Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
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
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- NSFW art should not be visible, please provide a link and a warning. You may crop the artwork and embed a SFW preview.
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Prompting
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Filling
- Reply to the original prompt;
- Change the subject to [FILL], you may add a title or stay chaotic;
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You may also upload your fill to the AO3 Collection.
Remixing
- Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above;
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Art/media
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no subject
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: idolverse; please like me, please love me
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt:
[FILL] please love me for something more
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: insecurity, desiring love, introspection(?), character study, wanting to be loved for something beneath the surface, uncertainty
Permission to remix: Yes
A/N: i am posting this with a boatload of uncertainty on my shoulders because this is a leap outside my comfort zone. character studies are not my strongpoint but i wanted to give this a shot!! fingers crossed it's adequate to the prompt!!
***
Mingyu wakes up with disappointment sitting heavy on his chest. He can’t remember why. He thinks he was dreaming, some blurry thing where he’d been told by some blurry-faced fan that he looked good. It’s a compliment, right? He should be happy, right? Instead it rings hollow, like he’s an easter egg shell, all painted pretty on the outside and empty on the inside.
When he lifts his head Wonwoo is gone, his bed covers pristine and perfectly made. Mingyu feels a little bolt of resentment, at Wonwoo for leaving, at his neatness, or at his dream. One of those; he doesn’t want to think about it.
He leaves his bed unmade when he swings his legs off and sits up, ruffling his hair with one hand and checking his reflection briefly in the mirror on the wall, reflexively. He pinches his cheeks into a smile, massages his face muscles like dough until the smile comes natural, like he’s been smiling like this forever, like it’s not an art form he’s had to master after nights of red-rimmed eyes and feelings of insufficiency.
In the bathroom he practices again. Slight half moon. With teeth? No teeth. Crooked? Nah. Head tilt, that looks okay. Then he makes eye contact with himself in the mirror and cringes, feeling ridiculous, the back of his neck burning hot. Hurriedly he splashes water on his face and scrubs his teeth white. His hair is wild but he doesn’t want to care about that.
Instead he walks down the halls, passing Minghao’s room. There he lingers, hand an inch from the wood. Should he knock? Does Minghao want to see him right now? His smile had been strained last night when Mingyu had checked on him, his own smile wobbling when he said he’s fine. Minghao had given him a look, pinched between the eyebrows, as though he could see through the lie and was simply too kind to mention it. Mingyu might have called him a hypocrite if he had, but then they both would be. Tour has worn them all down.
Mingyu drops his hand, steps away, tries to look nonchalant when a staff member walks by. Instinctively he runs his hand through his hair and gives her a little smile, dipping his head. She flushes and looks away, pink in the cheeks. Abruptly Mingyu is disgusted. Is this who he is now? Greet people with a husk of a charmer and pretend he’s comfortable carrying that perception with him wherever he goes?
Jeonghan had prodded him once about it.
“I think it’s shallow, going by looks.” Mingyu had rolled his eyes and pretended that it didn’t hurt. “I thought this was an industry for talent.”
“Talent doesn’t sell, hyung,” Mingyu had snapped back, sharper than necessary, exasperated, “surely you know that.” By the way Jeonghan’s eyes had narrowed, he’d picked up something in Mingyu’s face or tone, irritatingly perceptive as he was. Mingyu felt the need to jab back, level the playing field, if only to soothe his wounded pride. With Jeonghan it always felt like this: constantly hauling himself to keep up. He hates it.
“What about your cheating tendency?” Mingyu muttered, resentful. “Playing clever, finding loopholes to swap for screen time? You think I haven’t noticed that?” It’s mean, Mingyu knew. It’s not like he was unaware that Jeonghan had his fair share of insecurities.
“We all do what we can to get by,” Jeonghan had said simply, eyes inscrutable on Mingyu. What he didn’t say was this: we do what we can to get by, because we both know we could’ve been easily replaced.
