17hols | 2022 Round 1: Quotes

2022 Round 1: Quotes

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!
Ship/Member: Any Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: N/A Do Not Wants: None Prompt: <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.

Ship/Member: Any Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: N/A Permission to remix: 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)

Ship/Member: Any Major Tags: N/A Additional Tags: N/A Permission to remix: 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

❮ ROUND 1: QUOTES ❯

ROUND 2: ALTERNATE UNIVERSES

ROUND 3: LAST WORDS

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

HIIIIII WHAT A WONDERFUL PRESENT TO COME BACK TO… you are so good (smooches your head & gives you my heart) — you did a wonderful job for writing seokhao your first time.. i think their innocence really shone through and the true-ness of their feelings??? like it’s really so them T___T gosh like seokmin confiding his fears (n being so earnestly anxious about how minghao will receive them) & minghao just being like, hey dude, i see you and i feel you and you are so incredibly loved!!!! that’s the crux of seokhao to me!!!! strong and foundational reassurance and devotion!!!

+ Loneliness is something Seokmin doesn’t like to think about, something he tries to push away as he reaches out a hand to be close to the friends he’s made after so, so many years of being alone. MMNGH SO RELATABLE AND WHAT A WONDERFUL (HURTFUL) START…
+ He’s supposed to be the one that brings out the happiness through their friend group, one that makes everyone smile. The one that’s okay with shouldering his own problems and problems that he’s handed to when they need a moment away. ugh i love it when fics touch on the burden of being the happy one + its a v relatable burden for me too personally ;__; so thank u
+ GOSH THE ENTIRE SCENE NEAR THE END. saying i love you without saying i love you but knowing they said i love you

thank you a thousand times over <33

Ship/Member: Any, Seungkwan/Any
Major Tags: hunger games AU
Additional Tags: the calm before the storm, finding comfort in each other while you still can
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

By late afternoon I lie with my head in Peeta's lap making a crown of flowers while he fiddles with my hair claiming he is practicing knots. After a while his hands go still.

"What?" I ask.

"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," he says.

Usually this sort of comment, the kind that hints his undying love for me, makes me feel guilty and awful. But I'm so relaxed and beyond worrying about a future I'll never have, I just let the word slip out.

"Okay," I say.

I can hear the smile in his voice. "Then you'll allow it?"

"I'll allow it."

- Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

ahhhhhh my god this is stunning. the recent andrew garfield renaissance moved me to rewatch, then re-read never let me go which was why it was on the brain and this is so much more gutwrenching? beautiful? than i could've ever imagined. there is a sadness in sacrifice in making your body public domain, and the little nods to what it means to be autonomous in this is gorgeous. thank you for filling!

hate that i was there at the conception of this. love to see it though.

Ship/Member: Soonyoung/Chan
Major Tags: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse
Additional Tags: use your close reading goggles for more fun and games, don't look too closely though because I wrote this in a few hours and didn't really edit it
Permission to remix: Yes

***

The storms were closing in fast. Chan knew it; Soonyoung knew it.

Everybody knew it. It had been all over the news, before the news crumbled just like the mountains, and after that the debris of it lingered on everyone’s tongues—little particles of information, my brother is still in Shanghai, did you hear, they say that, I applied for a permit to—until it dissolved.

There wasn’t much to discuss after that. Every day the same news, every day the same poems in the same books on the shelf, until there was no paper anymore and Soonyoung carefully ripped the blank page at the front of a book long-borrowed and wrote down a careful message to Wonwoo. He folded it up into an envelope. Hope stuck the stamp down onto the pulpy sheet: the last prayer. It’s blank, Soonyoung justified. Chan watched him the whole time. The book is different now, he said, but it’s okay.

Soonyoung pretended, the next morning, that he hadn’t heard Chan crying next to him. Chan pretended he hadn’t noticed the damp spot on Soonyoung’s pillow.

They rationed stamps after that, then they started neighborhood drives to turn old books into new paper. An opportunity to see how paper is made, Chan told his kids. Ask your parents if they have any spare books lying around.

He tore the apartment up the day before the field trip, gathered every bit of paper he could find: an old grocery list in the couch cushions, the textbooks from college, the poetry books, paper towels, a few cardboard boxes, an old calendar, some newspapers with articles about dead politicians.

Wonwoo’s reply. Letters, too, from Seungcheol, from Minghao, the ripped one from Junhui, the last time anyone had heard from him in months.

