2022 Round 1: Quotes

[hwarium]

Status: Closed This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted. Seventeen Holidays Round 1: Quotes About "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." "What is grief, if not love persevering?" "You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath" Calling all readers, lovers of poetry and music, screen and stage. Quote collecters and lyric hoarders, unleash your archive. Each prompt must contain a quote - you can combine them, add commentary, link to articles, and more. Steal from a literary classic, or WeVerse drama. Have fun! Examples Minghao + Ocean Vuong The most beautiful part of your body is where it's headed. & remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world. Ocean Vuong - night sky with exit wounds Hoshi/Anyone; "Beauty is terror" Thinking about these two quotes together and the idea of on/off-stage personas: "Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful we tremble before it. And what could be more terrifying or beautiful, to the Greeks to to our own, than to lose control completely?" - Donna Tartt, the Secret Histories "I am calm in everyday life but when I put on my in-ear device and step on stage, I can feel the tension and hear the cheers getting louder as the music gets louder. When the staff tells me it's time to step on stage, I feel something boil inside me. I feel it steaming inside and I think I have to give a burst of something, spill what is inside me." - Hoshi in Hit the Road Ep. 04 Any ship; "It's been so many years" Hello, hello there, is this Martha? This is old Tom Frost And I am calling long distance Don't worry 'bout the cost. 'Cause it's been forty years or more Now Martha please recall Meet me out for coffee Where we'll talk about it all. Tom Watts - Martha 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 and a warning. 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; Copy+Paste the following HTML into your comment and edit the sections. Feel free to add as much detail as you want! <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Do Not Wants:</strong> None <strong>Prompt:</strong> <blockquote>[QUOTE GOES HERE] </blockquote> 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, edit the sections, and add your text. You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection. <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** Remixing Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above; Change the subject to [REMIX]. Art/media Upload your work to any platform (twitter, imgur, youtube, soundcloud, google maps, etc.) Using the same HTML code as above, copy the link into your fill or remix. That's it! 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) <strong>Ship/Member:</strong> Any <strong>Major Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Additional Tags:</strong> N/A <strong>Permission to remix:</strong> Yes/No/Please ask *** <img src="INSERT IMAGE URL" width="400px"> <a href="INSERT ANY URL YOU WANT">TEXT THAT DESCRIBES THE LINK</a> Note! On dreamwidth, you can't edit a comment once someone has replied to it. Navigation ABOUT DATES FAQ BAITS ✧ FILLS ✧ ❮ ROUND 1: QUOTES ❯ ROUND 2: ALTERNATE UNIVERSES ROUND 3: LAST WORDS

Comments

i know the end

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: fated for disaster
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

This love letter begins / to Adam, from your ribs / so-called intelligent design / without you, I would die
—Jensen McRae, Adam's Ribs

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain.

Went looking for a creation myth /
Ended up with a pair of cracked lips
—Phoebe Bridgers, I Know the End

[FILL] i know the end

[fleurissons]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Wonwoo, past Jeonghan/Seungcheol
Major Tags: Character Death
Additional Tags: (vaguely?) historical, mild violence and sexual content, the saviour who has come to ruin me etc etc
Permission to remix: Yes

When the plague robbed their kingdom of its crown prince, Wonwoo inherited Seungcheol’s most treasured possession: his betrothed.

The Council summoned him as soon as the burial rites ended. They told him of the empty lands, the people they didn't have to work them. Their numbers were dwindling, even more so after the illness swept through the villages.

To the north, the Yoons had far many mouths to feed and not enough fertile soil to keep up with the demand. The union between the two kingdoms made sense. Seungcheol and Jeonghan made sense.

Wonwoo?

Wonwoo was spare parts.

/

Prior to his passing, Seungcheol had been courting Jeonghan. He had Wonwoo read his letters to him before sending them, claimed he had never quite mastered the art of romantic correspondence. Wonwoo thought otherwise. If anyone knew how to contain love in parchment, it was Seungcheol.

Jeonghan came to stay in the Jeon palace soon enough. To get the two of them acquainted, the Council reasoned. The moment Wonwoo laid eyes on him, he knew Seungcheol’s writing had captured Jeonghan’s liking perfectly, from his sharp wit to the blue undertones of his dark hair.

They never spoke of Seungcheol. A dead prince was hardly an appropriate topic during meals.

The only thing Jeonghan wanted was an hour of Wonwoo’s time every day. One night, Wonwoo watched him play the gayageum in his room, the lamplight casting a graceful outline of his body on the canvas door behind him.

"I learned to play from one of the courtesans back home."

"It was lovely, thank you." Seungcheol would have said something similar, but better. "What else did you learn?"

Jeonghan pushed him onto the floor and started to disrobe them both. "This," he murmured.

Compared to the wooden zither, the noises Jeonghan made were far more beautiful. Wonwoo gazed at his resplendence and wondered, had Seungcheol witnessed him bathe in nothing but moonlight? Had Jeonghan shone the same way above him?

"Do you see him in me?" he breathed out, heart heavy in his chest.

Jeonghan’s eyes betrayed nothing. "No, I do not." Wonwoo believed him, somehow. He leaned down until their lips were touching. "I see me in you."

He didn’t know what to make of the answer, but Jeonghan drove his hips home and Wonwoo wordlessly apologised to his brother. To his kingdom. He couldn't help it. Loving Jeonghan was more greed than duty.

"I am glad it is you," Jeonghan whispered much later, a secret meant to be guarded with one's life.

Wonwoo echoed the words. "I am glad it is you."

/

He could do this. With Jeonghan's hand in his, Wonwoo could rule. He could stop placing second.

Except he'd forgotten about the price for taking what was never destined to be his.

/

Wonwoo understood now, splayed out on the blood-slicked ground under the scorching heat of the summer sun, that what Jeonghan had meant was:

Seungcheol would have been harder to fool.

Seungcheol would have been harder to kill.

I am glad it is you.

Jeonghan was a plague in his own rights. Before him, crown princes were dying like flies.

/

They were never wed. In the end, Jeonghan was only his as much as he was Seungcheol’s. He was truthful about one thing, at least. I see me in you. They were both greedy, but the wanting in Jeonghan’s heart didn't call to Wonwoo as Wonwoo's called to everything Seungcheol had.

It called to power.

Jeonghan whistled a low tune when Wonwoo dismounted, the same one he played on the gayageum. He waited as Wonwoo unsheathed his sword, in no rush to fight a battle with an assured outcome. Their steels kissed and kissed again under the harsh sky, singing one final song.

"Will you burn me?"

He doubted Jeonghan had a grave readied. His kingdom wanted land; a body took up more space buried than burned.

Jeonghan smiled. "Have I not already?"

I am glad it is you, Wonwoo thought to say.

"Do not dress me in white," he said instead.

Jeonghan hummed. "White is more Seungcheol’s colour than yours."

What is my colour then? Wonwoo wondered. In another life, what would you have me wear to the altar?

Crimson bubbled on his mouth. It burst when Jeonghan kissed him.

all of this is temporary

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: insecurity, the looming specter of the breakup
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

But Jesus, you've got better lips than Judas
I could keep your bed warm, otherwise I'm useless
—Halsey, Bells in Santa Fe

[FILL] Time and time over

[saltysoon]

Ship/Member: soonyoung/mingyu, implied soonwoo, TheM (mentioned)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: established relationship, insecurity, the looming specter of the breakup, mature, just mingyu going through it.
Permission to remix: Please ask

***
I don't think I've done full justice to the plot but I hope ya like it!!
***

Mingyu has had a good day at work. He runs a cafe next to minghao's art gallery, it guarantees customers and he even offers catering services to them if the gallery holds any events. He has his own regulars as well, people who live around, some of them his own neighbours. The cafe is homely, comfortable and most of all his own.

He mechanically locks up, simply following his daily routine. Usually he'd visit minghao after but he's at his rapper boyfriend's concert. He was baffled when minghao first talked about him but he's come to know that he's just as invested in art as minghao.

He walks down the road, his apartment is just a 10 minute walk from the cafe. He passes by various shops, resisting the urge to stop, when something catches his eye. It's a baby onesie. He chuckles, of all things, he shakes his head. Minghao and his boyfriend have been going through a bit of baby fever these days, clearly all the baby talk has gone to his head. He doesn't dare think any further.

He reaches his apartment, ignoring the name plate that says 'mingyu and soonyoung', it can be soonyoung's apartment too when he spends more than 6 hours a day in it.

Mingyu admits that this job is a great opportunity for his boyfriend of 5 years. He also admits that he is angry and resentful. It's no secret that he is clingy, especially to soonyoung, it's something he was teased by their friends their entire college life. He never minded then, his puppy like tendencies were embraced by soonyoung. He always confidently boasted about his perfect relationship, he wonders if he'd be able to do that ever again.

He almost cuts himself, lost in his thoughts while chopping, a rookie mistake. His grandmother always said, " minggu yah, if you want to cook, learn to keep your heart big. The more love you pour into your food while cooking, the more delicious it will taste."

Mingyu plays some music, if he has no love to put, he'll put nothing at all.

+++

Mingyu's lying down in the bedroom when he hears the sound of the front door open, he's almost too familiar with it now. The lights are switched on but mingyu pretends to be sleeping. By the time soonyoung finds food laid out for him on the dining table, he forgives himself for wanting to make soonyoung feel guilty.

Soonyoung enters the room. Mingyu anticipates his next move, for once he has greeted him with silence instead of an argument and hurt. He walks till he's right in front of him and bends down, squatting till they're eye level. Mingyu tries his best to level out his breathing but he knows he's caught, he could never remain calm this close to the love of his life.

He slowly opens his eyes and the light in the room reflects the stars in soonyoung's eyes, those small eyes that hold Mingyu's galaxies within them. He smiles out of habit and adoration, internally cursing his puppy tendencies. For his loyalty and for smelling wonwoo's perfume along with the alcohol smell that surrounds soonyoung.

His smile doesn't disappear. Jealousy and despair doesn't mean the absence of love. Soonyoung isn't smiling back, he prefers it this way. He wouldn't know what to do if he stopped wearing his emotions on his face. Soonyoung cups his face gently and gives him a kiss on the forehead. Mingyu wants to ruin him.

Mingyu's scrolling through his phone, settling for playing a random game, Instagram is worst enemy right now. Picture perfect lives, when he can't even think to admit that his is falling apart.

Soonyoung joins him in bed and they're snuggled under the covers. " How was your day at word?" Mingyu starts the conversation. Soonyoung lies with his back pressed to Mingyu's chest so feels the sigh he lets out,"we don't have to talk about it mingyu~ah I know you hate it"

That's not true, it's not that mingyu hates soonyoung's job. He loves that his boyfriend is a lawyer, and is so proud of him for having the strength to pick himself up after his injury. Mingyu thought soonyoung would die the day he had to stopped dancing, he would have if he had loved anything the way soonyoung loved the stage.

He was surprised the day soonyoung announced that he would strive to become a lawyer. He wondered where this sudden decision came from but never got anything beyond a mumble of 'wonwoo looked cool in the courtroom' from soonyoung.

Fast forward to today, after much struggle, soonyoung passed the bar and landed a job in wonwoo's firm. So no he doesn't hate his job but he does hate everything that comes with it.

" Tell me" he says simply, maybe the twinkles in soonyoung's eyes will make him feel better. Soonyoung tells him funny instances from interactions with his colleagues, the interesting clients that he met, rambles off about he once again got lost in the big place.

" And then we had a welcoming thing for the new employee and so the junior partners joined us. The hierarchy is so strict in this field. It's super weird calling wonwoo sunbae but he told me it would be disrespectful to do otherwise. Everything's going so well, I owe him so much honesty." Soonyoung continues to tell him about the other partners but this is where he gets stuck.

Jeon wonwoo, his roommate from college. He could wish he'd never met him but with that he would have never met soonyoung either. He wonders often whether it's him, whether it's his guilt that brings out this jealousy, this insecurity.

Wonwoo was a well known nerd, he always had his nose in a book. The only time he looked up was when Kwon soonyoung was around. Mingyu remembers following wonwoo's gaze and immediately falling in love. Soonyoung was giggling with a friend, eyes disappearing into lines, he was the cutest person mingyu had seen on campus. Looking at the honey dripping out of wonwoo's eyes he understood quickly he wasn't the only one who thought so.

He didn't want to be the asshole who stole someone his friend was pining for, so he waited. He waited an entire year but wonwoo didn't move an inch, soonyoung didn't even know about his existence and even had a relationship within that year with someone else.

After convincing himself that he wasn't a jerk, he asked soonyoung to be his partner for a class and the rest is history.

And now he has that adorable guy in his arms sleeping. Mingyu leans down to borrow his nose in soonyoung's neck and ignores the tightening of his arms as he once again is greeted by wonwoo's scent.

+++

Mingyu wakes up at 11am, something which he rarely gets to do. Soonyoung must have turned in the middle of the night because he's currently lying on his chest. It's absolutely cruel that he doesn't wake up like this everyday.

He must have moved because he soon feels soonyoung stretch and yawn.

"Good morning love" he is sure anybody could hear the smile in his voice. Soonyoung hums back, clearly still sleepy and rubs at the slight skin exposed at his waist. Mingyu's skin tingles at the simple contact and remembers how he's been starving for his beloved.

Soonyoung's wide awake when mingyu flips them over so he's hovering over him. He's always enjoyed their size difference, something about knowing that he is at the mercy of this man, despite how big, he'll always melt for his soonie.

He kisses him everything, tries to pour in how he's been feeling these days, how his absence is drilling a hole in his heart, how fearful he is that one day he won't be soonyoung's person, how much he hates that wonwoo gets to see soonyoung everyday and how much he's hates that stupid scent that he hasn't had to put up with since college, until now.

