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2022 Round 2: AUs
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Status: Closed
This round has closed. It remains open for fills, comments and remixes, but prompts are no longer accepted.
✧ Seventeen Holidays ✧
About
When you put the characters you love in a new world, you end up loving them even more. Sometimes it's about the aesthetic (dark academia). Sometimes it's about straining those ship dynamics to the extreme (Pacific Rim). Maybe life is hard and you need to exorcise something (unemployment/coporate slave AU). Or perhaps you are so in love with the world you want to see Seventeen in it. Shakespeare, My Hero Academia, RuPaul's Drag Race. No problem - just give some context so anyone can fill it. Examples
MinWon - Bittersweet
Ah yes, the ambiguous Bittersweet MV. I'm curious to see anyone's interpretation of those MinWon scenes.
Any / NCT AU
Remember how Seventeen was supposed to be subgroups divided across Korea, China and Japan? What if that happened and the members were split up, only to reunite once a year. Or if they promoted like NCT - thinking about the graduation angst of NCT Dream, the ridiculous schedules of SuperM. Who is Mark and over-employed. Who is Shotaro and stuck in the basement?
Wonhui X Link Click (Donghua)
Link Click is a show about two guys who run a photography studio and time travels to help their customers. Wonwoo knows every event within 12 hours of a photograph being taken and Junhui can time travel and possess the photographer for 12 hours to complete a mission. Wonwoo speaks in Junhui's mind and tells him what he needs to do - where to go, what to say, what will happen. There's a rule that Junhui can't change the past because it will change the future :') but Junhui wants to :'). Would love to see WonHui investigating another sebong's story, or an exploration of their contrasting attitudes to fate (resigned vs headstrong - roles can be reversed if you want).
Rules
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Prompting
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Remixing
Art/media
Note!
Have you considered trying for the 17hols hall of fame? The categories are: Exactly 400 Words, Year of the Tiger, Five of a Kind and the Rarest Pair. ▽ Click for More Info ▽Exactly 400 words: your fill is the absolute minimum word count. Well done you cold curt succinct savage. Year of the Tiger: in celebration of 2022, we will also celebrate anyone who supports this agenda (context: burn your ears). You must seamlessly incorporate a horanghae or wooahae or hahahahanihae (etc) in your fill. You can not regret it. Five of a Kind: You win this if you fill 5 prompts, and each fill is different in the same way. E.g. 5 different ships, 5 different AUs, 5 different mediums. You also win this by doing 5 remixes! The rarest pair: the fill with the rarest pairing at the end of the fest wins. This is based off the number of works in the ao3 tag. For simplicity, this will be the / tag and not &. (e.g. a “Wonwoo & Minghao” platonic fill will be counted by the “Wonwoo/Minghao” tag). The ship must only have Seventeen members and be the main pairing in your fill. We will update the category with the current titleholder during the fest so you know who to challenge~ I anticipate polyamory. (To help us out, please mention that you’re going for one of these categories at the beginning of your fill.) Navigation
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Selkie au
Major Tags: strangers to friends to lovers
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: mentions of disordered eating
Prompt: Selkie seungkwan selkie seungkwan!!!! He would look so adorable in a big fur coat!! Fluffy boy. And like Seokmin as someone who lives in a small fishing village and comes across him when he washes ashore. But please make it sweet and consensual.
(an extract from Wikipedia for those unaware of traditional selkie mythology: A typical folk-tale is that of a man who steals a female selkie's skin, finds her naked on the sea shore, and compels her to become his wife. But the wife will spend her time in captivity longing for the sea, her true home, and will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean. She may bear several children by her human husband, but once she discovers her skin, she will immediately return to the sea and abandon the children she loved.)
[FILL] this world and the next (pt. 1)
Major Tags: strangers to friends to lovers, selkie-adjacent korean mythology, magical elements
Additional Tags:
***
AN: I must first say that this fill is not entirely true to the prompt. I was reminded of the Korean folktale of the woodcutter and the nymph, which is essentially a selkie story: a woodcutter saves the life of a deer who tells him about sisters who live in the heavens. The sisters come down to earth to bathe in a lake, and if he steals one’s clothes, she must stay on earth and be his wife. This was my attempt at mixing the two mythologies in a sweet and consensual way. Sorry I didn’t go full selkie, but I figured I’d post it anyway. Hope it's okay^^;;
Minor blood/injury mention in the first few lines.