Soonyoung found him staring at the little pile of paper, thinking about how flammable it was, how easily it could turn to mush in the rains, when he came home.

I’m the teacher, Chan explained; I can’t go empty-handed. I can’t tell them they can’t do something that I’m allowed to do. But I don’t want to get rid of any of these things.

Soonyoung smoothed his hand over Chan’s forehead, pushed his bangs back, stroked him over and over. What are you allowed to do? in his most soothing voice, so familiar between them.

Have a container for my thoughts, Chan told him, something to hold the words for me.

Soonyoung helped him pick out his goods. They didn’t talk about the news, or the fires, or the vacancy signs, or the fact that Soonyoung was home earlier than usual. They didn’t talk at all.

Soonyoung came with him that day. The children walked between them, each carrying a sacrifice: a book, a note, a love letter, a permission slip. Chan introduced him to the children. Soonyoung knew which was his favorite, which he’d had difficulties with, whose parents frustrated him. The last little girl clutched a thick book with two hands. The title said The Vampire Lord, and Other Stories. She told Soonyoung she couldn’t read it yet.

The woman running the affair was short, old. She stood with her batteries and her blender and her sieve in front of the half-bare convenience store. On the table before her was a small stack of photographs.

We are going to make paper, she told the crowd—her neighbors, their neighbors, the children, all the children. We are going to make paper, and each household will receive a monthly ration, until we run out. Thank you for your generous donations for the good of the community.

Soonyoung clutched his paper tightly. I cannot let my stories fester in my head, someone next to him whispered. I have begun to write on the walls.

They—Chan and Soonyoung, Soonyoung and Chan—let that image turn in their minds. It would not be so bad, they thought, to turn the little thoughts they used to slip to each other into monuments. When the second waves hit, people started to divide things into categories of ephemera: their houses were only as secure as anything inside them. The parts of their lives were greater, then, than their sum.

Please place your paper in this box, the woman said. We are going to do this efficiently. Here will be the objects, here the station where the paper is separated from the rest. Here the garbage, here the blender. Here the line of neighbors.

And shy, shy Soonyoung. And the line of unknown vampires, waiting to be read. And the two-handed grip, and the stories on the walls, and the last stamp in the drawer, waiting and waiting and waiting for Junhui.

“Excuse me,” Soonyoung said. He gave Chan a reassuring smile, clutched at his hand briefly when he reached out. He made his way to the front. Bowed to the woman, bowed to the crowd. “May I say something?”

Chan was quiet as he watched him. The neighbors were quiet.

“I am proud to give part of my life for my community,” Soonyoung continued. “What I have in my hand is not precious to me. Nevertheless, every piece of paper contains something greater than itself: a memory, or a potential. There is a girl here with a book who cannot read it yet. Her sacrifice is her future, all the future joy she will ever extract from its words. We have photographs and grocery lists written in long-gone hands. Is it not right to thank them?” He felt on trial there, spinning his words out of his heart to be judged before the people, but he forged on despite his embarrassment. It felt strange to perform with only his honest words. He used to dance. He used to dance with Chan—a lifetime ago, almost.

“You all are busy,” he said, “and there is much work to do. We are all hungry, and there is not enough food. But let us only take one day of our lives, and see each person here. Reveal the things we have chosen to forget. Then our paper will not be a rationed thing; it will be another thing given, another thing shared between us yet.”

He raised his hand high so those who were able could read it: We’re sorry; your services are no longer needed. We wish you the best of luck in the future.

“Termination notice,” he said, “thank you for allowing me to contribute to the paper drive. I never want to see you or your kin again.”

Someone laughed.

More people laughed. The children laughed. Someone cheered, and soon enough Soonyoung had a real, proper reaction—and, in the middle, a cackle, full-breath and sustained for the moral support of the group. Soonyoung made eye contact with him across the little gap between them. Chan’s eyes, his face, the lips and teeth and cheeks and tongue and ears, everything Soonyoung had thought so often about—We can make new words, Soonyoung thought.

He put his notice in the box, then stood behind it, assuming the role of helper without thinking about it.

The photographs went next: the woman’s son, her grandchildren, her grandparents. Thanked and blessed, wept over, kissed. The whole group memorized their faces, shared the fear with their arms around each other’s shoulders. After the photographs came a grocery list, then a stack of comic books, then quite a lot of old newspapers. Minute by minute, the line ate away at the anchoring papers of people’s lives, leaving only the memories behind like a discarded ice cream wrapper. Would it be enough that such things had once existed? It would have to be.