His hands find purchase at soonyoungs waist. He rakes his nails up and down his sides. He wants to be gentle but he knows he's not, soonyoung moans into his kiss that spurs him on further. He wants to draw out every sound possible out of him. Every moan, every whimper he wants them all. He pushes down his thigh as he snakes a hand to his lower back to pull him closer.

" Mingyu " soonyoung breathes in between kisses. "Mingyu. Gyu. Hold on" his hands grip at his shoulders.

He stops immediately worried, waits for soonyoung to continue as he catches his breath. " overwhelmed. Just slow down " A thousand thoughts run through his head as he does what soonyoung asked. Right now he doesn't have the ability to comprehend much more than the alarm signals that blare in his head. He doesn't know what he did wrong, just that he's been bad.

He nuzzles into soonyoung's neck, dropping kisses and licking, hoping that sucking hickeys into his skin would calm him down. He takes the skin within his teeth, alternating between sucking and licking. The skins barely become a light red when he's pulled up by this hair back to soonyoung's lips, he goes easy. Anyone could guide him to the ends of the earth by pulling on his hair.

The kisses start desperate and slightly slow down. Soonyoung cups his face lovingly and he feels more at peace. "what do you want darling" he says peppering kisses all over his face.

Soonyoung doesn't say anything but looks down and that's all that mingyu needs to understand. Mingyu pulls up his shirt and circles his nipple before blowing on it. Soonyoung arches his back and what a sight he is to behold.

He continues his way down his chest to his stomach, gives his belly button a smooch and lowers down his boxers.
Soonyoung's cock is just as pretty and cute as the rest of him. He takes him in his hand, a familiar weight and brings his mouth to his inner thighs.

Soonyoung still hasn't lost his dancer thighs and mingyu thoroughly enjoys them as he licks and sucks at them. He feels his earlier possessiveness in the pit of his belly and bites into his thigh hard enough to leave a mark. Soonyoung groans " mingyu! Marks!"

Mingyu turns his attention to the other thigh and litters a whole galaxy of marks all over them. " And who's seeing your inner thighs except me huh."

Soonyoung looks like he's going to say something when his phone rings.

" Don't you dare soonie. It is your day off and anyone else can wait." Mingyu take the head of his cock into mouth not waiting to hear soonyoung's response.

The ringing stops for a minute before it starts up again. Soonyoung checks the caller id.

Mingyu pulls off," I have vampire teeth and I am not afraid to use them."

" It's work, mingyu please." At least soonyoung looks as pained as mingyu feels. He rolls off him and he leaves the room to prepare breakfast instead.

He's cracking eggs as soonyoung comes in and sits in front of him instead of standing beside him. Clearly he's about to receive bad news. " They need me to come in," he says quickly. Bad news indeed.

"It's our first day off together in ages" mingyu says as if soonyoung doesn't know.

"Who called?" Mingyu spits out, burying his hurt with anger when soonyoung doesn't respond.

"Wonwoo." Mingyu turns away from him and digs his nails into his palms. The silence hangs in the room for the next 5 minutes till soonyoung gets up and goes back to their room.

He comes back out fully dressed and mingyu doesn't feel any calmer. " Don't go, " he pleads.

"Mingyu. It's just work" soonyoung sounds annoyed. That's just the thing though. It's not just work. Is he going crazy, can soonyoung not see how everything is falling apart, how they are falling apart.

"It's not work. It's wonwoo, you're going to him" Mingyu's tone is accusatory now, he knows this is going to spiral but god he can't stop himself.

" Mingyu what??? Do you even hear yourself ?? Wonwoo is a senior at the firm. He is our friend mingyu what the hell." Soonyoung's so close to shouting.

" Why are you being so defensive then huh?" He's angry, at himself, the situation, soonyoung.

"You're being so childish." Soonyoung's eyes narrow. The last time when those eyes were pointed at him, he was in the audience witnessing his last showcase. "You're so clingy and needy sometimes, mingyu , I can't stand it." And there it is. The tiger eyes that kill in one blow.

Mingyu knows that his face is an open mirror to his heart showcasing all his hurt but he also sees how soonyoung just doesn't care.

"Soonyoung" mingyu breathes.

"I'm sorry, I was harsh. That was wrong of me,"Soonyoung says, looking anywhere but at mingyu.

"You meant it" mingyu says with horror.

"I'm late, I gotta go, I'll talk to you late" and he leaves as if he hasn't shattered Mingyu's world.

+++

Later he opens Instagram and the first thing he sees is jeonghan's story of hoshi and wonwoo. They're having lunch together. If he was an outsider he would have said they looked good together.

Mingyu doesn't leave his bed for the rest of the day. Soonyoung doesn't come home that night.

love as a knife to the heart

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: wonhui or wonhan or gyuhan. or any, i don't really mind ^^
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: unrequited love.
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“It was a mistake to keep this single knife in my heart so long, but it is my knife, and my heart, too,”
— Richard Jackson, from “Basic Algebra".

Re: pull it out without questioning why

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Jeonghan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: toxic ex yjh
Permission to remix: Yes

my government mandated prosey fill for the year ✔

***

Said the scar to the blade, did you miss me? I remember your kiss. Do your teeth remember my taste?

Someone once told him that one day, he’d forget its cutting bite. But his heart remembers the searing pain. The heart is a muscle, the old trauma too deep a memory to ever fade away.

Jeonghan had once mused in bed how sad it would be to be someone’s last love. “You’d be so conditioned to other people’s hearts that it’d hurt more, don’t you think? You’ll have to keep remembering that you loved someone else’s infinite almosts.”

It feels like guillotine optimism that the heartache won’t come down heavy. He wakes up with a sword sticking out of his side.

(But last love promises a weathering, and a first love is an unprepared soft center, easy to be kneaded to shape to someone else’s desire.

He’s still peeling himself free from the shape that he’d been left in, but the blade keeps parrying him back into place. Stay in this shape for me. Weather me. Stay wanting me. Stay mine.)




Said the blade to the scar, you’re different than how I left you. The blade replies smoothly, I’m out of commission now.

“It’s been a long time,” Jeonghan calls out to him. The presence doesn’t puncture anymore, but the scar in his chest draws tight. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

It’s not sad, the way Jeonghan had mused it to be. To become someone’s last love, long after their first. Naturally, he does mean it’s not sad for him.

“I’m doing better now, I think,” he says to the glass in his hands, and Wonwoo refills his cup.

“You seem to be,” Wonwoo agrees, letting the silence cut deeper. Maybe the flesh gets bitter and weathered. Maybe being someone’s last love does mean that you have to undo the trauma of the first.

Maybe jealousy does sour at the back of his throat at the sight of the ring on Jeonghan’s finger.

Jeonghan gets shy for a moment, hesitating before fumbling for the phone in his pocket. “I think you know him, actually.”

You are the thing that wore me down, is what he doesn’t say, but when he says Seungcheol’s name, a caress forms around it that isn’t followed by the kiss of a sharp edge.

When Jeonghan leaves, his fingers find the scar at the center of his chest. From the scar, he can feel the hilt.

BBkeurim papapa

[sunsparrow]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Shall I make a pretty pose for the camera?
Look at this and smile for me
And please press it
On the bottom, that cute and red
Heart heart
- Twice, Likey

It’s stuck in the ground and the smallest breeze will turn it

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Jicheol (Jihoon/Seungcheol)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Non-linear, childhood friends to lovers, AU-setting
Do Not Wants: None (go wild, destroy our souls)

Prompt: Hi, just think Jicheol kid fic to adults, where cheol has this complex where he feels like he has to be Jihoon’s carer or has some kind of authority over Jihoon, they’ve only got each other, and all Jihoon wants is to be treated as an equal and maybe be seen as more than the tiny kid that needs taking care of—- the two of them are waiting for a better future and always come back to each other in every situation they find themselves in as they grow apart.

“I want to always be waiting
That makes me feel better
Even if you get lost
And it takes you a while
Come round and round back to me
Even if it’s far ahead in the future.” — SVT Vocal Unit, Pinwheel

by the sea, by the sea

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you. Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.
- Nizar Qabbani

[FILL] a boat in the sea of love

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Seokhao, 97z mention
Major Tags: beach day
Additional Tags: N/A
Permission to remix: Yes

***

“We should go to the beach.” Seokmin suggests one day, eyes bright in the reflection of the morning sun, “We’ve been here for almost 3 years and I’ve never been to the Santa Monica Pier.”

Minghao uncurls from his position on the mat so he could look at where Seokmin is, half buried under the blankets. Seokmin’s expression is as awake as he ever is at 9AM in the morning. The idea of having that knowledge, of knowing what Seokmin looks like in the process of waking makes something curl warm and comforting in between Minghao’s ribs.

It feels a little like devotion, like love right on the tip of the tongue.

“Sure, when were you thinking?” Minghao asks, leaning forward again until he could feel a tug on his hamstring.

Seokmin hums, the sound of tapping coming from where Minghao can’t see and he knows Seokmin must be checking his dates and availability.

“How about next weekend? Your internship will be done, my workshop will be wrapped up and it’s the last weekend before our semester starts again.” Seokmin finally says, tilting his smartphone towards where Minghao is now arching his back to show him the calendar. “When are you done again? I mean don’t get me wrong it’s very sexy to watch but I’m bored now.”

“Yes, I’m done now.” Minghao laughs, “And it’s good for you. Yoga increases blood flow and flexibility.”

Seokmin makes a face but he’s smiling, and Minghao already knows what he wants to say, the same response from the same conversation that they have had dozens of times. He will be affectionately mocking in a way that only Seokmin could be while Minghao patiently explains the benefits of pulling your body into dozens of improbable shapes, the ways that your muscles and bones will thank you.

He hopes they will have this conversation hundreds more times, every day for the rest of his life if he had the choice.

“Yeah, let’s go next Saturday.” Minghao says before Seokmin can respond, leaning down to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, “I miss the beach.”




Minghao packs for them because if it were left to Seokmin, they would arrive at the beach sans sunscreen and changes of clothing and anything else that wasn’t related to surfing or running barefoot through the sand. Instead, he’s relegated to helping Minghao load everything into their old beat up Toyota sedan.

From there, it’s an hour drive from their tiny apartment in the heart of Koreatown to the beach, A/C on full blast against the sweltering Los Angeles heat. Seokmin sings loudly and purposefully off tune to the songs on Minghao’s playlist and Minghao flips through the news and internet, reading anything interesting he finds. Halfway through the drive, they call up Mingyu whose all the way across the country in New York for the summer, just so Seokmin could rub it into his face that he couldn’t be at the beach with them.

“It’s not as if we can’t just go again when I get back.” Mingyu says, the sound of the radio a buzz in the background of his call.

“But it won’t be the same as the first time with us.” Seokmin trills, smug, “You’re missing the discovery and wonder.”

Mingyu audibly snorts and says, “Discovery and wonder my ass, this isn’t even the first beach we’ve been to. I bet you’re going to get sunburned,” to which Seokmin squawks indignantly and the conversation only derails further from there.

Minghao listens to Seokmin and Mingyu bicker, only stepping in before it can devolve further than petty names, their words still softened with fondness, never meant to hurt.

“Text us your flight details for next week, we’ll pick you up from the airport. We miss you.” Minghao says, and ends the call before Seokmin could interject with something childish.




It’s half past 11 by the time they arrive at the beach, the sun blistering in the sky. Seokmin voluntarily slathers on sunscreen, Mingyu’s sunburn threat clearly still lingering in his mind. Privately, Minghao doesn’t think Seokmin, who is bronzed like precious metal, is the one more likely to sunburn between the two of them.

They unload the rest of the car and Seokmin hoists the beach umbrella under his arm while Minghao carries the tote and beach chairs.. Both of them share the weight of the cooler filled with lunch and bottled water, and set off to find an unoccupied plot of sand.

“Want to join me surfing?” Seokmin asks after they’ve set up their spot.

Minghao shakes his head, already fishing for the book he’s stashed under the extra towels. “No, I’ll watch. Have fun in the sun.”

Seokmin nods, already expecting the answer, “I’ll be back soon.”

The kiss he gives leaves Minghao’s cheek warm, flushed by something other than the burning sun.




Seokmin finally finishes up a little before 4 and returns clearly ravenous. His hair is still damp but he’s already stripped out of his wetsuit back into regular beachwear. Minghao, for his part, has read less than he would have liked, constantly distracted by Seokmin trying to catch his attention from amongst the waves or in between tides. He puts away the book and holds out a towel; Seokmin dutifully sits in the other beach chair.

Minghao towels off his hair gently, running fingers through the locks bleached by the light, a field of wheat spun into gold. He doesn’t think he would ever tire of this, of the privilege of drying Seokmin’s hair after showers and rain, of seeing Seokmin close his eyes and sigh into the pressure against his scalp.

Minghao feels the thing in his chest swell, pressing against his lungs and threatening to burst with the fullness of the feeling.




They eat sandwiches as a late lunch, Minghao’s filled with mostly vegetables and Seokmin’s piled as high with cheese and meat as he feasibly could. Seokmin digs his toes into the sand, shuffling them until slyly until he’s poking the arch of Minghao’s foot, and then laughs when Minghao almost drops his sandwich at the unexpected contact. They talk about the water and Minghao’s book, small stories about work until they’re dusting crumbs off their swim shorts.

“C’mon, let’s go into the water for a bit.” Seokmin says, eyes twinkling with sincerity, reaching for Minghao.

His fingers are warm, by heat and joy, and Minghao follows willingly. If Seokmin glowed even under the most ordinary of circumstances, he was blinding under the summer sun and Minghao was enraptured by the light of him. Seokmin was fearless of the waves, dunking his whole body into the water despite the chill, and was not above splashing Minghao upon seeing his hesitation.

