2022 Round 2: AUs
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
How it works
Prompting
Filling
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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Totally back in love.
Major Tags: Idolverse, Rock Band, any sort of Celeb setting
Additional Tags: N/A
Do Not Wants: None
Prompt: Summer of Like AU. Yes, as in the 2005 Pete/Mikey Warped Tour romance. Primer/manifesto linked for the unfamiliar, but essentially: Summer romance that fades out but never truly goes away. "Sorry every song's about you."
[FILL] that one summer i can't help but return to
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: summer feels, ambiguous relationships, yearning, uncertainty on feelings, idolverse, summer romance that never truly goes away, implied sexual content,
Permission to remix: Yes
a/n: hello op! it's me again! this fic is very much full of feelings and i wrote this with absolutely no idea where i'm going with it. i am not familiar with the summer of like and fob and mcr but i read through the manifesto and got hooked on the way pete's journals were so inexplicably full of Feelings and melancholy in a way (like, the vibes...) and this thing was born. it's probably a bit of a mess. but i hope it meets your expectations? enjoy:)
***
The summer Jihoon spent, alone, with Soonyoung is the summer that remains evergreen in Jihoon’s mind. He supposes there isn’t anything truly resembling solitude when every aspect of his life is stuffed with meetings and deadlines and expectations. It’s what he signed up for, it’s true. They were never fully alone, no matter what corner of South Korea, or the world, for that matter, they tried to hide themselves in.
But there’s something about heat-sticky summer air bloated with music and unrestrained laughter through open windows. Something about the freedom and joy that tasted like the youth he never fully got to grow into. Something about going to Jeju-do simply because they want to and they can. Something about it all that can make him forget it all; forget to check over his shoulder for cameras and fan swarms, forget to check to notifications on his phone from their manager.
He doesn’t remember the details of how Soonyoung managed to coax an entire free summer for them.
But here. He can list everything with heartstopping clarity from that summer. Orange and pink sunsets, clouds like smears on the horizon. The overly noisy splash of water at the Shinhwa water park and the shrieks of kids fucking around in the pools. The way Soonyoung’s bare chest gleams dark against the sun, water crystalline down his throat and arch of his neck. Curled up on the bed with the windows thrown open and welcoming like a fresh beginning. Frank Ocean soft through the air, the sheets damp under the indents of their knees. Summer heat shimmery against the darkening sky.
He’s never certain in those moments. Those moments when Soonyoung looks over as the shadows piece themselves together in the sky and Jihoon can only faintly see the outlines of Soonyoung’s face. Those moments when Soonyoung presses their lips softly together and Jihoon feels everything spill free like an open wound and the urge to press it all into song lyrics overwhelms and Jihoon unleashes it all upon Soonyoung’s skin. Shatters his words against the arch and roll of Soonyoung’s body and reforms them into a type of tactile worship he hadn’t known he was capable of. And then they're sticky and sweaty and so happy and Jihoon laughs, embarrassed, rolls away.
And then standing at the beach the next morning, the sun barely awake, Soonyoung certainly not, still sprawled on the bed, where Jihoon’s left him, to where he will inevitably return. But having this moment, rolling around thoughts in his head. Waves foamy over his toes, waiting for something to happen, for something to develop and some conversation to take place. He calculates every angle of every eyebrow tilt from the night before and wonders if there’s some coded love message in the gasps and grunts fused into his memory.
The ocean is still dark and ambiguous out far under the just breaking light. Jihoon decides that he has an aversion to the unknown and leaves the beach behind him, breathing around the well in his chest.
Soonyoung still isn’t awake when he toes off his shoes at the door and wipes his feet clean of sand. There is fondness, rushing like the tide through his chest. It’s pulling up some seaweed-like feelings he isn’t ready to deal with. So he shuts off his brain and climbs back into bed. It’s sweltering and he shouldn’t be pressing back into Soonyoung’s arms but he can’t help it. Soonyoung pulls him in unconsciously anyway, he tries to reason. He goes to sleep.
Summer swings around and goes. Jihoon wakes up one day and it’s time to go back, to the studio, to the dorm, to the rest of the members. Time to step back into the idol personas they both left in the trunk of their car.
The advent of autumn blows their summer apart like dead leaves and Jihoon drives them back to Seoul with his head not quite down from the clouds and giddiness still wrapping like messy velvet ribbons around his heart. They don’t speak much on the drive back. Jihoon feels distinctly like he’s leaving a part of himself behind.