I’m going to Jeju tomorrow, someone said, and if this letter from my girlfriend all those years ago only matters to me, what use is it now versus when I am dead?

No one said history. The little girl with the vampire book went next. She cried as she thanked Chan for helping her read. Chan cried too.

They took the cover off the book, carefully scraped off the glue, and cut the paper down to size. Soonyoung caught a few words as he flipped the pages—kiss, betrayal, blood, destruction, time, sex, forever. He asked the girl if she wanted the cover, now that the pages were gone, to remember this day by.

She took it from him, and then helped him add the water to the paper in the blender.

The children had brought snacks. At some point, the owners of the convenience store must have set up a table for food, and the neighbors began going home and returning with items: granola bars, jars of kimchi, rice, a portable burner. Soonyoung pressed blend, and when he took his finger off the button and the noise left his ears, he heard music behind him.

It was coming from the convenience store. He could almost recognize it, he thought.

“Hyung,” said someone next to him.

Chan.

Soonyoung took in his tired eyes, his sweaty bangs and the stressed set of his shoulders under the shirt that was beginning to cling to his skin.

“Chan,” he said. Chan Chan Chan Chan.

Chan’s smile began at the corner of his mouth and spread out, out, out, until it reached his eyes, until it reached Soonyoung too. He tilted his head. “It’s Apink,” he said quietly.

The last group whose music Chan had taught choreo for, before the studio closed. Soonyoung remembered then: the song had played on repeat while Chan figured out the moves he wanted to change in order to teach it to his ten-year-olds.

Chan curled his fingers around Soonyoung’s idle ones where they rested on the table, opening his hand. Soonyoung looked down as Chan placed a stack of paper into his hand: an entire book, unbroken except for the blank page at the front.

“Neither of us has opened this book in a long time,” Chan said. He was looking at Soonyoung, only Soonyoung. “You were running the blender, so you didn’t hear, but I talked about Jeonghan hyung. Remember when he gave me this?”

Before, Soonyoung thought, but it wasn’t quite true—it had been before the mountains, but after the waves, even after the first storms. They had still visited each other. They had still eaten lunch together. Still hugged each other and told jokes and argued.

“He managed to call me at work this morning,” Chan said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you until now, but—he’s coming here. Next week, if he can make it.” The rattle of his breath echoed in Soonyoung’s own chest as he took a deep breath. “I think the walls thing is a good idea,” he said, eyes trained on Soonyoung, so wide and desperate. Soonyoung wondered when he had gotten so desperate. If he was like that all the time now, and Soonyoung just wasn’t watching closely enough. If he, too, seemed that starving when he looked at Chan.

“The walls?” he echoed, though he knew what Chan was referencing: the man who had made that comment had given three stacks of newspapers from fifteen years prior, one paper for every day he delivered a baby at the hospital, a little ritual of success. He had looked at the children with a mournful gaze and wondered which of them, if any, he had held in their first moments. Nobody had asked what happened to the others. There was almost no way of knowing.

He reached for Soonyoung’s other hand. Chan was tapping his foot to the beat of the song, Soonyoung realized, and so was he. Chan intertwined his fingers with his and started to sway gently. “Whoever wrote those poems didn’t know us,” he said. “The things we’ll say about each other can’t be contained in something like that.”

Soonyoung set down the pages and picked up the discarded cover waiting for one of Chan’s kids to sweep it into the community recycling bin. Its glue and veins were exposed, as if it really were a dead thing. He turned it over gently.

Love Poems.

“You’re not something that can be closed and discarded to me,” Chan said to him. “Even if we’re making something better out of a loss. You’re everywhere to me, my anchor, you know. The world will have to wreck my foundations before I stop loving you like this.”

Brave Chan. Chan whose hand was so warm in his. Chan who brought him good news, Chan who led the children’s march to sacrifice their futures, to destroy the very things he taught them was one of the most precious gifts of humanity. Chan who gripped one end of the book while Soonyoung held the other as they took the book apart, Chan who helped a child he didn’t know measure the water for the paper blend, Chan who stood on his tiptoes and whispered in Soonyoung’s ear, Dance with me? and Soonyoung who squeezed his hand, who stroked the hair back from Chan’s sweaty forehead, who watched the sun come out from behind the clouds to illuminate Chan’s brown, brown eyes, and sniffled wetly as the tears finally, finally spilled down his cheeks.