What Jeonghan didn’t say was this: we don’t have talent to sell. We have only this.
Mingyu hadn’t known what to say in the wake of that. But maybe the silence spoke enough.
A clattering of a hotel clean up cart jolts Mingyu back into the present. Unwittingly, he’d ended up in front of Seokmin and Jeonghan’s room. Voices are loud from the inside; something stings inside of Mingyu.
“Oh are you going in too?” Soonyoung is rounding the corner, nodding toward the door Mingyu’s hesitating in front of. He doesn’t wait to hear the answer, simply swipes a keycard he’d gotten somewhere and barges in. Mingyu catches the door before it can slam in his face; the stinging gets worse in his chest.
Inside Soonyoung is loud and prancing, bounding in and out of screen, overexcited like a puppy at dinnertime. Normally Mingyu would join him, but today all he feels is a mild annoyance.
“Is the food good?” He asks, to Seokmin, to Jeonghan, to whoever will listen amidst all the noise. It’s a disconnected phrase, but he can’t think of any other way to make himself known.
Seokmin turns and his expression becomes a little shocked. “Wuah, your hair.”
“I know, it’s messy,” Mingyu replies, wishing that Seokmin would notice something else about him, something less superficial. But he doesn’t. Snap out of it, Kim Mingyu. He sinks onto a corner of the bed instead, leaning back onto Seokmin, covering his hair with one hand. Seokmin’s arm drapes across his shoulders, and when he laughs Mingyu feels lighter instantly.
And then he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. They’re doing a VLive. Should he stay? Should he leave? He flutters around them for a while, until Jeonghan runs out of patience.
“Go quickly; it’s annoying.” Mingyu, where he’d been hovering near Jeonghan’s shoulder, wilts a little. Seokmin catches it and points it out, laughing.
“He’s hurt,” he says, comical. Mingyu schools his expression when Jeonghan looks up at him, an expression on his face that says, don’t take this seriously. He parrots it out loud too, stilted smile on his face.
“It’s just that you keep saying you’re gonna go!” Jeonghan defends, a patch-up, like he’s realized Mingyu might actually be hurt.
He is, a little, but he’ll never admit to that, not on camera. So he does the only thing he can think of: play into it.
“I’m sorry, goodbye,” he ducks into the camera frame, waves goodbye, smiles his bathroom-mirror smile. “I didn't know I was annoying.” Keeping his tone neutral is almost too easy. Leaving is easy too. He’s two-thirds of the way to the door when Seokmin tells him to stay.
“If you haven't eaten yet, eat with us.” Behind him, Jeonghan makes noises of agreement without looking up.
“No, I’m annoying,” he says back, and even he’s unsure whether he’s still playing into the joke (is it one? It doesn’t feel like one) or if he’s actually starting to believe it.
“Come on, eat with us,” Seokmin says, softer this time, and Mingyu relents.
/
He’s got a cup of Shin ramyeon in his hands when he sits down on the bed again. Jeonghan has gone somewhere. The air is quiet. Seokmin is on his phone. Mingyu opens his mouth to entertain the audience and shuts it when nothing surfaces, wondering what’s wrong with him. Why can’t he do his job right?
Jeonghan comes back again, nudging at Mingyu’s shoulder insistently.
“Move over there, I wanna sit next to Seokminnie.” Mingyu looks up, and Jeonghan seems to see the genuine weariness on his face. His face softens a fraction.
“There’s more camera room for your pretty face over there.” It’s exactly the wrong thing to say. Jeonghan’s eyes widen. Mingyu moves wordlessly. Once he’s settled, he tries for a smile at the camera, an attempt at coverup—look, there’s nothing wrong here.
Somehow they get caught up in a discussion about roommates, but Mingyu loses focus when Minghao crawls onto the bed, pushing into Seokmin’s embrace. Mingyu fumbles a sentence in his conversation with Jeonghan about their compatibility as roommates, distracted by the way Seokmin ruffles Minghao’s hair, the way they bump foreheads and Seokmin beams like Minghao’s the most precious thing ever. Jealousy is unnameable inside Mingyu.