***
When Seokmin wrenched the arrow from the deer’s firm, blood-soaked flank, he hadn’t been all that surprised to see the torn hide slide back to wholeness, the exposed muscle hidden away again before he could blink. After all, the deer had just asked him to do it.
It had been an unusual sight in the first place: a tiny deer limping along the dark beach, an arrow protruding from its side like an exclamation point. Seokmin had never seen one this far from the mountain. He dropped the net he was wrestling with on the crumbling asphalt around his house, and strode toward the animal as if in a trance. The waves were loud, as always, but under the roar, a voice: “Help me.”
In front of Seokmin, the deer turned to look far out to sea, offering up its wounded side. The request was clear.
Once whole, the deer almost seemed to grow larger by the moment. Its eyes sparkled unusually—or was that just the reflection of the waves? Seokmin can’t remember now. He remembers, though, the water lapping at bare feet as if to keep him from running.
He stands in the same water now—the waves that have raised him since he moved to Jeju at age three. Even at night, the sea is warm like the softest yo in Seokmin’s cabinet, the one he only rolls out when his sister visits from the mainland. He can’t quite remember the deer’s eyes anymore, but he recalls its parting words vividly. In fact, they haven’t stopped ringing in his head since he heard them.
“Tonight a full moon, right? Why don’t you go for a swim around midnight? You deserve to be a child of the island too. See if they’ll have you. Or perhaps, you could have them.”
Seokmin had tried to shake the words from his head. He’d cleared up his simple, banchan-less dinner and made his bed on the floor of his simple little two-and-a-half-room house. But as the stars came out, the music of the ocean beyond his front door had almost seemed to form words—promises, secrets, his name. He’d laid in bed with his eyes squeezed shut as long as he could—past midnight, then past one, two, three. But sleep never came, and as the sound of the water grew more desperate, he found himself casting aside his blankets and striding outside in his pajamas. As he crossed the beach, the few houses nearby were dark with sleep, though the distant mountain was beginning to appear against the faintest gray halo, betraying the arrival of the rising sun.
Now, he picks up his feet when the water becomes too deep to continue walking, swimming slowly into the dark water. He’s a strong swimmer by nature, an even stronger one by practice, but he’s never ventured out this far without his boat nearby. Still, something buoyant and soothing floats in his chest as he continues forward into the sea, which seems to calm around him.
Then he realizes: the sound that had beckoned him out is gone.
Silence sits heavily on the surface of the water, flattening the waves. Whatever it was that the deer wanted him to see, he must have missed it, he thinks, and the calm in his chest takes on a sickening, panicked edge, sliding menacingly up to his throat. He wrenches around to swim back towards the beach, and that’s when he sees it. Or rather, him.
A person floats face down around ten meters away, almost completely underwater except for bare shoulders and dark, almost blue hair. In the dim light of incoming dawn, Seokmin can’t tell if he’s moving or not—the pale, mute swish of his limbs beneath the water like that of seaweed. Shock punches Seokmin in the lungs. He dives forward through the still water.
Beneath the surface, Seokmin meets the boy’s eyes, shocked large and surprisingly clear, through a film of salt and darkness.
Their heads pop up at the same time, and Seokmin sputters as he treads. The boy eyes Seokmin suspiciously, as if he isn’t the one who’d just been floating facedown in the ocean.
“Are you okay?” Seokmin doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to ask, but he’s not quite sure what else to say. His voice feels clumsy in his mouth; his limbs are getting dull and heavy.
The boy’s eyes well up with tears, distinct from the seawater that rolls off of him in shining threads. Not the right thing to say, then.
“Do I look okay?” He exclaims, flapping at the waves with long-fingered hands. Seokmin notices that the boy isn’t really treading water—he’s just sort of suspended at the surface, fine-featured face glancing around nervously. “They left me behind, and I can’t find it!”
“Find what?” Seokmin asks, frowning, his breath coming too short to ask the other questions: Who are you? Who are they? Why didn’t I let myself be satisfied with the talking deer?
The boy sniffles. “My coat.”