“Jeonghan hyung’s doing okay?” he asked.

Chan closed his eyes and swung his hips as he moved out of the way of the next group of helpers to the beat of "Love." He nodded. “He’s alive. He said he talked to Seungkwan, too. He’s in America.”

Soonyoung hadn’t realized how heavy the sky was until the burden was relieved from him. “Chan,” he said again. Chan Chan Chan Chan.

Chan’s energy was like a star, bursting and burning and steady, steady, steady. “Hyung,” he said, voice full of hope.

The paper took several days to dry. Chan went home that evening with the limp cover of The Vampire Lord, and Other Stories in his hand as the red sky flooded what was left of the street, and Soonyoung went home with the promise of forever on his tongue.

Edited 2021-12-31 07:21 (UTC)

i thought i had commented on this but:

i keep coming back to "I think I'm done, are you?" like.... what a succinct summary of what it feels like to love someone who isn't quite selfish but is only interested in taking.

Ship/Member: Any! but... dont u guys think this is very verkwan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art.

- Vita Sackville-West, Letter to Virginia Woolf

"the idea of being innately known by someone else all the time" 8jun are just so striking this way because i really liked the idea of the narrative of their dynamic being awkward in the beginning where it was just a push and pull and clash of their personalities, to something they've worked out now. but that is truly the 8jun charm and i do agree with what you tweeted recently with it being so unique to them and how, even if we see them their bond as inherently and deeply platonic, it's still sooo charming to mine from... i feel like i also came late to the 8jun party. love bros who will stick with each others' cringe!

agh i love him so much. ;_____; i love that your interpretation leaned more into seungcheol's impulsiveness, and how that lends to his devotion to othere

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: glee AU
Additional Tags: crack, satire if you're feeling vengeful
Do Not Wants: None please go crazy go stupid

Prompt:

“Because you’re all minorities... you’re in the Glee Club.”
- Will Schuester, Glee

“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.

as always... you ruin me...

i really like how neatly you ended this--dialogue always hitting home as usual <333 what i love about this is the way you effortlessly drew out intentions underneath conversations between people that can be easily misinterpreted or discontinued, which is so ripe for 8jun

Ship/Member: Any
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: scifi, fantasy, hear me out: clones
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Come release me
Without you I do not yet exist

- May Swenson, Symmetrical Companion

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam;
not made out of his head to rule over him,
nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him,
but out of his side to be equal with him,
under his arm to be protected,
and near his heart to be beloved.

- Matthew Henry

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

Prompt:

“In your darkest hour, in the blackest night…think of me…and I will be with you. Always. For where else could I go? Who else could I love but you?”

- Fray Myste, FFXIV Dark Knight Level 70 Job Quest

this is perfect … thank you so much …

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

Prompt:

they get out of the car together to kiss you goodnight,
you who have perfected the ghost goodbye,
existing gatherings noiselessly, leaving only
a dahlia-scented perfume, your ribcage
compressing to slide through doors ajar and untouched,
yesterday you were a flash of white in a pigeon's blinking eye,
in the day few hours old you stand solid and full
of other people's love for each other
spilling over, warm leftovers.

(full poem here)

-- Sue Hyon Bae

Ship/Member: Chan/Soonyoung
Major Tags: violence, murder, minor character death
Additional Tags: some blood, mention of alcohol & drugs, mourning the death of past selves
Permission to remix: Please ask

(also posted on AO3) I had a lot of fun writing this

Chan is the first casualty. Chan was always going to be the first casualty.

Dino steps away with bloodied hands that will never be washed clean.

***

The first thing Chan learns is that Hoshi is not Soonyoung. Because Soonyoung wasn't Hoshi and it makes him shiver to think that maybe, maybe Soonyoung was never Soonyoung to begin with.

There is hidden machinery beneath Soonyoung’s face, Chan knows, small thin pieces of technology he doesn’t quite understand that runs along the right side of his face— he could trace over it with his eyes closed. There is hidden machinery beneath Hoshi’s face, Chan watches as it glows in the darkness of the night like neon veins stretching from his temple to his chin, like venom. It pulses with bioluminescence, something too animal to be machinery, and Chan wonders if it really is technology at all, if it ever was.