When they pull up to the dorm building and step out, Soonyoung reaches for Jihoon’s hand instinctively, the way they’d always done at Jeju-do. Jihoon shakes him off like his body still holds implicit memory of shaking off summer bugs and mosquitoes. Perhaps there are kinder ways to remind him that they are now back in the prodding range of cameras and reporters and eyes and ears. There definitely are. Soonyoung moves to leave a noticeable distance between them.
They settle back into schedules with professional efficiency. Jihoon tries to rid himself of summer memories with far less success. On hotter nights he still opens his phone to the page of notes he had impulsively created.
There is only one line he’d penned from all those nights at Jeju-do.
Hot and miserable and so in love.
***
with the lack of frame of reference i had i based a lot of this on what i read in the manifesto.
Re: [FILL] that one summer i can't help but return to
Re: [FILL] that one summer i can't help but return to
Re: [FILL] that one summer i can't help but return to
"...forget to check [the] notifications on his phone from their manager." my bad my bad
[Fill] This Whole Damn City Thinks It Needs You(but not as much as I do)
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: rock band, emo elder nostalgia, very gentle Pete!Scoups Mikey!Wonu except i’m taking some liberties
Permission to remix: Please ask
A/N: OKAY BET
Wonwoo is twenty years old when he meets Seungcheol for the first time, though he’s always been in Wonwoo’s periphery. They both play bass. That’s what catches Wonwoo’s attention. He always pays a little more attention to the bass players, the same way Mingyu always knows who is left handed. Seungcheol is like the kid brother playing behind Jeonghan’s smooth, racy vocals. His hair is jet back and wavy, eyeliner smudged under his lashes. He’s dressed in skinny jeans and a checkered long sleeve shirt and Wonwoo can’t take his eyes off the way his hands move over the strings. There is a quiet confidence about him. A steadiness, just like the bass line he lays down. Wonwoo wonders if you can idolize your peers or if that’s just jealousy.
Wonwoo is almost shy on stage, the amped up bass shaking through his skinny frame, the lyrics he pens coming from someone else’s mouth. Joshua only gets what Wonwoo is trying to say about half the time. That’s ok. Wonwoo doesn’t want him to understand everything. He doesn’t want anyone to understand that much about him.
It isn’t until Wonwoo meets Seungcheol that lyrics start to mean anything.
They're touring on a summer festival circuit. The usual suspects fill the tents that pass for dressing rooms. Wonwoo is tracing his eyelids with liner when Seungcheol and Jeonghan walk into the tent. Jeonghan and Joshua go way back, friends of friends or something like that. They all sort of exist in the same spheres. Wonwoo knows someone who knows someone who knows the legendary Lee Jihoon. It’s all connected.
Seungcheol spots him through the mirror and grins, walking over to him with a wave.
“Wonwoo, right?” he asks. “I watched your set in Chicago. You guys really get it.”
Wonwoo fights and fails to keep the smirk off his face. “Get what?”
“The scene. You have what the girls want.” Seungcheol’s eyes meet his. “The guys, too.”
Wonwoo has to drop the pencil before he pokes his eye out. It doesn’t clatter as loudly as he wants it to. “Y-yeah? You really think so?”
Seungcheol winks. “I know so. We should hang out after the show. You know, compare notes.”
There are things that Wonwoo has been hiding that no one knows. Bisexuality is one of those things. He’s staring at Seungcheol through a grimy mirror and Seungcheol is breathtaking. He’s hot. He’s implying things that everyone in the scene says but only means for the fans. He’s gotten his hopes up a few too many times to feel this way about Seungcheol. He takes the leap anyway.
“I’d like that,” Wonwoo says.
Jeonghan calls out to Seungcheol. He nods before he walks back to the other two men. It feels like he’s run a marathon, his heart skipping in his chest. Seungcheol wants to see him after the show.
Yeah. Why not?
Here are the things they do together over the course of the summer. Seungcheol takes his jacket even though it shouldn’t be able to fit him. It does. Wonwoo spots him in it during their set and nearly misses his cue. They smoke on the balcony of their hotel and watch the sunrise. Wonwoo plays a song with them, taking over the bass part while Seungcheol wanders closer to the crowd. Something shifts, so small Wonwoo almost doesn’t notice it.
I wish you were my bass, Seungcheol says a few weeks later, typed in black letters on his journal. Not just my friend. In the picture posted above it, Seungcheol is laying on the stage, hips canted up against his instrument.