It dawns on Seokmin that the boy—man, really—is naked. It doesn’t seem odd at this point, just makes him look more vulnerable, though the water around them is warm and the horizon is warming, too, with the first glints of sunlight. He swallows against the slip of salt in his teeth. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s eyes are dark and wet and they sparkle like Seokmin thinks the deer’s did. “Seungkwan.”
“Did you lose your coat in the water, Seungkwan?” He gets a tense nod in response. Seokmin gulps again, his breath starting to come rougher as his legs churn. “How ‘bout this, huh? We swim to shore, I grab my fishing boat and net, and we can see if we can drag it up.”
Seungkwan’s face twists, displaying sudden scorn that takes Seokmin’s breath away. “I don’t need your help. Go ahead and swim back before you drown, ajeossi.”
In the quiet night, the defiant words drop without echoing, and Seokmin can’t help but bark a surprised laugh. “Alright,” he huffs. “My brain is well and truly fucked now, you know? So if you’d rather I just pretend this whole thing—” he makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, splashing Seungkwan, who just wrinkles his nose—“is some kind of surreal, never-ending dream, be my guest. Just please don’t die out here, okay?”
Seungkwan turns up his nose. “You have my word.”
Seokmin can feel Seungkwan’s narrowed eyes on him as he turns onto his back and kicks slowly back to shore.
The sun has fully arrived behind Hallasan when Seokmin steps heavily onto the rocky beach, his pajamas logged with seawater and laden with salt. Turning around, he can see Seungkwan bobbing out in the water, face down again as if trying to look at the ocean floor. He sighs, something sickly and apprehensive curling in his belly. What if the next time he looks out to the sea, Seungkwan isn’t there? What if he still is?
The only option is to keep watch, he decides. He ducks inside to tug on the first dry clothes he can find, scoop up the last few lumps of cold rice from the rice cooker, and pull his smartphone from its charging cable before taking a seat on his cold concrete stoop, chewing morosely.
The little dark head drifts around for hours, until the sun is high in the sky and Seokmin is squinting at the diamond-bright water, his stomach complaining for a real meal. Sighing, he props up his phone and sets it to stand watch, recording video, while he goes inside and slaps together a few tuna sandwiches. When he hurries out to his small boat tethered to the small dock, he tampers down the strange little sense of relief that washes over him when he sees Seungkwan is still out there in the water.
He can feel Seungkwan staring at him as he cuts out into the waves, the familiar hum of the boat’s motor soothing his nerves slightly. Seungkwan doesn’t swim away. He just watches as Seokmin draws closer, the water around him barely moving except to ripple minutely with the in-and-out draw of his narrow chest. In the direct sunlight, Seokmin can finally take in his face—it’s both delicate and strong, with a soft nose and cheeks but jagged jawline. His skin is fair and the kind of flawless Seokmin’s only seen in advertisements.
He cuts the engine right next to Seungkwan, who has to crane his head up to look at him, and again, Seokmin finds himself not knowing what to say. “Would you like a sandwich?” he decides on.
Seungkwan stares up at Seokmin, screwing his eyes up in apparent displeasure, or perhaps because of the sun. Moments pass. Sweat forms on the back of Seokmin’s tanned neck, stinging salty and familiar. Finally, Seungkwan sighs.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a towel, would you?”
Seokmin doesn’t, but he strips off his shirt, swallowing an entirely inappropriate nervous giggle. Luckily, once Seungkwan’s scrambled onboard (Seokmin’s eyes intently searching the horizon as he does) the tee hangs to Seungkwan’s thighs, giving him a semblance of modesty as Seokmin maneuvers the boat back to the beach, feeling like the more exposed one. In the five minutes it takes to return to shore, Seungkwan scarfes down both sandwiches, and when Seokmin finally peeks at his face, it’s colored with a strange bemusement and hunger.
In the cool dark of his kitchen, Seokmin carefully peels and slices a pear while Seungkwan goes through every single item of his closet. Then, he takes a cautious seat at the low table; the hem of Seokmin’s shortest shorts peek out from under his tee. His hair has dried in salt-stiff peaks, but it still retains that strange blue shade. Across from him, Seokmin can’t stop staring.
“So, this coat,” he ventures cautiously, eyes fixed on the chipped plate and its pathetic arrangement of pale fruit. He cringes at his voice; it seems too loud, too abrasive for whatever fragile reality he has entered since last night.