Hoshi catches him looking and smiles.

His smile, too, is like Soonyoung’s. It reminds Chan of winter, of a snowy dawn and tears running down his face. Soonyoung had been there — Soonyoung had always been there — for him. An anchor, keeping him grounded even when the waves had threatened to pull him from the shore and down into the depths. Snowflakes had clung to Soonyoung’s dark hair like little stars in an empty sky. Hoshi’s hair now is silver-white as if the snowflakes had melted and bleached it, his gaze is cold, but his smile is still everything Chan remembers.

The second thing Chan learns, shortly after the first, is the sound of a dead body hitting the floor. The sound of flesh falling into a pool of its own blood. The sound of Hoshi putting his gun back in its holster.

Chan is still Chan and he doesn’t dare look— doesn’t dare take his eyes off Hoshi.

“You’re going to have to come with me.” Hoshi says, but it’s Soonyoung who continues, “It’s not safe for you here now.”

“You’ve seen too much.” Hoshi says with Soonyoung’s voice.

Chan is prepared to mourn the Soonyoung he knew but the way Hoshi holds his hand out, the way Hoshi’s fingers intertwine with his, the way Hoshi helps him up and leads him away— it makes him pause. Soonyoung was never Hoshi, Soonyoung was gone before Chan ever could’ve known— but some of Chan’s Soonyoung still exists in Hoshi.

And that is a very different kind of mourning.

The third thing Chan learns is the weight of a gun in his hand.

His hand is shaking and he cannot stop it. He feels Hoshi’s unimpressed glare at the back of his head. His hand is shaking more than the person in front of him; the person whom Hoshi had gagged to stop the string of pleads and begs spilling from their lips.

“Any time today, if you will.” Hoshi’s voice is devoid of emotion yet dripping with disdain, with the venom that he’d gotten Chan to paint on his nails.

Hoshi doesn’t say his name, he never says Chan’s name— Chan wishes he would, just once.

“I can’t—” Chan’s voice is so much quieter than he’d meant to be, echoing in the warehouse and so much smaller beside Hoshi’s commanding presence.

“I can’t.” Hoshi parrots back at him, scoffing “You aren’t a child anymore, stop acting like one.”

The gun is heavy in his hand, the cold metal like needles into his palms from how tightly he’s gripping it. He knows all the parts— had learnt them over and over again, taking apart the gun and putting it back together under Hoshi’s careful watch until he could recognise each piece with his eyes closed.

There are tears running down his face now, tears that he wipes on his sleeve as quickly as he can before Hoshi notices. He doesn’t quite hide the little hiccups of his sobs in time though, and he can feel the faint distaste rolling off of Hoshi at the sound.

“Aim.” Hoshi’s voice is right beside his ear now, his chest almost pressed up against Chan’s back.

He listens. He follows. He places his other hand on the gun to steady himself.

“Shoot.”

Chan hesitates.

“Lee Chan.” Hoshi’s voice is a whisper now, a hiss, a viper lying in wait. His hand is on Chan’s shoulder. “Would you like to take his place instead? No? Then stop humiliating me — shoot. him.”

Chan pulls the trigger.

Hoshi lets out a low whistle as he steps around Chan and walks over to the corpse. The corpse that Chan put there. The one that Chan just shot. His shoulders are shaking again as he watches Hoshi carefully lift the corpse’s head back up off its chest. The gun slips from his sweaty hands with a loud clatter.

“A perfect shot — right between the eyes.” There’s awe in Hoshi’s voice. It makes Chan feel equal parts proud and sick to his stomach. He wishes he hadn’t done so well. “I knew you could do it, Chan.”

He wishes Hoshi would stop saying his name.

Chan is silent the whole way back to their gang’s hideout. He is silent and pale and almost completely motionless. As if it was his body that had collapsed back in the warehouse, lifeless and broken.

Perhaps it was.

There is a party thrown for him when they return, booze and drugs and cheering chants of Hoshi’s name— to the gang, Chan has no name yet but there is blood on his hands now and so he is finally one of them. Someone tries to pull him away from the crowd, their grin reveals fangs and doesn’t falter even when Hoshi steps between them and Chan with a raised eyebrow.

“C’mon, Hoshi, the kid just got his first kill — he needs a tat from The8.” They pout in a way that could almost be innocent, if Chan didn’t know where he was.