Does he want Minghao to be happy like that with him, or does he want someone to look at him the way Seokmin looks at Minghao—like he’s someone worth adoring?
/
Mingyu feels lonely when Seokmin’s mom calls and he’s not in the frame. Jeonghan leans his head on Seokmin’s shoulder and calls her Eomma. Mingyu sits on the other side and eats silently.
The live passes by in a blur of conversation, words they string together to make for content. It feels like relief when Jeonghan finally asks him to shut off the camera.
Mingyu knocks it over, in true Mingyu fashion. They all yell in alarm, and Mingyu thinks it’s the most candid he’s been this entire live. He’s leaning against the wall when he finally rights the camera and the smile he has on doesn’t feel forced.
“Bye,” he says, waving. It’s a good image to end on: genuine, true.
Could you love me like this? He asks Carats silently, with all the desperation he’ll never reveal on camera. But the live disconnects and the comments vanish, and it’s just the three of them again.
/
“Mingyu-yah,” Jeonghan starts, sprawled across the bed. Seokmin has gone off somewhere, maybe to Minghao’s room. Mingyu dismisses the thought forcedly.
“Hmm?” He fiddles with his phone’s home screen aimlessly, to keep his hands busy more than anything.
“You seem off today,” Jeonghan notes, his face still buried in the pillow. Mingyu answers him with silence. Jeonghan rolls over, face imprinted with red lines from the rumpled cover of his pillow. Mingyu kind of wants to laugh at it, but finds he has no energy to; he’s simultaneously too tired and too restless.
“What is it?” Jeonghan slides off the bed and comes to stand before where Mingyu is sitting, one leg crossed over the other, eyes fixed resolutely to his phone. A hand tips his face up by the jaw; Mingyu keeps his eyes glued to the vague English lettering on Jeonghan’s black shirt.
“Mingyu-yah,” Jeonghan’s voice takes on an impatient edge; Mingyu wrenches his face away.
“It’s fine,” he says tersely, looking back down at his phone. He doesn't even have an app open; his phone is simply an avoidance mechanism–a fact Jeonghan is well aware of.
Jeonghan’s hand drops away. Mingyu convinces himself that he doesn’t miss the warmth.
“Okay, then,” Jeonghan says, voice distanced. “I’ll be here, I guess.”
/
Mingyu doesn’t talk to anyone else for the rest of the day and is feeling intensely bitter about it by the time night has fallen.
He had gone through their afternoon schedules with forced cheer, putting on smiles, another game of acting. Another game of pretending—that the exhaustion of tour isn’t stretching tension over all of them. Minghao still won’t look at him directly; now neither will Jeonghan.
When they get to the hotel most of them traipse off to their rooms immediately. Mingyu watches Seokmin’s back disappear into Minghao’s room and resentment rises to bite at the heels of his mind like a raucous dog. He turns himself sharply away.
“Mingyu-yah,” Jeonghan comes up behind his shoulder, looking so out of it, like he’s ready to sleep for a week. They could all use that.
“What,” Mingyu says back dully, still staring at Minghao’s closed door, feeling the inexplicable sting of rejection.
“Come to my room,” Jeonghan says, and he’s not needling, not whining, simply—requesting. For some reason it strikes Mingyu as odd. But he follows when Jeonghan starts walking again.
Mingyu is flopped face first on the bed when Jeonghan comes out of the bathroom, barefaced and looking more refreshed. He whacks his hand towel against Mingyu’s ass. The victim yells.
“Yah!” Mingyu rolls over and sits up, face stormy. Jeonghan hesitates, his towel raised over his shoulder in preparation for a second attack. He lowers his arm when Mingyu’s expression remains unchanged. The humour slips from his face like dirty winter sludge.