“C’mon you weenie, you’ve got to get a little wet at the beach.” Seokmin laughs, shaking droplets like diamonds out of his hair.

He smiles in the way only Seokmin does, without expectations, because there is something to smile about even when all else is dark. Seokmin is dazzling against the dark of the waves, the bright blue of the sky, and Minghao feels as if the ocean itself is swallowing him whole with the depth of his wanting. This was a feeling he could die with, a love so deep Mazu herself would have coveted it among her heavenly splendor.

“Of course, I’m coming.” Minghao says, and follows Seokmin into the sea.

---

I’m a little nervous posting this because ki, I suspect you will know who I am immediately but I wanted to try something. also i didn't edit any of this and most of it has nothing to do with the ocean.

title from siken, "saying your names" which has also nothing to do with any of this in actuality.

i want you to know

[madeoutcreek]

Ship/Member: Joshua/Vernon
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Joshua-centric, post-disbandment/idolverse future fic, chance meetings, some BBB squares i'm sure
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.

- Federico García Lorca

You are not like the regulars
The masquerade revelers
Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

I've never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try
I'm still on that trapeze
I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me

- Taylor Swift

++ for your consideration

Everybody’s got to love something

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, I learn to live dead, just numb, but then I see someone I want, and it's like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I'm losing.
- Tony Kushner

[FILL]: Everybody’s got to love something

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Jeonghan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: minor character death (implied), blood, lies, ambigous ending, some sort of spies/secret agents setting i guess
Permission to remix: Yes

I honestly don't know what possessed me. I'm sorry Ki!!
***

The last time Wonwoo let himself want, someone ended up dead.

In his dreams, the blood is still vivid, staining the palms of his hands, dripping out of a wound that he was unable to cauterize, palms uselessly fumbling to apply pressure. In his dreams, there’s always so much red.

The last time Wonwoo let his guard down, a life was taken, and a golden medal was appointed to his chest, a reminder that he destroyed one life to save countless others. If he could go back and change the trade, he would. If he could go back, he would swap the cards, become a traitor. Choose a life on the run and one less life on his conscience.

He’s learned to tighten the cuffs around his heart, leaving it no room to breathe. In his line of work, wanting leads to death. It leads to countless sleepless nights, made of nightmares stained with memories, whirlwinds of reality poisoning his sleep.

Numbing himself with alcohol isn’t the smartest choice, not when the cool liquid going down his throat doesn’t lessen his want, not when all it does is loosen up his tongue. He should know better than to down another drink, and yet.

“You’re still here.” Jeonghan’s voice is soft, suave, a caress on Wonwoo’s heated skin, a nail on the coffin of his heart. “Thought you would be gone to bed by now.”

The last time Wonwoo let himself want, someone ended up dead. Every time Wonwoo stops himself from wanting, a piece of himself dies. It’s an unbalanced trade.

“Can’t sleep,” Wonwoo says, omitting the ghosts that haunt his dreams. Jeonghan just tips his glass in his direction, downing the clear liquid inside it. He smacks his lips against the sour taste of alcohol mixed with soda, and Wonwoo yearns for that mouth, craves its warmth.

Inside his chest, his traitorous heart beats faster when Jeonghan’s hand squeezes his knee, palm resting over the light fabric of his trousers. It’s a gentle gesture. It’s everything that Jeonghan isn’t - warm, soft, comforting.

The last time Wonwoo let himself want, it wasn’t Jeonghan. Now, with fingers cold from condensation and his heartbeat on the tip of his tongue, Wonwoo wonders how it would feel, to let himself fall into the web of lies that Jeonghan has set out for him.

Play pretend, they told him, but his heart must have not heard. The cuffs around it are loosening up, claws ready to devour, bleeding for a love that isn’t real, that would never be so.

Jeonghan smiles and it’s pretty, even if it's fake.

“I think I love you, Yoon Jeonghan,” Wonwoo says, truth slipping out of him with a bitter chuckle.

The pretty grin stays on Jeonghan’s face, his hand stays on Wonwoo’s knee.

“Everybody’s got to love something,” Jeonghan says back, voice unwavering.

In Wonwoo’s dreams, his face takes the place of the dead, bleeding love out of his wound. In reality, Jeonghan just keeps on smiling.

This time, when Wonwoo lets himself want, it's a losing game.

you don't have to be a star

[madeoutcreek]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: failure, insecurity, imposter syndrome
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Well, I'm not the moon, I'm not even a star

- Your Best American Girl by Mitski

Hey, hey, hey, lover
You don't have to be a star
Hey, hey, hey, lover
I love you just the way you are

- Hey Lover by The Daughters of Eve

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Seokmin/Any, Mingyu/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I think for a brief second that I am dreaming inside of my dream, that I had to make you up twice, just to get it right. You, brushing your dark hair out of your face, smearing batter across your cheeks. You have come and made my dreams smaller, narrower. Filled them with sugar and your body humming in the same room as mine.

- Caitlyn Siehl

[FILL]: Just To Get It Right

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Seokmin/Minghao, Seokmin/Mingyu
Major Tags: Could be read as MCD/Past Character Death if you were so inclined
Additional Tags: Could just be post break up, dreams, faintly creepy, no plot only vibes
Permission to remix: Yes

Teen and Up, 0.9k

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36818569

the same old sin

[madeoutcreek]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Seokmin
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

"And then we'd be at each other's throats even more." Oh, petal. You say that like it's a bad thing.

- Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

He's a fighter past his prime
He's in the gutter waving his hand, "I'm just fine"

- Alpha Dog by Fall Out Boy

[FILL] pretend that i'm the only one

[kisoap]

Ship/Member: Mingyu/Seokmin
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Bridgerton AU set in South Korea
Permission to remix: Yes

***

"There would be nothing worse than to be tied down in a political courtship," Mingyu confessed to Seokmin, forthright. They were walking along the river in the height of spring, and the falling cherry blossoms slid down the spokes of the pale yellow parasol Mingyu held up for them both. The people around them were horribly pretending not to look at them as intently as they were.

"I want to marry for love," insisted Seokmin, saying much of the same thing. "It seems pointless to promise yourself for anything less."

Mingyu paused and turned to face him. "Do we not agree?" he proposed, surprised by their equal footing on the matter for once.

The sleeves of Seokmin's powder blue jungchimak fluttered in the breeze like the petals raining down. He met Mingyu's eyes for such a brief moment that it could almost be mistaken for the sort of consideration he had all but declared Mingyu unworthy of from their first meeting.

Seokmin sighed, "Were you even listening to me at all?", a simple reaffirmation that he still wasn’t. He continued on past the shade of the umbrella, obstinate, and all Mingyu could do was trail after him like any other besotted fool in his wake.

***

They said it was a waste for Mingyu to have status and talent and to be as handsome and charming as he was when he exhibited not the least bit of interest in settling down, season after season. They still pushed their sons and daughters toward him, hoping to catch him changing his mind.

They said Seokmin wouldn’t go a month into his debut without an engagement. Now that it was April, they corrected themselves and said that Seokmin could only be too picky to be satisfied.

Wonwoo said when he noticed Mingyu staring across the courtyard, “Love has turned you desperate,” because he didn’t have the tact to say anything but the truth when it came to people outside himself. “I never thought you were capable.”

Seokmin smiled at the suitor he was walking with. He’d never bothered to look at Mingyu like that before. “At most, it’s a trivial infatuation,” he reasoned thickly. “Nothing more.”

***

Mingyu found Seokmin sitting on the fringes of the festival. “We should dance,” he offered immediately. “There are a lot of people tonight.”

Seokmin was fixated on the crowd. Across where couples were dancing was Yoon Jeonghan, walking alongside his wife. They had married last autumn, just as the gingko leaves fell. Mingyu had been in attendance, and Seokmin had worn the same look of beatific devastation in the distance, merely more hardened and removed now.

“I want to marry for love,” Seokmin said again without looking at him, the only acknowledgment of Mingyu’s presence beside him at all. “I don’t want to settle for less.” He said it like he would rather die otherwise.

Mingyu had enough shame to turn away. “Of course,” he managed. I would love you, if you let me, he meant to say. I already do. But that was too akin to a boyish vulnerability he’d long thought himself above.

He proffered his hand to Seokmin, who met Mingyu's eyes for such a brief moment that it could almost be mistaken for the sort of consideration he had all but declared Mingyu unworthy of from their first meeting, before placing his own in Mingyu’s palm. Mingyu grinned with his canines. “So let’s put on a show,” fueled by that fleeting glance of fatalistic hope, to his own detriment.

evil isn't born, it's made

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Any, Joshua/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“You had evil inside you, and you indulged it. Men will always indulge it.”

― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“I'm only whatever you make me
And you make me more and more a villain every day”

― Halsey, Easier than Lying

FILL: evil isn't born, it's made

[infrequencies]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Seokmin
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Blood, Overwhelming specter of terminal illness, Parksborn your boys 2k21
Permission to remix: Yes

If this is revised from a long essay I sent to someone about Parksborn then no it isn't <3 Originally wrote this in second person also in a car and I have motion sickness so mistakes are my own fault.
***

You want me to be the villain, so I am.

Is love a promise or a threat?

There are things Jeonghan would do for him that he'd do for no one else. Recreate himself, break off the pieces that upset him to keep him close. Remold, revise, rewrite his less than savory history for a future that will keep him warm at night.

Seokmin is a good man. An honest man, an evolution of the lanky stringbean of a boy he fell head over heels for way back when. Scraped knees and sunburnt shoulders, hazy comforts. A pair of unwanted boys creating their own stories. In the end, all they will have is each other. When they tell their story, it will be them against the world.

Seokmin’s loyalty hangs over him like a promise. Anything you need, hyung, I'll do anything for you. Jeonghan was born with the world at his fingertips. He only has ever needed one thing.

Seokmin says he loves him.

Love is a promise.

All of Jeonghan’s firsts will end up belonging to him.

But you don't belong to him, do you? You've never really belonged anywhere.

Jeonghan has never had to ask for anything. He's not used to asking so openly. But the one thing he needs makes Seokmin balk, and god, he's fucking bleeding out in his arms in real time and Seokmin won't give it to him.

We don't know what it would do to you, he claims. But wouldn't love be reason enough to keep Jeonghan alive?

Love is weakness.

Seokmin undoes it this time. Rewrites his and Jeonghan’s history, tells him that what he needs is what he can't have.

You liar, you don't love me, too. It's easy for you, after all.

Seokmin calls him selfish, but Jeonghan has only known self-preservation. Being wanted is something that he's strived for his whole useless life, and Seokmin knows the intimate details more intricately than any therapist, any journal, any assistant who's heard him cry before getting fired.

It's to keep you safe, he claims. What is safe when you will die, poisoned by the breath of your own wanting? He's never wanted anything so fucking much. How is it selfish to want to be alive?

The gauntlet feels heavy in your hands. But: love is a fight.

Seokmin is pleading with him now, red suit torn to shreds, heart heavy in his outstretched hands, to see the error of his ways. To choose him. But he couldn't even choose you, remember?

And oh, he's bleeding now. Really, truly bleeding and it's beautiful. His blood shines like a star, like his eyes when he cries, when he begs for his life.

You're not a bad person, Jeonghan, he says, crimson shining from his lips. Jeonghan’s lips curl in a sneer.

He's a villain of Seokmin’s own making.

my favorite taste is bittersweet

[sunsparrow]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

there is no aging. there is only changing.

[icarusundone]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Doyoung
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Magical Realism
Permission to remix: Yes
WC: 400
going for [Exactly 400 words]

***

There is a god sitting at Wonwoo’s kitchen table, his head bowed low and eyes closed, forearms resting on the chipped wood. Sometimes, Wonwoo pretends that the window behind the god is a stained glass mosaic, so that he’s praying in a church rather than silently begging for miracles while shoveling dakjuk in his mouth.

Before he leaves for work, Wonwoo peels an orange, slicing through the rind with his nails. He leaves the fruit in front of the god, pith and all, and throws the ribboned peels into the trash. Once he had forgotten and had been greeted by the former kitchen table in flames. He had spent the next day rescuing a stray round table which was no better than firewood from a street curb.

When he returns from his job, the slices will be gone.

The god doesn’t move when Wonwoo’s there. He may as well be marble, a statue carved by a devoted sculptor who detailed the bow of his lips and the shadows cast by his eyelashes— no more than human-shaped cloth draped over cold stone.

His god uses silence as a currency. He pays his rent in quiet mornings and noiseless nights, the only sound the scrape of Wonwoo’s spoon against his bowl as he eats and then retires to his room.

When he was a child, Wonwoo read about kind gods and cruel gods, merciful and merciless. His god is a disparaging god, his silences kinder than his words.

“Was I supposed to grant you three wishes?” his god asks one day, bound to his chair, a modern bronze jar. It is still easy to trap a god. He leans in closer, like he’s telling a secret. “Even divine power cannot help you. You’re never going to be a writer.”

His god is carved in the likeliness of one of his college classmates. His god’s face graces best-selling lists and book jackets.

“Is being a savior lonelier than you thought?” Doyoung asks him in the same grating voice that incited the class’s laughter as he critiqued Wonwoo’s writing.

Like clockwork, Wonwoo goes to his office job and returns to a god who doesn’t love him, and he sits and eats dinner in suffocating silence, and he wanted to be a hero, but he’s long run out of miracles.

“Is this what you wanted,” his god asks, eating an orange slice. “Everything? Like this?”

made of stardust

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: soulmates and/or magical realism, reincarnation?
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“I'll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wont' just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight...”

― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy

[FILL] for tomorrow

[blankpostit]

Ship/Member: seokmin/jeonghan

Major Tags: fantasy au, reincarnation

Additional Tags: character death bc well lol, blood, mentions of violence

Permission to remix: yes

i started writing this with something else in mind but my permanent bbc merlin brain disease & my permanent arthurkyeom brain disease both did a number on me. i'm sorry and i hope jeonghan waiting for seokmin for more than 600 years makes up for it. <3

***

People have found love worth dying for ever since the beginning of time. If I can die for you, then I can live for you. I have no regrets. You have never cried before, don't cry for me.
Priest

seokmin shall fall very soon, as all kings should. as they all do at some point.

a younger jeonghan, a decade ago from here, used to be terrified of this moment. his sleep was plagued by nightmares of flames and smoke swallowing seokmin, of a sharp sword crossing seokmin's back and making its way out of his chest, of a soil red and wet with blood of the once and future king. in those nightmares, jeonghan screamed and cried pathetically in front of their kingdom's foes, an embarrassing mess of a boy who refused to accept his and his king's fate.

time, though, is the most powerful kind of magic. the only kind of magic jeonghan will never master. and what once would've brought him to his knees now is nothing but a painful rite of passage to him.

watching the fall of seokmin and his great kingdom hurts. jeonghan watches from the shadows as the battlefield turns into wreckage, bodies piling up and blood tinging everything -- soil, flags, weapons, other people's faces and hands and armor. he helps without being seen; saves knights without them ever noticing and plays tricks on the enemies to try and hold them back. despite knowing the outcome of this battle for years, jeonghan still tries to do some damage control. it's not enough.

at the top of the hill, seokmin fights magic with wit and strength. he swings his sword against invisible enemies and takes more hits than he has ever taken before. seokmin is the best warrior this land has seen and his skills are unrivaled but he is a fair man through and through and his enemies are the exact opposite of that.

and even if he were to play dirty, there's only so much one can do against fate.

chan shows his face only when the first rays of daylight start to adorn the dark sky above them with delicate shades of gold. the king is already on his knees.

somewhere in the woods behind the field that is bound to be seokmin's grave, jeonghan shivers. fully aware that the time has come.

“where is your wizard friend now, knight?” chan asks, mockingly resting the tip of his sword on seokmin's right shoulder. seokmin raises his head, defiantly stares at chan straight in the eyes. he's panting heavily and jeonghan knows that even without that final blow chan so desperately wants to give, seokmin won't be able to hold out much longer.

“he has more important battles to fight,” seokmin replies, spiteful until the very end. “i don't need him to fight mine.”

it almost breaks jeonghan's resolution.

the urge to stay is only suppressed by one thing, the undying truth that has brought them here: seokmin does need him. but not this seokmin, the one in the future, centuries from now.

chan looks at seokmin with disdain. “i'm tempted to believe you do, look at you.” he scoffs, slowly walking around seokmin and swinging his sword swiftly, putting on a performance of sorts. it's both graceful and pathetic. needless. everyone knows how this ends. “i guess you can blame this on your father as well. today you're atoning for his sins more than yours.”

“i've kept my promises,” seokmin says and his voice is filled with pride. it makes jeonghan smile -- it always does. “and i shall die with no regrets.”

chan sheaths the sword and when he speaks, his tone is surprisingly solemn.

“then die for once, knight.”

with a wave of chan's right hand, the light in seokmin’s eyes is gone. there’s no thunder and lightning, no fire, no smoke. just painful silence until seokmin’s body falls flat with an ugly sound, face to the floor where his own blood had painted an abstract picture of loyalty and courage throughout the night. it's different from jeonghan's nightmares but that doesn't make it any easier to witness.

it doesn't matter how the king dies, it matters that he's dead.

now jeonghan's hardest mission as the king's magician, confidant and longtime companion can finally begin.

🗡️

after the first 500 years, jeonghan stops searching. it is not a matter of hope; fate is inescapable. it is a matter of when but maybe their when is still very far away.

the longing never ceases but jeonghan learns to live with it, carries it around him like a cloak, allows it to knock him down once in a very long while just so he can get up again.

he keeps his promise.

he tells stories about seokmin, the once and future king, makes sure the memory resists the test of time and prepares the soil for his return.

jeonghan busies himself with magic, with people, with silence.

he learns how to change his appearance but is always too afraid to do it because this face of his is the face seokmin knows and jeonghan fears not being recognized.

for countless times throughout the centuries, jeonghan wishes he had someone to ask questions regarding this situation but, apparently, he is the only one to ever experience this. other wizards and mages have more questions than answers and, soon enough, jeonghan stops telling them the entire truth. turns out that he knows more than any other magical being has ever known; and yet, even after so much time, he feels like he's learned nothing.

🗡️

the endless wait makes jeonghan lower his guard. he stops looking for seokmin in every child and man that slightly resembles him.

the king will arrive when the king arrives.

and arrive he does at last.

the scorching sun above the street market punishes everyone with blinding brightness and high temperature. jeonghan walks slowly, hand protecting his eyes in an attempt to see anything in front of him. his own annoyed thoughts are buried under the noise coming from crowd buying and selling goods, people shouting one over the other in pure chaos.

sometimes jeonghan wonders how he came to like humanity so much.

as he makes his way to a calmer spot, a hand grabs him by the wrist and his annoyance rises. jeonghan turns around ready to be rude at someone for the first time in a long while but, before he does, a voice that he hasn't heard anywhere else except his own dreams for more than 600 years speaks.

“oh, finally!” seokmin singsongs. it's casual and carefree as if he hasn't been gone for centuries. jeonghan's heart jumps inside his chest and his knees almost fail him. the king, his king, speaks again. “thought i'd never find you!”

in the sky, as though orchestrated by fate itself, a thick cloud covers up the sun just in time for jeonghan to see seokmin smiling triumphantly at him. the heat and the noise disappear as jeonghan's eyes scan seokmin's face -- it's the same face he's known and loved and longed for. every mole in its rightful spot and he wants to place a kiss in every single one of them, loses himself a little at the thought.

the warm grip of seokmin's fingers around his wrist is what brings him back; it feels insufficient and unbearable all at once. if they hold each other right now, jeonghan knows he won't be able to let go, so he waits a little longer. such selflessness! if there's a heaven, this alone should earn him a nice spot over there.

“there you are!” jeonghan manages to say and his voice comes out surprisingly firm. being ancient does have its advantages. the smile he offers seokmin carries endless joy and an honesty that he doesn't think he will ever be able to convey with words. he hopes it's enough but if it isn’t, he has the rest of their lives to keep on trying. “i was almost giving up on you and going after someone else to show my little tricks to.”

do of this what you please

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“Names are powerful things; you should be careful whom you share yours with. You never know when a person might turn your name against you.”

― Christopher Paolini, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

[Fill]: By Any Other Name

[thesolemneyed]

Ship/Member: Minghao/Soonyoung
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Cryptids, Fae, Names
Permission to remix: Yes

400 words :3, Teen and Up

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36009274

actorzzz

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: famous/non-famous
Additional Tags: humor
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Out of my league, old school chic
Like a moviestar from a silver screen
You're one of a kind, livin' in a world gone plastic
Baby, you're so classic

— Classic by MKTO

[FILL] hey where's the drum

[wonwoo420]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Seokmin
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: Actor Seokmin/regular dude Wonwoo; "URI BOO" moment appropriation
Permission to remix: Yes

***
“Seokmin-ah! You’re the only one for me!”

Wonwoo wants to melt into the cement as the gaggle of mostly female fans turn to look at him. It’s terrible. The real perpetrator, Soonyoung, is giggling beside him, unfairly hiding behind Wonwoo.

Seokmin is laughing good-naturedly, waving.

“So cute!” Soonyoung bellows, hurting Wonwoo’s ears.

The other fans around them aren’t even trying to hide their laughs. Wonwoo needs to drag Soonyoung away and never let him come with him again to any show ever.

Seokmin turns and Wonwoo sees the exact moment he spots him in the crowd. Their eyes meet. Wonwoo’s throat is filled with sand. He blames Soonyoung rubbing off on him in the worst way for feeling like a main character in that moment, his body feeling feverish from his sole to the top of his head.

Seokmin smiles, gently, like he’s holding a kitten and trying not to frighten it.

Wonwoo wants to be a kitten so bad.

Soonyoung slaps his shoulder so hard he pitches right onto the barrier. “Hey, don’t get mushy in public!” he yells, like he didn’t instigate the whole thing. “I support you but keep that to yourself!”

He’s grateful he didn’t have to look at Seokmin anymore. He doesn’t know what to do with the heat inside him dissipating into a filling warmth, like a particularly good soup. Wonwoo shoves Soonyoung back (he just cackles) and swims his way out of the crowd.

–

It goes without saying, at least to Wonwoo, that Seokmin is spectacular as King Arthur.
He’s always impressed by Seokmin’s talent and hard work, but seeing it manifested in a nearly three-hour musical is truly a different kind of experience. At the end of it Wonwoo wants to build an altar to Seokmin. He shines so bright it should blind him, but Wonwoo just sees more clearly how much he adores him.

He’s scared it shows on his face. He’s scared other people will see that he loves Seokmin, actually, and wishes all the time to cross the distance between them to tell him that. He wants to be near him and soak up his warmth.

Soonyoung suggests they wait by the parking lot again to see Seokmin when he leaves. Since Soonyoung can’t be trusted to behave, Wonwoo just walks out.

–

“Hyung, I gave you the backstage pass for a reason.”

Seokmin kicks off his shoes and drops his bag by the entryway and promptly forgets their existence, making a beeline for the couch where Wonwoo is hunched over his controller. Wonwoo pauses his game and lets Seokmin push him to the end of the couch so he can use his lap as a pillow.

He smells like Wonwoo’s body wash, which means Seokmin forgot to buy his in travel-sized bottles, again, and his hair is still damp. Wonwoo removes Seokmin’s eyeglasses, a lensless spare Wonwoo had lying around that Seokmin “borrowed” for when he wants to look inconspicuous.

There are still tiny clumps of eyeliner on his eyelids.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Wonwoo says, his lungs expanding like he’s relearning to breathe.

“Soonyoung-hyung didn’t have the same reservations.”

“Because he’s Soonyoung.”

Seokmin hums, turning to his side and nuzzling Wonwoo’s stomach. “I think you just like being dramatic.”

Wonwoo can't argue. He likes being found. He likes Seokmin finding him.

–

pam0218 32 mins ago
0:35 seokmin cant stop laughing at the fanboys god bless
👍 194

svtpopper 34 mins ago
THIS IS SO CUTE AND PURE
👍 21

dkfan 61 mins ago (edited)
whoever that tall dude is, i’m challenging you to a duel for dk’s heart
👍 433

Deep in my enemy I find the lover;

[surjamukhi]

Ship/Member: Seokmin/Mingyu
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

We make each other alive. Does it matter if it hurts?

- Ingmar Bergman

I have nightly since

Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me;

We have been down together in my sleep,

Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat,

And waked half dead with nothing.

- Shakespeare, Coriolanus

We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade. This intensity, this heat, sun like a disc-saw through your body.

- Jeanette Winterson

Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

- Richard Siken

[FILL] Deep in my enemy I find the lover;

[seokmin_liker]

Ship/Member: Seokmin/Mingyu
Major Tags: Sexual Content, Brief depictions of violence
Additional Tags: rival gangs, think romeo and juliet but not really
Permission to remix: Yes
Word Count: 4990

dear ki, i can only hope this fic is even a fraction as good as your prompt is! i definitely lost my mind while writing this. much love <3
also i'm on four hours of sleep so if there are any typos that's probably why

[1/2]

The raindrops drum on Seokmin’s window. If he closed his eyes, he would think they were bullets trying to break through. It's dark outside, but the moon is almost full, and the glare of the streetlights illuminates the streets outside, so the night is unusually well-lit. There aren’t many people outside at this time of night, but Seokmin can see the occasional figure skulking about, shivering in the cold, hiding amongst the shadows. In all honesty, he wouldn't be surprised if he did hear bullets at some point during the night.

But that's not why he's awake. He's awake because he's waiting for someone.

And he doesn't have to wait for too long. The small sound of shoes coming up the metal fire escape lets him know that his visitor has arrived. He opens the window, letting in the cold and the rain and the man he's been waiting for.

“What took you so long?” Seokmin whispers, without any bite. They have to whisper - if someone came in to find him in Seokmin's room, they'd both be dead men.

“Nothing,” Mingyu replies, squeezing through the window. “Why? Eager? You been waiting up for me?”

“Of course I’ve been waiting up for you, otherwise I’d be asleep right now. Not because I’m eager.”

Mingyu just grins at him. The lights in the room are off - that's the way they prefer it - so it's only the moonlight that guides Seokmin and shows him the curve of his smile, the glint of his teeth, the smoothness of his skin.

It also shows him the drop of rain that slides down Mingyu’s nose and drips onto the floor.

“Let’s dry you up before we do anything else,” Seokmin decides, moving to grab a towel from the small en-suite.

“Wouldn't it be better for you if I caught a cold? You and your, uh, Dragons?” Mingyu says that last word with a smug leer, and it sends a chill down Seokmin's spine. He doesn't really like being reminded of the circumstances when Mingyu’s here, not when they could be focusing on other things.

“Well, I’m not thinking about them. I’m thinking about me. You're not exactly going to be a great kisser if you sneeze.”

He reaches up - hating the few centimetres that Mingyu has on him - and dries Mingyu’s face and neck, taking his time with it. Mingyu’s breath hitches. The touch is good, but not good enough, not when Seokmin knows he could be tracing a path over the vast expanse of Mingyu with his fingertips. He dries Mingyu’s hair too, standing close enough to him that their breaths mingle in front of their mouths. Seokmin feels a current everywhere his fingers touch Mingyu’s hair, and it's the most anything he's felt in a few days.