Hoshi turns to him, eyebrow still raised. It takes Chan a moment to realise it’s a question.

“Oh, uh, I don’t know…”

“It’s a tradition though, you have—”

Hoshi drags Chan away before he can hear the rest of their sentence and he is beyond grateful.

They’re in Hoshi’s corner of the living space when Chan finally finds (aided by the alcohol in his system) the courage to ask—

“Hyung,” he starts, waiting for Hoshi to finish his sip of his own beer bottle first before continuing, “do you have a tattoo?”

Hoshi laughs, twisting in his seat to pull his jacket down just enough to give Chan a glimpse of the dark ink running across his back and over one of his shoulders— although Chan doesn’t get a good look at what the tattoo actually is.

The following silence is neither unsettling nor comfortable, the sound of the party dying down but still audible through the metal walls of the hideout. In this moment of peace, Chan finds himself mourning, now that he has the time to. His fingers are still stained with crimson no matter how hard he washes them, his old life left in ashes and left far behind where he can no longer return to. He prepares two graves although he doesn’t quite know who the second person he’s mourning is yet.

It’s in the darkness of night, swinging in barely held together hammocks, that Hoshi nudges him with a ring-clad hand.

“Have you got a name yet?”

“You know my name, hyung.” Chan replies, painfully wide awake and unable to sleep.

“Tch, no, you need a name. You’re one of us now.” Hoshi huffs, “I’m Hoshi, and you’re…?”

It doesn’t take Chan long to decide. He’s been thinking about it on and off since he first took Hoshi’s hand. It’s a name he’s been testing in the cold moments he’s left alone, surrounded by four metal walls layered with rust and wondering if he’ll ever make it in this broken world. He knows his name.

“Dino.” He whispers it into the still air. “My name is Dino.”

“Welcome to the gang, Dino.” he can hear the way Hoshi’s lips curl around the sound. He likes it.

It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves he's prepared. It feels different now, standing in front of two engraved tombstones in his heart with snow swirling around his feet. Even in the burning heat of summer with his muscles aching and sweat sticking his hair to his forehead, he finds time to make the trip. It’s Chan who mourns but it’s Dino that visits the graves of Soonyoung and Chan.

And it’s Dino who shakes Hoshi awake one winter dawn. Outside the makeshift window — really just a hole in the metal walls — the first snow has begun to fall.

“I think I want that tattoo now.” He whispers and Hoshi sits up in his hammock immediately.

The tattoo parlour is still closed when they arrive— if it can be considered a parlour. It’s barely a small shack on the outside, looking as dark and unfriendly as the rest of the world they know. It shares a wall with the rest of the hideout but there’s a faint hum that Dino can’t quite discern. Snowflakes cling to the two of them as Hoshi calls The8 and Chan feels anticipation burning through his chest. There’s nerves there too, something between terror and excitement.

The8 turns out to be one of the taller members of the gang that Dino’s seen in passing before— sharpening daggers in the living area or painting on the rare days where there is peace and quiet. The runes on his arms always glow different colours and at different intensities — Chan wonders if they’re of the same magic as the right side of Hoshi’s face. Dino hopes he never has to learn how they glow when The8 is in a fight.

The door to the tattoo shack glows too but in a way that Dino is distinctly certain is technology, not magic. The8 steps through first and Hoshi pushes Dino in after. The inside of the building is far too large to fit within the walls he’d seen outside, the walls lined with tattoo art, stencils, and weapons alike. Hoshi pushes him forward again, guiding him towards one of the tattoo chairs and placing a binder of designs on his lap while The8 prepares his tools.

“The door was a portal.” Hoshi explains with a grin in response to the way Dino’s gaze can’t help but flicker back to it before settling on the designs in the binder. “The bigger designs are at the back of the folder, if you want something like mine.”

In the end, he decides on something smaller — a snarling tiger head on the inside of his wrist. He doesn’t miss the way Hoshi’s face lights up when he picks it or the knowing smirk on The8’s face as he readies his needle. Dino nods and tries to sit as still as he can while he gets inked.

(The fourth thing Chan learns is that tattoos fucking hurt.)

The fifth kill is no easier than the first. It still leaves Dino shaky and all too aware of the blood on his hands. The tiger on his wrist glares at him and he takes a deep breath. He doesn’t feel proud of himself like Hoshi tells him he should— of your progress, he says, you’ve come so far since you joined. He has, Dino knows he has, but he doesn’t have to like it. He can’t deny that he doesn’t feel as sick anymore— he’s still shaky, yes, but he calms down far easier, far more quickly, than before.