Seungkwan glares at him with a slice held between the fingers of both of his hands. “I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”
Seokmin feels his jaw set against his will. “I think that ever since some talking deer told me to go swimming last night, it seems to have become my business, somehow.”
Seungkwan rolls his eyes, a movement followed by his entire head—looking upward, baring his neck. “Jisoo’s vindictive. Just because he was cursed to live on earth, he’s trying to get the rest of us stuck here. Personally, I think that’s not very brotherly of him.”
Seokmin feels his brain whirring to catch up, stumble, and fall. “Oh my god, too much information, literally,” he groans, pressing pear-sticky fingertips to his eyes. “Are you saying that you don’t live on earth, but your deer brother does? Because of a curse?” When he peeks back up, Seungkwan seems to be biting back a tiny grin, though he quickly rearranges his expression to one of cool stone.
“I’m not saying anything except I need my coat,” he says. “And that if you’re hiding it from me, I’m gonna put a curse on you.”
“I have no idea what’s going on, but for some reason I feel like you can’t do that,” Seokmin retorts, and before he knows it, he’s laughing. Bemused giggles bubble up in his chest and burst, somewhat bitter with confusion but still sweet. Seungkwan looks shell shocked for a moment, and then he laughs, too.
“Fuck my life,” he utters, clearly and, to Seokmin’s relief, with some mirth. “One day you’re just taking your monthly trip to bathe in the ocean and the next you’re sitting in some rando’s kitchen with the threat of fucking mortality hanging over your head.”
“Stop saying stuff like that!” Seokmin gapes. “You’re breaking my brain, I’m serious.”
Seungkwan laughs again, and Seokmin’s kitchen fills with sunlight.
*
In the afternoon, they go out in the boat. Seokmin casts his biggest net, and they make slow passes up and down the coast, moving farther out into the sea on each lap.
“You fish with this?” Seungkwan asks, fingering the rough rope trailing over the side of the boat. He’s perched on the bench opposite Seokmin’s seat by the engine. Seokmin wonders if he should have offered him sunscreen.
“Not really.” Seokmin replies sheepishly. “I can fish, but not enough to be a fisherman, you know? I just help out with the uncles over there.” He points to the few other houses behind the beach, low and dirty white with colorful metal roofs. “I also help the haenyeo halmeonis in the village across the way. I just drive them to the market, help them sell everything. They’re all better fishers than me.”
“Gosh, you’re not really the best choice for a husband, then,” Seungkwan muses to himself, and Seokmin chokes.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying it’s good to have a steady income!”
“Who said I was going to be a husband?” Seokmin can feel his cheeks burning, and he hopes that his tan hides the furious flush. He feels transparent though, as if this otherworldly being can see straight into where he keeps his deepest desires.
Seungkwan pins him with a look. “You really don’t know what’s going on?”
“I’ve been telling you—”
Seungkwan interrupts him with an exasperated sigh. “Look, the long and short of it is that whoever has my coat? I’m basically theirs. ‘Til death do we part and all that. I can’t go home without it. Got it?”
The wind roars quietly between them, as if trying to press into Seokmin’s lungs, past where his breath has stilled in his throat. Seungkwan stares out into the water, jaw tight, and Seokmin allows himself to just look, for a moment, at this strange man who arrived in the strangest way, yet feels more vividly real than anyone he knows.
Finally, Seokmin opens his mouth and speaks, tentatively. “Where is home?”
Seungkwan’s face loosens slightly, and so does something in Seokmin’s chest. “It’s a place just like this, actually. Just higher. Brighter. Doesn’t take long to get there, either.” He pauses, then speaks so quietly Seokmin has to lean in to hear him beneath the sound of the wind on waves. “I can almost feel it, you know? It’s like it’s just overlapped on top of this world.”
Seokmin cuts the motor. Startled, Seungkwan turns to him, looking him full in the face for one of the first times since last night. Seokmin reaches for Seungkwan’s hand, sliding off his seat to his knees in order to avoid standing and tossing them both overboard. When he touches Seungkwan’s skin, it is warm, human.
“I promise,” Seokmin says, “I will help you get back.”
*
They don’t find the coat that day, or the next, or the next. Seungkwan sleeps on Seokmin’s extra yo, the one his sister uses once a year when she visits him for Seollal. On the floor in the dark bedroom, Seokmin finds himself watching Seungkwan’s chest rise and fall in Seokmin’s too-big shirts. His breaths are surprisingly deep for someone with such a birdlike frame.