“I think my hair’s dry enough,” Mingyu whispers, and Seokmin feels the words more than he hears them. He steps away to hang the towel back up in the bathroom, sensing that Mingyu’s eyes are on him the whole time.

If this were somewhere else, if they were out in the street somewhere, and Mingyu was looking at him like that, Seokmin would be scared. Of course he would - no Shadow looks at a Dragon like that without wanting to hold him down in defeat. But here, Seokmin knows better than that. Here, they can be both - hunter and hunted, predator and prey. Being held down can be a victory.

Seokmin makes his way over to Mingyu, deliberately slowly, ignoring the rapid drumming of his heart. As soon as he's close enough, Mingyu wraps his arms around Seokmin's waist, pulling him in.

“Now who's eager?” Seokmin teases. Mingyu just splays his hands over the small of Seokmin’s back, apparently not able to reply.

Seokmin smirks, bringing his hands to Mingyu’s torso, ever so slowly grazing them up from his lean stomach up to his chest. Mingyu’s T-shirt is cold and wet from the rain, so it's clinging to him, showing off his body.

“Let’s get these wet things off you, hm?” Seokmin whispers, punctuating it with a bite to the shell of his ear. Mingyu groans, moving his fingers under Seokmin’s shirt, sending pulses of heat through his skin with each feather-light touch.

This is getting a bit too delicate for Seokmin's tastes. He pulls Mingyu down for a proper kiss, hungry and heavy. His hands move up, fingers tightening in Mingyu’s hair, the grip almost cruel - but Mingyu likes almost cruel. They lose themselves in their kisses, nipping at each other’s lips, pulling each other closer than close.

At some point, Seokmin wrangles Mingyu’s shirt off him, and so it's only fair that Mingyu does the same to him. Hunter and hunted. Seokmin takes Mingyu to the bed, pushing rather than guiding, holding his wrists down as he mouths over his chest, tongue curling around his nipple. Mingyu whines high in his throat, and when Seokmin's hands are busy roaming over his middle, Mingyu takes advantage - he flips Seokmin over, straddles him, grinds down on his hips. Seokmin’s eyes close as he groans, but not before he notices the moonlight cast a glint on Mingyu's teeth.

It’s those teeth that sink into the tender skin of Seokmin's neck, almost like he wants to draw blood. Seokmin tries to grind up into Mingyu, but his hips are lifted up, out of reach. Fine. Seokmin instead grabs Mingyu’s ass, squeezing it, landing a sharp slap on it to hear Mingyu gasp. Seokmin smiles at that, in spite of himself. They've done this enough times to know what each other’s weaknesses are, to find where the other is more vulnerable and to exploit it over and over. It sends a warm thrill through Seokmin’s blood every time, to know they can make each other crumble again and again, no matter how familiar they become.

There comes a point in any struggle where one person submits to the other, giving them their satisfaction. Today, Seokmin lets it be him, lets Mingyu bear the glory of it. But they both know, as Mingyu holds his wrists down and pushes into him, that this victory is short-lived, and that it only takes a minute to turn a victor into a victim.

***

Maybe it didn’t have to be like this. Maybe in another world, where street gangs were a hypothetical, Seokmin and Mingyu could know each other properly.

They used to know each other back in high school. Maybe ‘know’ is a strong word for it. But they were acquainted. Honestly, Seokmin didn’t think that Mingyu was anything special. He was unnaturally tall, sure, but that was offset by how he was still growing into his limbs, clumsy and a bit too big for himself. From the brief glimpses Seokmin caught of him, it seemed he was awkward and loud and tried too hard. And Seokmin’s pretty sure Mingyu must have felt the same way about him. They were both the same in that way, really - utterly unremarkable except by virtue of who they’re friends with.

The thing is, high school is where it all starts and ends. Your friends in high school are your friends for life. That’s how the gangs work. So Seokmin’s and Mingyu’s fates are sealed as soon as they make friends in their first few weeks of high school, when they barely even know their way around the building. Seokmin hangs around with Seungcheol from the Dragons - he’s cool and strong and knows what he’s doing, and Seokmin can’t help but shelter under him. Mingyu befriends Wonwoo from the Shadows, who’s smart and tough. Wonwoo makes plans, Mingyu executes them. Wonwoo and Seungcheol each have their own friends who are even older and even wiser, and those friends have older friends too, until eventually Seokmin realises that what he’s gotten himself into is a family. Not a family tree, necessarily, but a family chain forged through grit and spilt blood, each person inseverably linked to the next.

And, like with any family, the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.

So Seokmin doesn’t really see Mingyu a lot in high school. He’s too busy hanging around with Seungcheol, either cowering behind him or posturing before him. He’s learning how to fight, how to hold his own, how to heal. He learns about the Shadows, their strengths and weaknesses and foibles, until he knows more about their gang than his own. He’s learning, in his own way, to be a man.

The first time he sees Mingyu after high school is in his first fight. Which isn’t surprising. It’s a scorching midsummer day, so hot that Seokmin can almost smell the asphalt. Even in his tank top, he feels like he’s suffocating. He isn’t feeling normal, he can’t, not on a day like this. The blazing sun has driven him out of his mind. So that’s why, when he and some of the other Dragons meet some Shadows on the street corner, he knows what’s going to happen. He knows how this has to end.

Wonwoo’s taunting Seungcheol. Seokmin can barely hear what he’s saying because of the blinding sun. Wonwoo’s good at taunts, though, because it’s Seungcheol that throws the first punch. A rookie error, really. But not unsalvageable.

There’s enough of the Dragons to take one Shadow each - Seokmin can’t be bothered to count how many. He just lunges at the first body he can find, using his speed to his advantage. The guy he was facing clearly doesn’t have good reflexes. He goes for it repeatedly, aiming at his face and chest and limbs. His vision is blurred to the point where all he can see is a flurry of skin and fabric, so he doesn’t know how badly he’s hurting the guy. He lets the strength of the sun imbue with him power as he jabs at his opponent over and over, but he doesn’t know if he’s making a difference. He can’t even see the guy’s face.

He does feel the man’s fist connect with his jaw, though. It knocks him off guard. All he can see is a tanned fist and rays of fierce sunlight. Not even looking where he’s aiming, he kicks back, landing on the guy’s stomach. When he hears his opponent run towards him again, he readies his hands for a shove.

He stops mid-movement when he looks properly and realises it’s Mingyu. He doesn’t know why. Perhaps some part of him expected Mingyu not to be involved in all this, like he was smarter and better than the muck of street gangs.

But perhaps not. Mingyu takes advantage of Seokmin’s weak moment. He shoves him onto the sidewalk, pinning him down by the shoulders. Seokmin can practically taste the gritty concrete. He tries to grab at Mingyu, but Mingyu must have worked out since high school, because he can barely move. He struggles in Mingyu’s vice-like grip, turning his head so he doesn’t have to feel his breath on his skin. It doesn’t work very well. Mingyu’s face has blocked out the sun from Seokmin’s vision, so he can see his golden skin and soft features a bit too well. Mingyu’s lip curls into a smirk, and an icy knot forms in Seokmin’s gut.

Distantly, though, he thinks this isn’t such a bad view. If he had to be pinned down by any member of the Shadows, he’d rather it be Mingyu.

But he couldn’t let him win for good. Somehow finding a way to get his legs free, he knees Mingyu’s chest. Hard. It forces Mingyu to roll away from him, allowing him to stand up and dust himself down. A surge of strength rushes through him as he looks down at Mingyu. He feels powerful, like he and Mingyu have achieved something, even though he can taste blood in his mouth. For once, Seokmin thinks he can maybe understand the glory of a rumble.

Some random Shadow holds a hand out for Mingyu to take, giving Seokmin a dirty look as he does so. Seokmin just raises his eyebrows in return.

Mingyu, though. Mingyu gives him a different look entirely. Like he wasn’t expecting Seokmin to be here, or to knock him down like he just did.

Seokmin ends up seeing Mingyu a lot after that.

***

People make habits out of the strangest things. The first time that Seokmin and Mingyu got together was odd enough, a clumsy moment in a bar where they were both alone until they weren't. I remember you from school, Mingyu had said. That's not the same me, Seokmin had replied. But it was even stranger that they agreed to keep doing this, despite the risk and the tension of it all. Or perhaps because of it.

But they made it their habit - sneaking up each other’s fire escapes and tussling until one of them gave in. It was like the rumble, really, but one that Seokmin could really enjoy. They weren’t working against each other here. They were working with each other; they were struggling and grappling with each other to make each other feel good. The glory could be theirs - shared, not split. In the privacy of a room, they could shut out the chill and the rain and the storm, and they could kindle their own hearth with the power movement of their bodies.

Tonight, Seokmin thinks that things would be different in another lifetime. He’d want to take things slower. He’d want to feel every inch of Mingyu’s smooth skin, to bite and nip and break him down. He’d want Mingyu to take him into his mouth, torturously gentle, while Seokmin pulled his hair desperately. He’d want to turn Mingyu round and open him up with his mouth, making Mingyu so sensitive he’d start to cry.

But they're not in another lifetime. They're in this one. So when Mingyu clumsily knocks down a vase on the windowsill, a single rose tumbling out as he clambers inside, Seokmin thinks that he can't play the long game with him. Even as Mingyu apologises, shakily setting the vase upright, he knows they have to wrestle. They have to push each other round until someone falls, like they always do, so that for once they can feel something that isn’t quite hate. Tonight, it's Seokmin's turn to win, warming Mingyu’s skin with his fingers and lips, feeling his own blood roar with heat and thrill and life as he takes Mingyu face-down.

(The rose on the windowsill was from Mingyu, funnily enough. He brought it on a whim one day. He’d said, I thought I might as well make this romantic. Seokmin had laughed and replied, It’s cute that you think this is a romance.)

The first thing that Mingyu says once they're done, when Seokmin has barely started cleaning him up, is,

“There's going to be a rumble soon.”

“What?” Seokmin replies, not quite getting it.

“A rumble. It will be a surprise - well, it will be a surprise to the Dragons.”

“When? Why?” Seokmin asks, his hands still.

“I don't know why. I guess they want to settle things. Your guys landed Chan in hospital last week, so that's probably it.”

“How do you know?”

“Wonwoo trusts me.”

“He shouldn't.”

Mingyu’s face changes at that. “I’m not telling everyone,” he responds indignantly. “I just don't want you there.”

“You can't tell me what to do.”

“I’m not trying to. I just don't want you caught up in all that. They're out for blood-”

“Aren't they always?”

“-and vengeance. I’m worried, Seokmin. I don't want you to risk it. I won't be going.”

“What's it to you if I get caught in the rumble? I can throw a few punches. Unless that's what you're scared of?”

Mingyu sighs. “Please, Seokmin,” he implores. “I don't know what they'd do to you, and I don't want to find out. Now are you going to do this or should I do it myself?”

Mingyu reaches out for the cloth, but Seokmin holds it out of his reach, looking him square in the eye. Mingyu relaxes, and lets Seokmin do it. A warmth floods through Seokmin's nerves as he thinks about what Mingyu just said. Mingyu doesn't care for him, because he can't, but this is close enough. As he cleans Mingyu up, Seokmin can only hope that his hands can say what his tongue is too heavy to.

Thank you for telling me. You didn't have to. You’d better stay out of it as well - I don't know what I’d do otherwise.

[...]

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Any, Mingyu/Any, Wonwoo/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: end of the world
Do Not Wants: None

“I know, you know, we know
We weren't meant for each other and it's fine
But if the world was ending
You'd come over, right?
You'd come over and you'd stay the night
Would you love me for the hell of it?
All our fears would be irrelevant”

― If the world was ending, JP Saxe ft. Julia Micheals

[FILL] in another world, would we have been in love?

[moonlitmelodiesfic]

Ship/Member: Gyuhan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: going for an end of the world picnic with someone you almost love but can’t but you’re still going because it’s close to love and you’d rather be living for something rather than nothing when your life ends. ambiguous relationships and feelings. light humour and fluff
Permission to remix: Yes!

***
i have to say i don't fully know where i'm going with this, but i hope somebody enjoys regardless
***

A day before the end of the world, Yoon Jeonghan shows up on the steps of the front door of Kim Mingyu’s house, car keys swinging from his index finger, a slanted dash of a smile on his lips.

“Ready?” he tosses over his shoulder, already turning away, heading towards the black Mercedes in the driveway. He doesn’t have to look back to know Mingyu is following. Gravel crunches underfoot, but otherwise the evening is rosy and soft, quiet save for the occasional trill of birds. A wicker basket swings from Mingyu’s hand, filled with ripe fruit and cheeses, crackers and meat slices. A charcuterie basket, so to speak. Jeonghan swings the driver’s door shut and clicks in his seatbelt, settling a hand on the wheel, throwing Mingyu a sideways smile.

“Let’s go.” And they’re off, backing carefully out of the driveway, speeding toward the coast, chasing the clouds to the sunset. Mingyu rolls down his window and hoots into the wind, and Jeonghan lets himself laugh, loud and ugly, free and unrestrained, choked off only when the wind gets in his throat and he wheezes. Mingyu cackles on his other side; Jeonghan slaps at his thigh blindly. Despite it all he’s careening towards a dangerous level of joy at a rapid pace. Ah, fuck it. It’s the end of the world. He can have this.

Mingyu takes his hand that he left in between them, gripping his fingers too tight, squishing flesh and bone together, like underneath all the joy and carelessness he’s still bearing the weight that comes with finality. That comes with the knowledge of finality. Jabs rise unbidden to the tip of Jeonghan’s tongue, but he bites them back this time and simply squeezes back, laughter dying a little in his throat.