A hand tilts his head up roughly and Hoshi hums as he smears the blood oozing from a cut on Dino’s face across his cheek. It looks good on you, he’d said once when their lips had been just millimetres apart and Dino had responded with a confused impatient noise, wanting to get another kiss before they had to get back to the hideout. Blood, Hoshi had said, blood looks good on you.

There’s a new tattoo on Hoshi’s wrist; Dino sees it out of the corner of his eye. He steps back just enough to see it, holding Hoshi’s arm still in the air with one hand. There, in elegant black ink, is the image of a dinosaur skull, the ink of the eye sockets glowing faintly neon. It rests on the inside of his wrist, the same side and placement as the tiger inked into Dino’s skin. The meaning is clear. Hoshi leans down and Dino meets him halfway. Their kiss tastes like blood.

The last thing Chan learns is that this is his life now, and Dino’s just fine with that.

Ship/Member: Any, Chan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: post-anything, aftermath
Do Not Wants: None

Prompt:

Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.

If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
—From "The Crane Wife" by CJ Hauser

subtitled "em looks through their quote archive and snipes themselves"

OH WOWWWW this is so much and so good. i didn't mention it in prompt but aside from interpersonal relationships the song reminds me so much of Group Early Days and the creation of idolhood so i am thrilled to see someone else touch on that same train of thought HEHE

- LANGUAGE is something that can ACTUALLY be SO personal,
- tfw the exhausting futility of being everyone's best listener while not letting anyone else in .......... "He holds his hands out, a helpless gesture, surprised at how many of them want to latch on." WILDLY SWINGING MY ARMS AROUND RN

cannot form a coherently formatted reply and for that i am sorry but know that this is marvelous. thank u so much <333

tyyyyyy I think this was such a fun note to end 2021 on; I love word limits, even if I didn't push this as far as it could go they're always such an interesting challenge

there's this poem I was thinking of that I heard read aloud several years ago that's always stuck with me and that I was thinking of when I wrote that--something about a burning track and a horse and what it means to trust--and I always wish I could find the author again because it's such a vivid image!! I'm so glad you enjoyed!

if this was a longer fic I think bringing in minghao and more history and what art and space means to them would have been so much fun! I'm so glad you enjoyed, that interpretation is definitely something I was leaning into!!

AAA this was such a delight to read, the slowly winding, mounting sense of dread vsbdndk so lovely and evocative!! wonu dearest please never heed warnings please always make terrible decisions <33 loved yjh's role in this too, my little cassandra <33 ALSO

He wonders how it’s called mercy, when being in love is the same as being alone.

THIS BIT PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE !!!!!!!! thank u sm for playing w this prompt :')

[incoherent screeching, vague hand gestures] they are in LOVE !!!! i loved this im always a sucker for cql AUs and this one was so perfect. it's also about time we gave snwu some swords thank you

"I know that, underneath it all, you’re just as horrible as I am. So prove it already! Show your true colours! Let me hurt you! Why won’t you let me hurt you?" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA seokmin being a little seokgyuphobic is canon in every universe and it is delicious!!!!!

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Page 37 of 73

2022 Round 1: Quotes

Re: [FILL] we all share the same sky

you'll allow it?

Re: [FILL] The price we pay

Re: [FILL] It’s just that you remind me of a dog I once had and loved very much.

[FILL]: The Vampire Lord, and Other Stories

Re: [FILL] in your wake

too much, too truly

Re: [FILL] a gap in the teeth

Re: you've never seen a devotion so stubborn & foolhardy

the #1 cursed ryan murphy quote

Re: [FILL] pretend that i'm the only one

Re: [FILL] cabin lights dimmed

symmetry/asymmetry

in the blackest night

Re: [FILL] pretend that i'm the only one

After the Threesome, They Both Take You Home

[FILL] if everybody's letting go, let's do it with both hands

doing the work

Re: [FILL] mirror with three faces

Re: [FILL] i die every time you look away from me

Re: [FILL] you've never seen a devotion so stubborn & foolhardy

Re: [FILL] you've never seen a devotion so stubborn & foolhardy

Re: the most blessed thing

Re: [FILL] did someone say pain?

Re: [FILL] let me push, let me shove