After a week, Seungkwan starts riding in the passenger seat of Seokmin’s truck in the early morning, rumbling over volcanic paths to meet a small band of haenyeo at the cove and load their crates of shellfish and octopus into the boot. Then it’s off to the market in Seogwipo, a 45-minute drive that Seokmin fills by singing along to the radio, like he always does. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to bother Seungkwan that much.
In the afternoons, they go out in the boat, or Seungkwan swims out alone, moving with eerie ease through the water. The coat, Seungkwan described, is white, robe-like. Seokmin finds his eyes getting caught on every foamy-crested wave, every plastic bag that washes up on the black beach.
[FILL] this world and the next (pt. 2)
Seungkwan, however, has the uncanny ability to coax Seokmin into the light.
Though he’s seemingly carefree with his words, Seungkwan’s wit sometimes wraps Seokmin up in knots, startling him into brash laughter at the strangest moments. When Seokmin makes a lame comment to keep a conversation going, Seungkwan grabs it and gives it depth, and meaning. He’s serious and genuine about everything, unafraid to admit that he’s afraid to meet the halmeonis Seokmin works with (who adored him, of course), openly delighted about perfecting his first gimbap roll (“I’ve never really cooked for myself,” he admits). Though his insistent honesty is shallow—Seokmin still doesn’t know exactly why Seungkwan would be so nervous around new people or why he’s never cooked, though he has a host of hazy, magical theories—Seokmin can tell that it’s real, and it makes him feel thankful for Seungkwan’s trust, though he’s not sure if gratitude has ever been this thrilling and terrifying.
Two weeks pass, then three. Summer finishes its final pirouette and faints into the arms of autumn.
They go to the mall in Seogwipo, but at home, Seungkwan still wears Seokmin’s shirts, and his sweaters now, too. Some days, he stays home while Seokmin goes out—seated frozen at the low table in the kitchen, his face gray with distant longing. On these days, Seokmin always revisits the fear he felt that first day: What if I come back and he’s gone? What if I come back and he’s still here?
Most of the time, though, he just comes back to a slightly brightened Seungkwan—one who’s made lunch for them to share out on the stoop.
“It’s getting colder,” Seungkwan comments on one such day. Seokmin has to agree. They’re eating jumokbap and cup ramyeon while staring at the ocean, and the salted wind coming in from the water had bitten at his bare arms until he’d gone in to grab a sweatshirt. Slim gray clouds slither across the sky.
“Do you even get cold?” Seokmin asks around a mouthful of rice. Seungkwan tuts at him, reaching over to peel a shred of gim from Seokmin’s chin. Seokmin swallows a little too quick.
“Of course I do,” he says. “Just—it’s never hurt before.”
Seokmin’s eyebrows leap. “Does it hurt now?”
“Not yet, but almost.” Seungkwan sighs, hard. “It used to feel so good, actually. Summer never was my favorite time to go swimming. When me and my brothers would come down here in the winter—that was the best. It feels like you’re being scraped clean. Now it just stings.”
Seokmin freezes. “Wait. Your brothers.” He scrambles for his phone, pulls up the calendar app, cursing himself under his breath for not putting two and two together. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. They’re coming back, right? You said they come here once a month.”
“Seokmin-hyung. . .” Seungkwan starts, quietly, but then Seokmin sees it—the date. He puts his phone down, but Seungkwan won’t meet his eyes.
“Hey,” he soothes, piling up their scattered lunch dishes so he can scoot in and pull Seungkwan close to his side. “So the full moon was yesterday. It’ll come again, that you can count on. We’ll just meet them then.”
“Seokmin-hyung,” Seungkwan says again, louder this time. He shrugs Seokmin’s arm off his shoulder, draws away ever so slightly.
“Come on,” Seokmin urges. He smiles down at Seungkwan, hoping it hides the desperate pang he feels seeing Seungkwan so unreachable, so mysteriously distant. “Just think of it as an extended vacation. People here would kill to spend two months in Jeju. I’m not that bad to be around, huh?” He gives Seungkwan’s narrow shoulder what he hopes is a playful nudge.
Sharply, Seungkwan lets out a breath he seems to have been holding. “Stop.”
