, has never walked around on eggshells around him. Instead, he waits and he watches and he listens.
Hansol is a good friend. One of the best, actually.
Wonwoo looks at the brochure. The feel of it in his hands, warm and crinkled, like someone had turned it over and over in their hands before handing it to him, is proof that Hansol is listening. Even if it’s never been said directly. Especially if it hasn’t been spoken aloud.
“Thank you,” Wonwoo says. Means it as he folds the brochure, carefully placing it in his breast pocket, right next to his heart. “I’ll think about it.”
Hansol smiles. “Good. It’s all I’m asking you to do.”
—
It’s a telephone booth overlooking the sea.
Speak your grief, the brochure says. Give your sadness a shape. Pin it down, here in this place. Leave it behind so it doesn’t follow you everywhere.
Wonwoo finds it maddening, having conversations with the wind. A dialogue is meant for two. There’s no point in talking if there’s no one waiting on the other side.
Even if he shouts, what are the chances that the response he’s looking for will make its way back to him? The answer Wonwoo wants is impossible anyways.
—
But because he wants to be better, Wonwoo tries. He goes to that little white phone booth and dials in a number he knows by heart.
Day after day after day, until it turns into weeks, and then a whole month. Every day Hansol calls to ask him how he’s doing. They end up talking about everything else for hours on end, despite the international calling fees.
When he stands there, receiver in hand, Wonwoo can never get past a shaky hello. Anything more marks him one step closer to saying goodbye, and he doesn’t want to do that either, just yet.
Just a little bit longer, Wonwoo thinks, but he has no idea who he’s talking to. Or who he’s waiting for.
—
On the last night of his trip, Wonwoo sees Soonyoung in his dreams. He knows it before the other boy appears. The stars shine brighter when Soonyoung’s is around, and in his dreams it’s no different. Effervescence is a quality of Soonyoung’s that translates effortlessly, no matter the time or circumstance — the world is sharper with him in it.
Today, when Wonwoo looks up, he’s nearly blinded.
He still isn’t prepared. The breath gets knocked out of him every time.
“Hi,” Soonyoung beams.
Wonwoo doesn’t say anything back, just desperately maps every inch of Soonyoung’s face, greedily lapping up every detail. He doesn’t know what he wants to do more: hold Soonyoung so tightly and never let go, or put at an arm’s length and continue to commit every crease, crevice, and corner to detail.
“You’re so silly,” Soonyoung puts two hands on both sides of Wonwoo’s face, eyes lovely little crescent moons. “You have to live, Wonwoo-yah. Your time doesn’t stop just because mine ran out.”
Wonwoo’s eyes are brimming with tears. “But I don’t want to. Not if I don’t have you.”
Soonyoung laughs as they begin to walk, hand in hand. The sound of it is so familiar Wonwoo’s heart splits open and patches itself up back together, in the same heartbeat. “You’re being melodramatic.”
“No I’m not,” Wonwoo shakes his head, impudent. “It’s true.”
Soonyoung pauses and stops to face him. “Brat,” he whispers softly. “You’re not making this any easier on yourself, you know.”
“I’m trying,” Wonwoo sniffles. “I’ve been trying.” I’m trying my best. I just don’t know how to go on without you. I’m too scared to leave you behind.
Soonyoung’s smile turns softer. Fond. “I know,” he steps forward to kiss Wonwoo on the cheek. “And I’m so proud of you.”
Here, Soonyoung begins to float away from Wonwoo, carried away by an invisible wind. They link fingers, just for an infinitesimal moment; Wonwoo trying with all his might to hold on, Soonyoung trying his best to give Wonwoo all the time that he can. But dreams are not made to last.
Wonwoo loses his grip, Soonyoung for a second time. The pain is more bearable this time around, though maybe it’s because Wonwoo has learned what to expect.
“Try again tomorrow!” Soonyoung calls out to Wonwoo, just as the breeze steals Soonyoung away. He disappears into the stars. “I’ll be there to listen. You know that better than anyone else, don’t you?”
—
The sun peeks over the horizon, bathing everything in a brilliant warm glow.
“Hi,” Wonwoo says again, standing in a telephone booth and speaking into a telephone that connects to nowhere. It’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey.
He closes his eyes and lets go, breathes the words out on an exhale.
“I miss you, Soonyoung. I miss you so, so much.”
The wind carries them out to sea.
—
a/n: why yes i did put the epigraph for the wind rises as the quote for this fill . one day i’ll write the full ghibli au for this but today is not that day
Re: [FILL] to tame the beast we call grief
i love this so much even though it hurts ! !! it feels like healing but also OUCh
Wonwoo loses his grip, Soonyoung for a second time. this line though....this ... ... .
Re: [FILL] to tame the beast we call grief
Re: [FILL] to tame the beast we call grief