“Hyung,” Mingyu says roughly, eyes trained on the horizon, like he’s anchoring himself. Jeonghan understands him at once.

“Mingyu-yah,” he says back, rolling up their windows, letting silence pool. “Hyung’s here.”

/

There’s nothing quite like going to spend one of your last days living with someone you don’t quite love. It’s heavy and light all at once, like being weightless in the air for a second, like being double-bounced on a trampoline. Except gravity always kicks in, and you land with shaky knees knocking together because you weren’t expecting the fall.

It’s company, though. That’s got to be worth something.

Jeonghan slows the car to a stop as they arrive at Clover Point, a teardrop-shaped piece of land that stretches into the sea. There’s a kite park in the middle, currently empty. Green grass rolls in all directions. Jeonghan leads them right to the tip of the land, as close as they can get to the water without being on the beach. Mingyu rolls out the blanket Jeonghan had stashed in his car a day before, and they both kick their shoes off before sitting, laying out a spread of food from the basket. Jeonghan eats a piece of cracker, a slice of salami, and a green grape all in one bite. Mingyu makes a face at him.

“Ew, hyung,” he judges, reaching for a strawberry, “you’re still sticking with your weird food combinations?” Jeonghan immediately reaches to make another.

“Yah, it’s the end of the world. If you don’t step out of your comfort zone now, when are you going to?” Jeonghan tells him sagely, holding up his cracker-salami-grape combination to hand-feed Mingyu. “Say ahh.”

Mingyu ducks away, grumbling, and Jeonghan chases after him, all the while shoving his self-acclaimed great combination toward Mingyu’s face. Eventually, he abandons the food and simply tackles Mingyu, reaching his cold fingers under Mingyu’s sweater to tickle him, cackling delightedly when Mingyu breaks in peals of laughter, kicking his legs feebly, gently, swatting at Jeonghan without much actual strength. They end up all over each other, Jeonghan piled on top of Mingyu like a melted marshmallow. Mingyu’s arms are around him, and Jeonghan is warm and so close to being in love it hurts. It’s even more painful, how gently Mingyu holds him, like Jeonghan is someone he adores, someone he would cradle to his breastbone and rock to sleep. And Jeonghan knows he shouldn’t be there, relaxed and soft in Mingyu’s arms, like they actually love each other. But it’s the end of the world. He can have this.

He can be selfish for once.

Eventually they untangle, and Jeonghan forces himself back and goes to sit on the blanket again, nibbling on a slice of cheddar cheese. Mingyu makes a prosciutto and parmesan cracker sandwich and tops off his bite with an olive. He makes a satisfied hum and closes his eyes. Evening light haloes him in rose gold and orange. He looks far more content than one should look on the eve of their doomsday. Jeonghan envies him for his ease.

“Oh!” Mingyu jerks upright suddenly, and Jeonghan raises his eyebrows quizzically at him, but Mingyu has taken off before he can ask. He’s back a second later, a bottle of Shiraz choked around the neck by his fingers. In his other hand he pinches the stems of two wine glasses. He sets all items wordlessly in front of Jeonghan and grins, excited and bouncy like a puppy. He deals with the cork in less than a minute with the corkscrew, and then he is pouring a generous amount in each glass, raising his and tilting it for a toast.

Jeonghan knocks his glass against Mingyu’s gently, listens to the clink, and wonders if that’s the sound that will resonate through the universe tomorrow when the world goes blind and the stars fall. Probably not. They’re not significant enough.

“Cheers to a meaningful life lived,” Mingyu toasts, and Jeonghan can’t help his snort. Mingyu shoots him a glare; he pretends to zip up his lips. But silently, he repeats Mingyu’s words. Cheers to a meaningful life lived, hopefully.

He fulfills it by leaning over when Mingyu’s done and kissing the taste of wine off his lips.

/

Later, when dusk bears down on the world and Jeonghan is sleepy and tipsy against Mingyu’s chest, Jeonghan asks the question that’s been trapped in his chest.

“In another world, if we had more time, do you think we could have been in love?”

Beneath him, Mingyu shifts, getting comfortable, wrapping an arm around Jeonghan’s waist.

“Maybe,” he says softly, lightly, like it’s a scenario easy enough to imagine. Jeonghan sighs against his shirt.

“Why, hyung?” When Jeonghan lifts his head Mingyu has a little furrow between his brows. Jeonghan presses his thumb there until it smoothes out.

“I just feel like it would be better to spend my last day with someone I truly loved.” He expects Mingyu to whine, to complain, to jab, to do anything other than say, “let’s pretend then.”

“What?”

“You heard me, let’s pretend.” Mingyu sounds so sure. “Here, I’ll start. Jeonghannie-hyung, I love you.” It’s dipped in saccharine sweetness. Jeonghan makes his dissatisfaction known. Mingyu only nudges him.

“Come on, hyung, say it back.” Jeonghan huffs, rolling his eyes, but gives in.

"I love you too, Mingyu-yah," he says, and feels better.

Mingyu hums, and pulls Jeonghan's head back down on his chest. They watch the stars like that together, and Jeonghan thinks, I could live another twelve hours like this.

Like this: sipping wine, nibbling crackers and cheese, watching the stars, and playing pretend at being in love.

dancing in a downpour

[hyojungss]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Mingyu
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: need every love story end in a revelation
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I'm hiding in the rain always smiling
I want an answer
That I don't think I can find

- bittersweet (ft. leehi), wonwoo x mingyu

I'll keep you warm
Dancing in a downpour
Breathe it in, take it off
And soak our skin

Maybe I'll find you
Maybe I won't
Baby, I'll try to
Even if I don't
You are what I never knew I needed
What I never knew I needed

- rainy zurich, the fray

[FILL] just as usual

[arcsecond]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Mingyu
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: non-idol AU
Permission to remix: Yes

sorry op i think i might've hijacked your prompt a little >__< but thank you for the lovely quotes and i hope you enjoy anyway

***

It’s raining when Wonwoo exits the restaurant.

The flashing lights of the OPEN sign swim at the edges in little pockets of rainwater, pooling in the places where the sidewalk is uneven. Wonwoo had worn his new leather loafers today, despite the weather forecast predicting the current situation exactly, and is now regretting it. He steps gingerly around the larger pools, making his way toward the covered seating by the bus stop.

He’s the only one to leave early this time, having tapped out after the second round of drinks even as his coworkers begged him to stay for a third. Still, it’s late. Wonwoo spares a glance at his watch. The buses have already stopped running and soon the cabs will, too. He sticks his head out from under the awning and watches for any last taxis to pass by.

As he checks his wallet for cash, someone comes to stand on the other side of the single row of plastic seats in a flurry of trembling clothing and shoes slapping against the thin layer of water covering the ground. Wonwoo thumbs through the bills before putting his wallet back into his pocket. The motion in his peripheral vision comes to a standstill. And then—

“Jeon Wonwoo?”

Wonwoo blinks. He knows this voice. He looks over and realizes he knows this face too.

“Kim Mingyu.”

Under the dim glow from the streetlamp across the road, Mingyu looks exactly the same and yet somehow completely different at the same time. As if the Kim Mingyu that Wonwoo used to know was a clay doll that had been pulled and pinched this way and that by a pair of metal tweezers to alter him just slightly, just enough for it to feel— strange.

But it’s easy to tell how well he’s aged. Unbelievably, he’s now even taller than he’d been back then. Grown into the full maturity of his features and yet somehow still as boyishly charming as ever.

“Long time no see,” says Mingyu, offering him a hesitant smile that spreads out wider when Wonwoo manages one back. “What are you doing here?”

“Went to dinner after work.”

“Ah, me too.” The evidence is clear enough, golden strips of light painting the image of cheeks flushed red with alcohol across Mingyu’s face. But Wonwoo would be remiss to think a little bit of soju could dull Mingyu’s acuity at all. Even now, his eyes glint with a sharp sort of brightness. “Where did you eat?”

When Wonwoo points it out, Mingyu laughs. “We were at the place right next door. We go there all the time,” he says. “What a coincidence.”

The restaurant Wonwoo was at earlier is a favorite of his coworkers. To think that they’d been so close, just a door away, without meeting, all this time.

“What a coincidence, indeed,” Wonwoo agrees. “You look well.”

“So do you, hyung,” says Mingyu. “Even caught in weather like this.”

But Wonwoo’s always thought this sort of dreary, wet weather has its own charm, even as his hair lies flat against his forehead and he can feel the skin of his feet pruning from his soaked-through socks. Sometimes the most inherently unromantic things can be romantic in their own right.

When, finally, they catch sight of a cab and Mingyu successfully flags it down, Wonwoo checks his watch again and knows this one will be the last one of the night. Mingyu opens the back door and asks if the driver takes card or mobile payment, hissing through his teeth when the answer is in the negative. “I don’t have cash,” he tells Wonwoo. “You take this one, and I’ll wait for the next one.”

Wonwoo takes the paper bills out of his wallet and folds them into neat thirds behind his back. “Do you still live in Seongsan-dong?”

“I— I do, yeah,” says Mingyu, after a beat. “You still remember?”

Wonwoo doesn’t answer that. “That’s far from here, isn’t it?”

The confusion on Mingyu’s face only lasts a second. “Oh no. Hyung—”

“It’ll be a while if you wait for the next one. You should go now.”

“We can share the cab,” Mingyu argues.

“I live in the opposite direction.”

The taxi driver is starting to look impatient. Wonwoo doesn’t blame him. Anyone would be tired at this time of night, and the wind is blowing rain into the car and onto the seats.

“I don’t have cash to pay the fare.”

Wonwoo pushes the money into Mingyu’s hand. “Now you do.”

Mingyu looks down at the money before looking up at Wonwoo again. Even in the low light, his face is openly distraught. “Hyung, I can’t accept this.”

“Please, Mingyu. It’s late.”

“How are you going to get home?”

“My place is close. I can walk.”

“In the rain?”

Wonwoo doesn’t waste his breath telling Mingyu not to worry because he will anyway. Instead he—hesitating only for a moment—takes Mingyu’s hands in his own and folds them around the money, holding firm even as he can feel Mingyu jolt under his touch. When Wonwoo lets go, taking a step back, Mingyu lets his hands fall in front of him and makes no move to give the money back.

“Let me send you home,” says Wonwoo. “One last time.”

---

It was raining when school ended on the day Wonwoo broke up with Mingyu.

Earlier that day, when Wonwoo went up to the rooftop to find Mingyu already waiting for him, it had been sunny, with a mild breeze. Uncharacteristic for February. The day before, the lobby of Wonwoo’s building had flooded, street gutters overflowing and soaking Wonwoo’s white sneakers in a suspiciously yellow tinge. But today the concrete was dry enough to sit on.

It was cold enough that Mingyu was still wearing a thick padded jacket over his school uniform. “Wonwoo-hyung!” he called, after the loud whine of hinges desperately in need of a good oiling announced Wonwoo’s presence. In front of where he sat criss-cross on the ground was a bowl of miyeok-guk on a metal tray, identical to the one Wonwoo set down when he sat next to him.

His cheeks were as pink as the tips of Wonwoo’s fingers. Wonwoo wanted to slip his hands into the pockets of Mingyu’s jacket. Mingyu wouldn’t mind. He never did.

In the end, Wonwoo tucked his hands into his own sleeves. He couldn’t tell if it was his hands making his arms feel cold or if it was the other way around.

“It’s so cold, hyung,” Mingyu whined, punctuated with exaggerated full-body shivers. “Why did you want to eat up here today, anyways?”

Because I thought it’d be nice, Wonwoo wanted to say. Because I wanted to eat with you today, and tomorrow, and every day after that.

“I’m graduating soon,” he said. “And you’ll be busy with exams next year.”

And Mingyu had always been smart. Cleverer than Wonwoo by far. So he understood what Wonwoo meant when Wonwoo himself was unable to say it outright.

Wonwoo watched Mingyu retract his hands and put them in his own pockets. “Okay, hyung.”

Between then and now the sky had opened up, the fluffy white clouds from earlier now dense and grey. The pitter-patter of rain slapping against the concrete echoed fast and frantic like a heartbeat. When Wonwoo stepped outside the building and under the awning, Mingyu was already outside, toeing hesitantly at the line between dry and wet ground. He looked over his shoulder at the sound of footsteps.

When he saw that it was Wonwoo, he turned away again.

“Mingyu,” said Wonwoo. Wishing he would look back even when Wonwoo didn’t deserve it. “Aren’t you going home?”

“I forgot my umbrella,” said Mingyu, curt. “I asked my mom to bring it for me.”

“I have mine.”

“Good for you.”

A little desperately, Wonwoo said, “You don’t have to call your mother. I’ll bring you back.”

Mingyu turned to him then. He’d never been very good at hiding his feelings—it was as easy as breathing for Wonwoo to read the hurt on his face. “You live in the opposite direction.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’ll get sick. You always get sick so easily.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You always say that.”

“Mingyu, please.”

Most of the time, Wonwoo tried his best not to be selfish. But just this once he wanted to be, just one more time.

When Wonwoo opened the umbrella over his head, Mingyu stepped underneath. The distance between their shoulders was small enough for Wonwoo to feel the heat radiating off of Mingyu’s body but still not close enough to feel its weight. One centimeter, give or take.

“Let me walk you home,” said Wonwoo. “One last time.”

fight each other or for each other

[slytherminie]

Ship/Member: Any, Seokmin/Mingyu, Jeonghan/Joshua
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

"When I dropped my sword
I threw it in the bushes and knocked on your door
And we live in peace
But if someone comes at us
This time, I'm ready"

― Taylor Swift, Long story short

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”

― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

[FILL] fight each other or for each other

[madeoutcreek]

Ship/Member: Seokmin/Mingyu
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: dreams, magical realism, swordfighting, relationship deterioration, implied sexual content
Permission to remix: Yes

sorry i literally don't have an explanation for this. also this is sorta inspired by sad day - fka twigs

***

At first, it comes in severed bursts.