Seokmin does, his very heart stilling. “Okay.” He doesn’t quite know what to do; when Seungkwan refuses to unfreeze under his gaze, he turns to look instead out at the water.
This is the part of the island he could never get tired of. The ocean’s immense size is both terrifying and comforting. When his heart feels too big for his chest, he stands in front of the water and lets it fill his vision till all he sees is evershifting blue; when his fears feel too immense to hold, he holds his ears to the waves and let them whisper: You are a grain of sand on an endless beach. You are a single star in a sky of billions. In the grand spill of time, you are an insignificant moment. Isn’t it better to be too small to matter?
“I went swimming last night,” Seungkwan says, finally. Seokmin resists looking at him again, resists bending in like a sunflower to hear Seungkwan when his voice drops to a whisper. “I met them.”
“Your brothers?” Seokmin asks, after a moment. He sees Seungkwan nod in the corner of his eye. “Did you speak to them?”
Seungkwan nods again. “Yes.”
Fear, relief, and guilt strike Seokmin in a triple-punch. What if Seungkwan had simply slipped home last night, without so much as a goodbye? But then, isn’t that what they have been searching for: a way home? Seokmin’s feelings don’t matter if it means Seungkwan can return—this he knows and believes in desperately, but at the moment, he cannot help but feel thankful and relieved that he is still here, that they are still together.
“Tell me honestly,” Seungkwan speaks again, then pauses, his lips open around the words to come. He blinks wetly, then continues. “You have it, right?”
When he realizes what Seungkwan is saying, Seokmin’s hands go cold. “What are you talking about?”
“What else, hyung?” Seungkwan’s mouth twists in frustration, and Seokmin is reminded of that first night, afloat in the dark, Seungkwan sharp and defensive and, he now realizes, so scared. “Why else would I still be here? How could I be feeling like this—” he stumbles, swallows, then keeps going, “—if you don’t have it?”
Seokmin is scared, too, but he has to know. “Feeling like what?”
Seungkwan finally looks at him. Tears track down his face, and Seokmin can almost taste their salt. “Like you have a part of me.”
Seokmin stands, startling both Seungkwan and himself. His sock feet slip on the gravel. “What do you want me to do, Seungkwan?” he says, shocked at how his voice comes out pleading. “How can I prove to you that I don’t have it?” How could you think I would do that to you, he doesn’t say. How can I have part of you when it is you who has me.
To his credit, Seungkwan looks just as miserable and confused as Seokmin feels. “I don’t know, hyung,” he says, allowing himself to really cry, now. “Do you think I know how it works? All my life, it’s just been a story—don’t let anyone take your coat, or you can’t come home. You’re trapped. Up until last night, I was hoping that that’s all it was—a story.” He sniffles, wrapping his arms around himself, hands hidden in the sleeves of Seokmin’s old army sweater. “But they wouldn’t take me back.”
Realizing how much distance he’s put between them, Seokmin rushes in to sit next to Seungkwan on the stoop again, who, this time, lets himself be held. Seokmin feels the flutter of Seungkwan’s heartbeat against his chest, the ever-fascinating reminder that Seungkwan is real and alive, and possibly, like Seokmin, a mere mortal. Is that what he wants? He shakes away the thought. This isn’t about you, Seokmin, he thinks, fierce and sudden.
It is as if Seungkwan has read Seokmin’s mind when he says, not looking up at Seokmin but instead turning into his neck, his nose sliding gently across Seokmin’s throat, “I think I need to go.”
Seokmin tries not to think about Seungkwan’s silky hair against his lips, the sturdy frame of his shoulders in Seokmin’s arms. “Because you don’t believe me?”
Seungkwan shakes with a sigh. The wind around them gets even colder. “Because I want to.”
*
Seungkwan leaves the next day, with one of Seokmin’s suitcases full of mostly Seokmin’s clothes (a fact in which Seokmin finds his one strange comfort—that if the ownership of a person’s clothing has power, then perhaps he will remain, in a way, Seungkwan’s). They’ve decided that his first goal is to see how far he can go; the second is to see if he is pulled in any certain direction, both hoping that by some instinct he will be reunited with the coat, wherever it may be. What they don’t discuss is also twofold. If he is tethered to Seokmin’s place, it surely must mean that Seokmin is holding him captive; if he finds himself aimless, it must mean that the coat is lost completely, either to the ocean or to some nebulous realm between this world and the next.