“I shouldn’t have,” Jeonghan murmurs, and that’s as close as he'll get to an apology, Mingyu knows. He huffs, shoulders drooping, collapsing in on himself. For someone so big Mingyu has felt small more often than not, beaten down by sugar-coated insults from early debut days and sometimes even his own members’ teasing. Sometimes maintaining his confidence can be so taxing.
“What’s going on today, Mingyu-yah?” Jeonghan knows better than to prod this time. He lays the question down as an opening. Mingyu wavers for a second before he gives in.
“I’ve been feeling…superficial, I think? lately,” He confesses, fiddling with the bed spread. “And I just wanna be loved for who I am below the surface, too, you know?”
He chances a glance at Jeonghan, who looks thoughtful, chewing on his bottom lip. Silence wells into the room.
Jeonghan breaks it a second later. “You are, though,” he says, very carefully, as though Mingyu might detonate if he pressed too hard. Mingyu blows out a breath.
“I know,” he mumbles, “but it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.” He sounds ungrateful, and he knows. It’s horrible, this feeling, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
Jeonghan hums softly, like he doesn’t know what to say, and truly, Mingyu can’t blame him. How do you remedy this sort of yearning? The desire to be seen without being seen through a screen? Their whole lives are cut and clipped and trimmed and edited until they’re screen models with just the right amount of personal struggle and victory. Sure, they have things like Hit The Road, and Going Seventeen, but still, that’s sifted content. There’s always a level of expectation that comes attached with camera lenses, and an idol persona they each don. Seungkwan’s entertainer, Jeonghan’s clever cheater/trouble maker, Soonyoung’s performer/tiger. Seungcheol’s leader, even.
It should be enough; they’ve already laid themselves bare enough for public figures. But somehow Mingyu still craves being truly known. Again, it is incredibly ungrateful to feel like this, he knows, when he has twelve other people around him who can lift his skin without touching him and recite his entire being.
“You have us,” Jeonghan offers, like a mind reader–maybe he is. “We'll always be here, to love you as you are.” It might be cheesy in another context, but Mingyu nods in this one. It’s not what he’s looking for, and Jeonghan knows that, but it has to be enough.
“Thanks hyung,” he says gruffly, swallowing down the tears. “I’m sor—“ Jeonghan shushes him immediately, crawling onto the bed and pulling them both down.
“Stay tonight,” Jeonghan says, gently, his arms a cradle around Mingyu.
“What about Seokmin?” He asks, half-hearted, already halfway convinced.
“He’s staying with Minghao—who you should really talk to, by the way.” Mingyu groans, partly because how does he know? And partly because he’s right.
“Yes hyung,” he mutters, rolling around and burying his face into Jeonghan’s chest, shrinking his large frame to fit. It feels nice, to be small and taken care of, safe in the comfort that he’s understood and loved. And maybe–
Maybe this is enough.
Re: [FILL] please love me for something more
this particular flavor of the seokhangyuhao in 2019 was once upon a time my preferred configuration so this stopped me in my tracks.
Mingyu doesn’t talk to anyone else for the rest of the day and is feeling intensely bitter about it by the time night has fallen. god i love how intensely he is in his head about it — reminds me of the gallery exhibition(?) he did years ago with art depicting the struggle of understanding himself.
also Jeonghan defends, a patch-up, like he’s realized Mingyu might actually be hurt. [...] He’s two-thirds of the way to the door when Seokmin tells him to stay. reminds me so strongly of a live post-music show promotion (don't ask me which) where everyone is laughing at mingyu and seokmin stops and checks to see if mingyu is okay. like gah, despite configuration they're still a family ;_____;
i love this. thank you so much
Re: [FILL] please love me for something more
[FILL] it gets tangled up inside
Major Tags: n/a
Additional Tags: actors au, mutual pining, tenderness
Permission to remix: Please ask
It's too long to fit the dreamwidth character limit so read it here:)