“Mingyu-yah,” Seokmin crows from the other end of the monochrome room. A bedroom. A bathroom. A coffee shop and an empty street—all at once. His shrill voice echoes off of shifting walls like unrelenting thunder.

“Don’t go easy on me this time,” he demands. “Got it?”

Seokmin’s dressed in something dark and flowy—robes, maybe—and inside of the everchanging room, he drifts around like a ghost. He hovers idly for one more brief moment, and then takes a step. Readies himself.

Makes quick work of drawing his sword.

The realization comes a split-second too late—they’re about to spar. Mingyu’s unknowing fingers wrap tightly around a dull bamboo sword. His palms sting from the pressure, as if they had just finished a match.

As if they had done this before.

Landscapes continue to shuffle around and replace themselves. It’s unsettling concrete and dirty tile and liminal places and then—a bad memory. An insignificant moment in their time. A singularity. Slowly, walls close in on where Seokmin and Mingyu stand across from one another, and it feels like an oncoming end.

Mingyu wonders if Seokmin is even himself here. Maybe he isn’t alone. Maybe he feels this incomprehensible dread and doom, too. But the only thing he can trust now is the solid floor beneath his bare feet.

He mimics Seokmin’s sure stance without a word.

Seokmin wears a wicked grin as his knuckles go white around the hilt of his sword. He takes another step closer.

“You don’t have to look so scared, Mingyu-yah. Isn’t this what you wanted all along?”

And those words throw Mingyu for a loop. He doesn’t remember wanting anything. He doesn’t remember how he got here.

Mingyu inhales shakily. He thinks he might die in this dream. And suddenly—

Seokmin lets out an inaugural cry, charging forward on callused feet, and strikes.

-

It takes Mingyu three sleepless nights to notice it. Seokmin had been aiming perfectly for the heart.

-

Whenever Mingyu wakes up, Seokmin is still there.

Residual instinct inspires an ugly jolt of panic up his spine, but then, a sobering wave of consciousness washes over his body as he wrestles with the sheets. Seokmin is not the enemy, he realizes. Seokmin is harmless, snoring peacefully on the other side of the bed.

He instantly recoils, quickly drawing back his outstretched hand from where it had been hovering over Seokmin’s sweat-stained shoulder blades.

Mingyu gets up for a glass of water, swallowing down the foul-tasting guilt blooming inside. He can’t help but be disgusted with himself. He’d been holding so much resentment close to his chest, nursing it and letting it grow into something abominable. Something so terrible he’d almost—

His fingertips absently brush the kitchen table they made together years ago. He snaps out of it and goes back to the bedroom. Seokmin is still sleeping, and Mingyu can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy.

-

In the dream, Seokmin is always the first to unsheath his weapon.

-

They had spent the entirety of November not saying much to one another.

Initially, Mingyu had chalked it up to some sort of bad luck. And he wanted so badly to make his peace with it, to accept that they had reached the sour end of their relationship too early and it was just another tragedy and nobody’s fault.

He told himself he could deal with something painful if it was ultimately blameless.

Seokmin stopped coming home after work. Mingyu said nothing, but he also stopped waiting up like a lonely dog. He stopped fixing Seokmin’s hair for him in the morning, stopped cooking them both dinner if he was going to spend his nights alone anyway.

He thought he could manage this, the quiet compromise. The wait.

Part of him didn’t even want to talk it out. All he needed was for Seokmin to say the word, and they could finally end this.

-

They tried to solve it with sex months ago, back when the problem was more like a negligible little inkling. A niggling feeling in the hindbrain, something too vague to address without feeling stupid and crazy.

Seokmin independently decided some space could do them some good. Mingyu did the opposite, clinging to him any chance he got.

Clung to Seokmin at bars, in the shower. And back then, it had been on their sofa watching a drama.

It was Seokmin who got the idea to grind up against Mingyu’s backside from where he’d been spooning him.

“I want you,” he said quietly into Mingyu’s ear. It came out like he wanted to convince himself of it, to speak it into some false existence.

He possessively wrapped one strong leg around Mingyu’s hip and Mingyu tried to like it. Tried to ignore the dull ache that had been growing in his chest for a while now. The same one that made him wish they would just talk or try to make it better or stop using work as an excuse so much.

The same one that would flare up when he counted the years they’d been together and felt like they didn’t mean as much as they used to.

Seokmin must’ve heard Mingyu then, because he let up. Got up off the couch and went to bed.

Looks like they both missed their window of opportunity.

-

There’s shattered glass from windows and bottles on the floor, wreckage from within the demolished GS25. Muddy grout in between the tile panels makes some primal part of Mingyu’s brain itch, but he doesn’t know if it’s even worth noticing. The sword Seokmin brandishes at him is different now—bright and shiny and razor-sharp. A ready blade, primed and perfect for a fleshy, red heart.

The filthy details don’t matter, Mingyu decides. He’s about to die right here, trapped in a terrible, terrible dream.

-

“Are you trying to one-up me?”

Mingyu doesn’t even know if he can claim the words as his own, but he says them as soon as Seokmin tries to disarm him.

Nothing more than the brittle sound escaping his scratchy throat, but finally—a voice. His stake in this battle.

Seokmin ignores him, bringing down his sword once more but Mingyu’s thinking quicker now. He sidesteps it and juts the bamboo sword out, lunging at the knees.

Seokmin freezes as he’s struck and staggers back, desperate to regain footing.

“Can’t you answer me?” Mingyu finds himself asking again between heavy breaths. Fighting back is so hard when his morale has been so low for so long. But here he is, against the uneven odds, revitalized by the pain of seeing Seokmin lose. An angry rush of blood to the head.

Seokmin grimaces as he repositions himself for Mingyu’s next move. It’s clear he hadn’t been expecting any sort of reciprocation, here in this shadowy dream realm where he could get away with anything. Mingyu’s chest swells with a sick sense of excitement and pride when it hits him—he can still hurt Seokmin, too.

Seokmin’s baring his teeth, angry decisiveness flashing across his face as he raises his sword high above his head before driving it towards Mingyu’s bare neck and holding it there.

In its jagged path, the blade manages to nick Mingyu’s lip.

Mingyu’s arms instantly go slack. He drops his sword and watches Seokmin’s black eyes become frantic and wild.

“Do it,” he urges.

Seokmin stares.

Mingyu presses on, making himself sound sickeningly sweet. “Aren’t you going to kill me, jagi?”

Seokmin’s eyes don’t break away from his.

“I will.”

Blood starts to leak from his cut lip. Mingyu’s tongue flicks out to taste it. The salt makes him grin.

Then something imperceptible snaps inside of Seokmin. He digs the side of his blade deeper into jugular flesh, and Mingyu winces as the pain registers.

“Don’t fucking tease me. Nobody’s laughing, okay? You said you were tired of the quiet, right? You told me you hate what we’ve become. I hate it too. We can end it as long as you let me deal with you.”

Seokmin’s face crumples up, tears springing from his cold eyes.

Taken aback, Mingyu blinks stupidly. “My heart,” he murmurs.

“What?”

“My heart,” he echoes. It’s happening again. The walls are closing in, and soon, all of this will come to some uncomfortably honest end.

Mingyu will not waste his chance this time.

“You were supposed to go for my heart.”

-

Seokmin comes home early that night.

He kicks off his dress shoes, flops down on the bed, and mimes suffocation via throw pillow in one smooth motion. Mingyu watches it all out of the corner of his eye, but he’s meant to be focusing on his book—he’s almost reached the good part.

Seokmin cranes his neck and looks at Mingyu for the first time in forever.

“I keep having these dreams,” he announces, sounding as mystified as ever. He’s lost. Nervous to even bring it up with Mingyu, too.

Somehow, Seokmin still doesn’t know it after all this time—he’ll never have to fight for Mingyu’s undivided attention.

“Really,” Mingyu replies as calmly as he can manage.

Seokmin’s dotted cheek meets the pillow again. “Yeah,” he whispers muffledly, brows furrowing with something familiar. Something like a delayed realization.

Mingyu takes a deep breath, and this time, there is no misstep to be made, no scare or hurt. Just relief.

He closes his book and puts it on the nightstand.

“Would you like to tell me about them?”

:)

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Any.
Major Tags: Character Death
Additional Tags: Grieving.
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

"Grief is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go." —Jamie Anderson.

[FILL] love, persevering

[deadwine]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo
Major Tags: Parent Death(s), Illness
Additional Tags: Non-idol/Modern AU, Grieving, Second Person POV
Permission to remix: Please ask

***

The last time you speak to your father is the first time you scream at him.

Courtesy, deference, innate understanding and the shaking, trembling, anxious fucking pounding of your chest broken away from just this once, to cradle the phone closer to your roaring lungs.

You’ve never screamed at your father before. He has never called you too late to tell you he’s dying before.

Unbidden you’re struck by the memory of a touch: your mother brushing ointment on the bruises on your knees as you sit cross-legged on the cold kitchen floor; your clumsy hands badly peeling a cucumber while she tosses chopped pieces into a large bowl.

Your dad loves this with a bowl of naengmyeon in the summers— what do you think, Wonwoo-yah? Like it?

No matter how hard you try, you can’t recall what it tasted like.





Quiet kids grow up to be quiet men. You know this, and you know that your family knows this, so you take it for granted. What is a phone call on which no one speaks but a building cavity of silences, a hollowness of your own making.

University flies by in a flash and train fares make the annual budget you draw up less and less.





Your aunt tells you you’re lucky when you make it back home at last, climbing out of the old town hospital elevator just in time to watch your mother die.

At least you got to see her one last time, say goodbye.

Nobody teaches you the art of bidding farewell to someone you love, not when they leave and especially not when they die.

Besides, is there a difference, you wish to ask, between seeing off the living who won’t speak and the dead who can’t.





There is, you learn the hard way.

Your train is on time and you’ll be home in three hours but you already know, in the way that dogs know of oncoming earthquakes, that your uncle lied to you on the phone, that your father is already dead.

There are no lies, no continued pretence on arrival. Just a corpse and its silence.





At your mother’s funeral, your father pats your shoulder and pours you the drink, twisting away to down his own before he walks off to greet new guests.

At your father’s, you pat your uncle’s shoulder and watch his son pour him a drink. Guests come, guests go. You pour and you pour, splashing liquid onto glasses. This is not a silence you are responsible for.

Or are you?





You almost miss the train back, locking up a house housing the remains of all your past lives, every slow step away from the front door heavier than the last. Your travelling bag is the same as it was when you arrived and you wonder what you could be carrying that is turning your footsteps to lead.





Time passes as it always has, the seasons change and the sun rises and falls. You are. You are.





The guksu place is on the street next to his apartment building is cheap—convenient.

The man at the counter recognises him now, putting down a bottle of soju and a glass before you can ask for it.

The naengmyeon is quickly placed before you, pre-made in the mornings. He offers to pickle you a fresh cucumber, to take off the heat.

You watch him peel the green skin and put the length of the cucumber down on the counter before he makes fast work of chopping it, the art of practised hands that do not need to wait for conscious thought to begin doing the needful.

It unravels slowly, the string holding your chest hostage in a bind. Fingers brushing through the fringes on your forehead, soft kisses on your nose, tinkling laughter at the dinner table, delighted ribbing in the living room, ambient, sunny music crackling from the beat-up speakers of an ancient sedan.

It was the silence, you realise. You have been lugging it all along, all this long and it’s a wonder you have been walking steady, instead of watching your feet sink into concrete as if wading quicksand. So achingly, terribly dense is the load now unfurling.

The man finishes prepping the cucumber and washes his hands before seasoning it in a bowl. He tosses in some oil, some gochujang, some sesame seeds. His hands are large and his knuckles coarse and torn but the movement of his fingers through the mixture is so, so gentle.

Everything pours out of you now like a monsoon thunderstorm.

I miss you. I’m sorry.

I love you. I’m sorry.

Nobody teaches you the art of saying goodbye to the dead.

There are some things about grief only you can teach yourself.

There are some things about grief you will find teaching yourself over and over again.

You’ll learn that these are just the kind of silences time cannot undo.

out of the woods

[klav]

Ship/Member: Any/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: optional: supernatural elements, the relationship between violence and tenderness
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Many places have a “forest that shouldn’t be entered.” Even people who are used to working in the mountains feel there is something there. They are suddenly overcome with fear and it becomes the custom to avoid certain places. These places exist. I don’t know what is there, but I think they are real. I’m not a believer in the occult, but the world is more than we can fathom with our five senses. This world doesn’t exist just for humans.
-Hayao Miyazaki

&

The only teeth I have are human teeth, I remind him gently / before opening his throat.
-Franny Choi

[FILL] my, what beautiful teeth you have

[sunwalkr]

Ship/Member: vernon/minghao
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: weird strange magical realism, obsession with teeth, strange supernatural elements, paranormal happenings and investigations, hansol vernon chwe is Not Human in this one
Permission to remix: yes
wc: 606
going for [five of a kind] (AUs)

this was very fun to keep purposefully vague so really it is up to u to decide what vernon is in this one

***

There exists something inside Hansol that should not be touched. Minghao caught a glimpse of it once. It was all teeth, wide and gaping.

They both stood in the shadows. One street lamp flickered desperately in the dead of night, as if it could sense what was hanging in the air. Evil was always more potent in the dark.