Seokmin drives him to the city. He walks him into the airport, finds an ATM, stuffs the cash he withdraws in Seungkwan’s coat pocket without letting him count the bills.
“I’ll be fine,” Seungkwan says, smiling wanly. “I technically have way more life experience than you, hyung.”
“Then why do you keep calling me hyung?” Seokmin jokes back, weakly.
Seungkwan shrugs. He looks strange under the fluorescent lights, surrounded by so many people, so many shades of black and gray and beige. He’s even smudged concealer under his eyes, which Seokmin thinks does less to perfect his skin and more to give the impression that Seungkwan has flaws—that he is one of everybody else. He isn’t, though—this Seokmin knows. Though he has watched Seungkwan learn hunger and fatigue, he is still different. Perhaps only Seokmin can feel it, but the way that just being around Seungkwan makes him feel universally important, like this world and the next exist for him, makes him both sure that Seungkwan has not lost his magic and desperate that he never does.
He is shaken by his thoughts by Seungkwan closing the distance between them and wrapping him in a firm hug. “Thank you,” he whispers into Seokmin’s shoulder, and Seokmin cannot speak, only able to hold him as tight as he can until Seungkwan lets go, turns purposefully, and walks away into the terminal.
And then he is gone.
*
Fall freezes over into winter, which in turn blooms into spring. Seokmin finds it depressingly easy to return to his routine: boat days and dock days and market days blurring into a long expanse of time that he can only barely keep track of by walking out to the water each morning to feel the air, the water, and the sand. Some days it will take minutes before he realizes he needs a coat—other days he will stand there for even longer, till the clouds on the distant horizon take on shapes: a thin-legged deer, hair dried in salted swoops, a pair of bare feet propped up on the dash of his truck. Eventually, though, these too fade into the wind.
And then, on a blazing hot day in June, a man in a white coat appears at the other end of the beach.
Seokmin’s fixing his neighbor’s net again, cursing as he rearranges its tangles across the gravel in front of his house that merges into sand. When he sees him, he half expects to see an arrow protruding from his side, like the last time something approached him along the coast.
This time, though, he breaks into a run. The ocean recedes, opening a plain of firm, wet sand for him to dash across as, with the wind at his back, Seungkwan does too.
When Seungkwan runs into his arms, it feels like Seokmin is holding the sun. The width of his shoulders, the scent of his hair: everything about Seungkwan is exactly as he remembered. Except for one thing.
“You found it,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at Seungkwan’s face as he draws the material of the coat through his fingers. It is fine, yet heavy, fitted with a tie around his chest and loose panels around his hips. Underneath, he is wearing jeans, and their cuffs are wet with seawater. He looks perfect.
“I did,” Seungkwan replies, and when he raises a hand to cup Seokmin’s cheek, Seokmin nearly stops breathing. “I’m sorry,” he says, terrifyingly sincere. “I should have believed you.”
“It’s okay,” Seokmin breathes, and he means it. He has so many questions, but suddenly, they don’t seem to matter: this is it. Seungkwan’s going home. The realization comes with such overwhelming sorrow and joy that Seokmin finds himself clinging to Seungkwan, to his coat, like he could never let go. “Thanks for coming to see me before you go,” he manages; he doesn’t know what else to say.
His hand still holding Seokmin’s face, Seungkwan stares at him for a long, bright moment, before rising up on his toes to kiss him.
The kiss is shocking—Seokmin can’t remember the last time he was kissed, but he knows it didn’t feel like this: Seungkwan holding him steady as the thrill, which threatens to knock him over like a giant ocean wave, melts into sunlight-warmth, and the taste of him, sweet and familiar, bursts on his tongue. He wants to drink him in; he wants to keep him in his mouth forever; he wants to make him a home that is better than any other world could be; he believes that he can.
“You don’t have to let go,” Seungkwan murmurs against his lips. When Seokmin draws back to stare at him, feeling, as he always did, like Seungkwan could read his mind, ever forced to work in double time to keep up with him, Seungkwan just smiles, the wind ruffling his hair.
“I’m home.”
Re: [FILL] this world and the next (pt. 2)
Re: [FILL] this world and the next (pt. 2)