A few more weeks and Wonwoo presses Seungcheol against the hotel door and kisses him, wet and messy and frantic. It feels like something clawing its way out of him. Something he has to do while there’s still time. Or maybe before it’s too late.
Seungcheol fucks him as the rising sun spreads across the bed, blazing orange when he comes, like his entire body is on fire. Seungcheol follows right behind, their foreheads pressed together while he shakes through it. Wonwoo breathes in the air he breathes out. It feels like they are one person. They could be like this forever, Wonwoo thinks dizzily. They could keep doing this as long as they want.
The thing about summer is that it ends. The leaves change, the days shorten, the air grows cold enough to steal your breath. Seungcheol and Wonwoo part ways at the end of the festival. Of course they do. There are albums to write, tours to perform. They have so much to do and how much longer will they really be on top of the scene?
The first time Wonwoo realizes that Seungcheol is writing about him is when he hears a journal entry from that summer put to music.
And I cast a spell over the west to make you think of me
The same way I think of you
This is a love song in my own way
Wonwoo laughs, a quick, sharp thing. It feels like ripping open a wound. It feels like talking about something that died, something long past. Something that they can never get back. Seungcheol never said it was about him, but Wonwoo was there. Wonwoo knows everything that happened over the summer.
Two can play at this game.
Joshua gives him a strange look when he hands over the lyrics. He sings them like he’s angry, and that’s all Wonwoo wants. Really. If the way Joshua and Jeonghan look at each other is anything to go by, maybe Joshua really does understand what Wonwoo wants to say.
Put another X on the calendar, summer's on its deathbed
There is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends
And I meant everything I said that night
I will come back to life
But only for you
Wonwoo wants Seungcheol to message him. Summer exists in this liminal space. Like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the man falls asleep on a train and finds the perfect town. Like no matter how hard Wonwoo tries, he will never be able to get back to that summer. He thinks about the way Seungcheol looked at him, the sun casting warm light over his profile. Wonwoo should have told him he was beautiful. He should have told him that he wanted to try to make this work.
Seungcheol had the same chance. He wonders why neither of them took it.
The years pass. Wonwoo stops making music, but Seungcheol continues on. Pain turns to fondness. It’s almost a fun game now, finding the things Seungcheol is saying to him.
If you were church, I'd get on my knees
Confess my love, I'd know where to be
My sanctuary, you're holy to me
Seungcheol sends him a birthday message on Twitter. Wonwoo retweets it, ignores the way his heart flips and plummets into his stomach. It’s strange. They were never together, so they never broke up. In fact, they never stopped being friends. Wonwoo waits for the day Seungcheol finally pens what Wonwoo wishes he could say.
And then it happens. The song hits Wonwoo like a physical blow. He doesn’t even know what time it is. He picks up his phone and presses Seungcheol’s name and he holds his breath long enough that he wonders what the hell he’s doing.
“Wonwoo?” Seungcheol asks, voice bleary and rough.
What if he’s halfway across the world? What is he thinking?
“Maybe this is all my fault,” Wonwoo says.
“What are you—”
“Maybe you really don’t know what that summer meant to me,” Wonwoo says, cutting him off. “I’ve never stopped thinking about it. Being your friend, being…whatever we were that summer, is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I’m definitely not awake enough for this,” Seungcheol says, half a laugh escaping him. “Do you really think I’m some secret romantic? That I’ve been writing songs about you since that summer?”
Wonwoo has known Seungcheol since he was twenty years old. Decades. They’ve been friends for decades. He grins even though Seungcheol can’t see him.
“You already said you were sorry every song is about me.”
Seungcheol groans. Wonwoo starts the song again, lets the soft sound of Jeonghan’s voice carry Seungcheol’s heart straight to him.
I'll be as honest as you'll let me
I miss your early morning company
If you get me
You are my favorite what if
You are my best I'll never know
And I'm starting to forget
Just what summer ever meant to you
What did it ever mean to you?
Maybe there’s a way to get back to that summer. If they both want it.
Re: [Fill] This Whole Damn City Thinks It Needs You(but not as much as I do)
me, giggling this morning: this one will get leesa me, on smack cam on the big screen rn: hey op what the FUCK
Re: [Fill] This Whole Damn City Thinks It Needs You(but not as much as I do)
Re: [Fill] This Whole Damn City Thinks It Needs You(but not as much as I do)
"Pain turns to fondness. It’s almost a fun game now, finding the things Seungcheol is saying to him."
OOF.
what a great read :'''')