Hansol had wiped his mouth with a sleeve and it came away red. “Sorry,” he said, sheepish, in that way of his, eyes wide and full of expression. But Minghao could not tell what he was sorry for — being seen or being caught. There was a difference, however small. Being seen meant to be exposed, to leave your body out in the open so that someone could know every inch of you and still make their way forward. Being caught meant to be caged — you did something you shouldn’t have. You are not what you say you are.

Minghao thinks it the latter.

Hansol Vernon Chwe is not human.
Not completely, at least.

///

“Hansol-ah has always been a little different,” Mingyu says placatingly when Minghao tries to bring it up. “Remember when he walked into the door because he was so focused on whatever he was holding?”

“No,” Minghao is impatient. Mingyu isn’t listening. Not in the way that matters. “I know what I saw.”

“What,” Mingyu frowns, tilting his head sideways. “Aren’t people supposed to have teeth?”

Minghao swallows his frustrations down and thinks: No, not like this.

///

Minghao tests the waters.

He follows Hansol around, desperate to catch a glimpse of the thing inside. There is a sense of foreboding that tickles the back of Minghao’s throat, but a sense of thrill too, electric in its forbiddenness. A grotesque fascination with the unknown, this sudden desire to keep unraveling the chain to see how far it will go. Pull back skin and find a monster.

He watches as Hansol leaves the hagwon, the hood of his sweater hiked up around his ears. Hansol might be weird but he does all of the things regular students do. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But Minghao is patient. When the sun has fled the sky, Hansol begins his trek home. He skirts in and out of alleyways, kicking at random rocks and pebbles, humming peculiar tunes.

A cat meows twice. First out of curiosity. Then, in obvious distress. Horror flickers briefly, in Minghao’s mind. He should not be here. He should have left Hansol alone. Some things do not have to be witnessed to know their terror.

One moment Hansol is there and the next he is not. He is replaced by some thing, some monstrous creature that swallows and consumes and does not look back.

It happens too fast for Minghao to be sure. It happens fast enough that Minghao can be sure. There is a sickening crunching noise that will haunt his dreams for the next nights to come.

And then Hansol returns, whistling, jamming his hands back into his pockets. As if nothing unholy had happened in the first place.

The street remains eerily silent after that.

///

“What’re you thinking about?” Hansol says to the air one day. He looks exactly at the spot where Minghao is hiding. Unblinking. Unnerving. Like he knew this entire time. It sends a jolt down Minghao’s spine. He shuffles out, ears turning red with the shame at being caught.

“Your teeth,” Minghao blurts out without thinking.

Hansol smiles before opening his mouth. “Which ones?”

Minghao sees canines all the way down.

See, he thinks bleakly. I was right.

He closes his eyes and waits for Hansol’s touch.

it's a banana duct-taped to a wall

[sunsparrow]

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: humor
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

“A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

[FILL] 画蛇添足

[arcsecond]

Ship/Member: Junhui/Minghao
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: vaguely canonverse, projecting my personal pain onto wen junhui
Permission to remix: Yes

sorry op for hijacking your prompt part 2... not a single part of this fill relates to any other part of it

***

Junhui gets canker sores in his mouth often. Wo you shang huo le, he’ll whine to Minghao, opening his mouth up wide and jabbing at the puffy, inflamed insides of his oral cavity no matter how many times Minghao makes it clear it’s not a very pleasant sight to see. Little white pus-filled circles ringed around the edge in a vicious scarlet. Just looking at them makes the skin on the inside of Minghao’s cheeks sting a little.

Again? Minghao will ask, not even pretending to be surprised. Any old lady off the street back home could tell Junhui that it was because he eats too much spicy food, especially in Seoul’s more temperate climate. But Junhui never listens. It’s because my body constitution type is bad, is his perpetual excuse, to which Minghao can’t help but fire back with then stop eating things that don’t match with your body constitution!

Did he apply ointment to the sores? He did, but then he licked it off. Did he try eating more cold foods? He would, but he’s suddenly picked up an irrational fear of cucumbers. Did he at least try drinking chrysanthemum tea? He will if Minghao makes it for him.

This is how Minghao finds himself boiling tiny dried flowers in a strainer at two in the morning every other week, watching the petals slowly unfurl.

Last week, in the waiting room half an hour before their last music show performance before their promotions ended, Junhui had been playing a game on his phone with his legs stretched out to the other end of the couch and his head pillowed on one of Minghao’s thighs. Minghao had been resisting the urge to comb an aimless hand through Junhui’s already-styled hair and valiantly trudging through the Korean translation of a novel originally written in Chinese, pretending that he didn’t desperately want to switch to the original version instead.

Just as he was about to set the book down and pull up Taobao, Junhui let out a loud cry of despair. LEVEL FAILED was all Minghao could see on the screen before Junhui dropped it onto his stomach with a sigh. Then, without missing a beat, he looked up at Minghao and asked, “Why do you never bring me to museums with you?”

“Huh?”

“You always ask Wonwoo, or Hansol, or Mingyu to go with you,” Junhui pointed out. “But never me.”

Minghao hadn’t known what to say, at first, to what was an objectively correct observation. He finally settled on, “You wouldn’t like it.”

“You don’t know that,” said Junhui. “I could love it.”

But Minghao already knew he wouldn't. He’d do a very good job of pretending to, for Minghao’s sake, but he wouldn’t really enjoy it for himself.

Still, Minghao said, “Okay. I’ll ask you next time, then.”

---

“If you complain too much I’ll send you home early,” Minghao threatens. Jokingly.

“Promise I won’t,” says Junhui, holding his pinky out. Minghao completes the connection. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

This time it’s some contemporary abstract art museum he’d found on Instagram. He’d shown Mingyu the profile and Mingyu had laughed, eyes shooting open wide as he covered his mouth with his hand. “You’re taking Jun-hyung there?” he’d asked. “That’s like throwing him straight into hard mode.”

“Art is art,” Minghao had grumbled. He’d wanted to visit, and Junhui had wanted to come with him. So they’d both get what they wanted.

True to his word, Junhui doesn’t complain at all. He follows Minghao around obediently and takes a billion pictures on his phone and pulls Minghao into blurry selfies and reads all of the borderline incomprehensible descriptions on the wall and asks engaging questions like he really cares about what Minghao thinks about all of this art, all the way up until they’re about to exit the last exhibit. It’s a different experience from going with Wonwoo, who brings two lenses for his DSLR and takes discerning pictures with the quiet click of the shutter going off in the background, or Hansol, who bounces off Minghao’s comments with observations of his own, or Mingyu, who takes it all in quietly and then argues with Minghao about it on the way home, but Minghao finds he enjoys it all the same.

“What’s this one supposed to be?” asks Junhui, pointing at the last piece on the last wall.

Minghao loves art. He believes in the value of every piece, no matter how simple or silly it may seem. He always tries to scope out the artist’s meaning and intention, careful eyes picking out each careful detail, and thinks of his own personal connection to it.

But sometimes he has to admit that he truly doesn’t know.

“No clue,” he says, and laughs.

An hour later finds them at a restaurant they stumble across on the way back from the museum. After the hotpot goes cold enough for the oils to float to the top of the broth and Junhui wins the obligatory fight over the bill by slapping his card down on the plastic tray first and quickly ushering the waiter away before Minghao can even argue, Minghao slumps down into his side of the booth and rubs his belly, feeling the heat from the soup spread through his body. Junhui had wanted their spiciest mala broth, as usual. He’ll be complaining to Minghao about another canker sore soon.

“I like you a lot,” Minghao tells him. Junhui’s still drinking the broth like it’s water. “You know that, right?”

Junhui sets his bowl down to blink at him. “Are you saying this because I treated you?”

“Because you treated me? I was supposed to treat you!”

Junhui laughs. “I like having you in my debt, Xiao Hao.”

Minghao makes a face. “So I can make you more tea?”

Junhui laughs again. He rests his elbows on the table and cups his face in his hands, uncaring of the thin film of oil covering his palms. “Because I like you a lot too.”

“You didn’t have to come today,” Minghao says, feeling warm. He thinks about the color of sunlight seeping into freshly boiled water and dried, wrinkly petals turning sleek and soft once again.

“But did you like that I did?” asks Junhui.

The answer, surprisingly—or unsurprisingly—is yes. Minghao nods and receives a lazy, satisfied smile from Junhui in return. Mouth curled up at the edges like a cat out in the sun.

“Then I’m glad,” says Junhui. “I liked it a lot. It’s always fun hanging out with you, Xiao Hao.” He pauses. “Let’s go to a different place next time, though.”

Minghao barks out a surprised laugh and agrees. Next time, they’ll go somewhere else.

[klav]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: idolverse, post-disbandment?
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Like any unloved thing
I don’t know if I’m real
When I’m not being touched
-Natalie Wee, from Our bodies and Other fine machines

&

even our intimacies are rigged with terror
-Adrienne Rich

&

I want a fist around my throat
I wanna cry so hard I choke
I want everything I ask for
-Halsey, You asked for this

[FILL] Our Temporary Flame

[(Anonymous)]

Ship/Member: Jeonghan/Mingyu
Major Tags: idolverse, post-disbandment idol Jeonghan, explicit sexual content
Additional Tags: first person POV, Jeonghan POV, 2010s maybe
Permission to remix: Yes

***

One January, I flew to Bangkok for a week to meet someone I had first met online.

I brought with me my best friend-cum-former-manager and zero fear, though Seokmin keeps saying, We can just go to the hotel and do one of those staycations you keep saying you wanted to try before! Should we just do that instead? Aren’t you scared? Isn’t this scary?

I said no. I wasn’t scared and no way was I gonna waste the week off I finally got after everything went to shit. And anyway, Mingyu and I had emailed back and forth for over a year, Skyping, chatting until dawn on both our ends, and he had already spoken to my mother. In November, he emailed me to say he was flying to Bangkok to finally earn a license in scuba diving. I was invited. “Bangkok,” he wrote, “feels like a much nicer place to meet someone like you.”

Someone like me. He knew what I was like, who I was on-screen. I mean, eventually. See, he didn’t at first; which was exciting. And a little hilarious? He didn’t care about those things, he said the first few times we talked and I kidded him that he was only pretending not to know the Yoon Jeonghan to appear cool or subtle. But turns out he absolutely had no idea. I found that both dumb and appealing. That’s what Mingyu was. Dumb and appealing. I bought plane tickets that same afternoon he asked, and now here I was, standing in front of him, a semi-brand new person. I remember looking at his ankles, between his cuffed pants and his Sperrys, and marveling at how golden they were.

We kissed each other that night, up on the roof of his friend’s apartment, looking over the pulse and gleam of the foreign city. I straddled him on the grainy gravel, felt his hardness between my thighs, murmured, “At last.” We passed a flat bottle of Hong Thong whiskey back and forth until we emptied it and our mouths hurt from all the biting and sucking and then we fucked that night too. Fucked like dogs in heat in his friend’s bed. Seokmin slept on futons on the floor, behind the kindness of a curtain. Mingyu pushed into me and the pain arced through my spine. I was blinded. He put his hand over my mouth so I could whimper. We fell upon each other, hungrier than we had ever felt before.

Sex over the next few days would reveal he was almost too big for me, and that he took pride in seeing my blood on his cock. “Who touches you there,” he would murmur in a different voice as he drove into me, and I would say, tears filling my eyes, “Only you.” It wasn’t a lie. I had never been taken like this for all the years I had been batting my eyelashes at the perpetually recording lenses of professional (and fans’) cameras. Nobody dared to fuck me to tears.

It felt new like this. It felt laughably new.

A memory of me kneeling in front of him in a sunlit room above Khao San Road — we ducked into it between lunch and dinner with his friends — trying to take all of him into my mouth and throat. “I want you to watch me suck you off,” I said, with too much flourish and eagerness for I had always wanted to say those words sometime to someone, and he grinned looking down on me, pleased, as he fumbled for his glasses he liked to stylishly hang over the v-neck of his printed, tacky shirts.

We were both stupidly myopic, but his was of vision and mine was of emotion. I knew this would end soon. I would fly back to my rotten and emptied out life soon; and he would take to the ocean. I drank as deep of him as I could.

It was the fourth day into our temporary flame, the second to the last, and we had found a room in a nondescript bed & breakfast in a soi off of Sukhumvit. Mingyu browsed the books and magazines in the lobby while the concierge told me a windowless room would be cheaper than one with windows.

We reveled in the gaudiness of our room: the bed big and gold and frilly, the curtains on the wall that, when pulled back, revealed a plaster wall, the bathroom door that swung open only so far. Windowless, we had no sense of time.

We drank Thai rum with American Coca-Cola, and already we were talking about love. About ambition and the choices we had made. Why the sea? What lies there? Exactly. What’s next for someone like you? Someone like me. Someone special like you.

Fully naked, I knelt on the bed — wedding-cake sheets, brocade pillows — and, just as fully naked, he knelt in front of me, leaned forward, and pushed my knees apart. He wrapped his arms, big and corded with veins, around my hips and pushed his face between my legs, and instead of opening his mouth to lap at my cock, he breathed in hungrily, desperately.

It was the most erotic act anyone had ever done to me.

I shook and I shivered, my hand in his hair, my hand on his nape, his face pressed at the base of my cock, tasting and breathing, and I said, choked with tears because for all the places in my body he had touched me, pinned me, choked me, for these transient days I had felt newly human and real, beyond it was fear. Already, I was looking at the end: “Memorize me.”

And he looked up at me, all terror and awe in his beautiful, brown eyes, and he whispered, “I’m trying.”

We could burn this bright for only so long.

religious guilt as subtext

[deadwine]

Ship/Member: Wonwoo/Junhui, Junhui/Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: violence and tenderness/violence as tenderness, vampires/immortality/supernatural elements (optional)
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

How come it's so much еasier
With anything less than human
Letting yoursеlf be tender?
-Julien Baker, Favor