17hols fills: round 2 + 3

[hyojungss]

originally posted for 17hols round 2 (aus) and 3 (screencaps). will continue to update either through round 3 or 4

round 2 prompts filled:

1. bury us alive - seungkwan/chan - au - 1100w

round 3 prompts filled:

1. eviscerated - junhui/soonyoung - au - 1200w

*

#1 - 1100w - bury us alive

Ship/Member: Seungkwan/Chan
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: fire emblem awakening fusion au, non-graphic depictions of violence, risen are actually undead = this is also kind of a zombie apocalypse au
Permission to remix: Yes

A/N: yes i accidentally got myself with my own prompt... this is based on the script of the future past 2 dlc from fire emblem awakening so there is some dialogue taken verbatim. action is not my strength, but... yeah. thank you to ten for looking this over for me [seungkwan = inigo, chan = owain. hansol healer. mingyu wolfboy]

***

A legion of the undead approaches from the rear of the group, smelling human flesh. A rancid wind blows past them. Chan shivers.

“Mingyu can run it,” Seungkwan says, assuming authority, “Hansol, guard him.”

Hansol nods, healing staff in one hand, Mingyu’s in the other. Mingyu does not let his face betray emotions as he transforms, clutching the satchel of stones tightly against his chest. All four of them are already covered in blood wounds. There’s a particularly nasty bite mark on Seungkwan’s shoulder that Hansol’d only half-patched up before they had to run again.

In between them and the castle Ylisstol is five miles of Risen territory. There Seungcheol is waiting to receive two of the five gemstones needed to activate the only shield capable of withstanding the fell dragon. After that he will take the sword Falchion in hand and risk his life to slay him. In other words, they are literally the hope of the earth.

Under his breath Chan says something about how he’s got more stamina and Seungkwan rolls his eyes.

“You know I’m not trying to insult you, we just have to do our part, that’s all,” he says. “Seungcheol assigned us to this team so that we could protect Mingyu, not steal his job because we’re too confident in ourselves to realize any of us could die today, no matter how good at running we are. Look at how much farther ahead of us they’ve made it already, Mingyu can carry Hansol on his back.”

“Fine, whatever,” Chan says. “Stray Risen incoming on your left.” Seungkwan lobs his tomahawk at one and it hits him square in the neck. Chan stabs the other in the gut and is nearly choked in the neck before the parasites leave their host.

“Just because you won races at the castle’s athletic festival when you were a kid doesn’t mean you’re all that,” Seungkwan says, panting.

“Neither does winning jousting tournaments against Jeonghan in the finals,” Chan retorts. “Him getting there was a fluke and he didn’t even try.”

“That was one year!”

“Look,” Chan says, ignoring his glares, “we have to cross the bridge.”

The cliffs approach ahead - on the way to retrieve the stones they’d taken the low route, but there’s no time for that anymore, and the only way to cross without pegasi is a long rope bridge. To fall into the depths below would be a death sentence.

Behind them, the horde of Risen is so much closer than it’d been five minutes ago.

“I don’t think we can make it across before they start rampaging,” Seungkwan says, looking at the scene before them.

Chan wipes sweat from his forehead, the taste of iron ringing in his mouth. “The closer we let the Risen get to them, the harder it’ll be to keep us all safe. At least Mingyu and Hansol are almost to the other side, but Hansol doesn’t even have a weapon.”

“Well, yeah,” Seungkwan says, a little bit hopelessly. “Hansol is good at his job though—”

“Stop talking about jobs,” Chan snaps. “It’s the end of the world, we don’t need to specialize.”

“You don’t think you were put on this mission for a reason?”

Chan slows down just to look at him.

“Don’t stop running, you idiot,” Seungkwan shouts, without looking back.

From behind Seungkwan looks strong, muscles defined in a way Chan hadn’t ever really noticed. When he thinks about it, it’s been like this since they were young— Seungkwan gives a feeling of security, protection, to anyone who merely stands next to him. Chan would never admit it now but maybe if things were better and they had the free time to give speeches about who they looked up to, Chan would call Seungkwan his hero.

“You should cross the bridge,” Chan says. “I’ll stay.”

Now Seungkwan can’t help but freeze in his tracks. “You’ll do WHAT?”

“I’ll fight,” Chan says. “You tease me all the time about being cocky but deep down you know I can fight, and I’ve fought multiple Risen at once. I wasn’t on Seungcheol’s guard for two years doing nothing. And once you make it to the other side, I’ll cut the bridge down.”

“I can’t do that,” Seungkwan says, facing him. Begging him.

“Do you want me to die,” he asks slowly, “or do you want all of us to die?”

“You don’t think there’s any other way?”

“There isn’t,” Chan says affirmatively. “This gives us the best chances of survival. And by us I mean... everyone who’s waiting for us in Ylisstol. I was top of the Military Tactics class my year, too,” he adds to give some encouragement, but Seungkwan isn’t smiling at all.

“Chan...”

Chan puts on the bravest face he can muster. It comes easier than he thought it would. “I know this isn’t going to be easy for you, Seungkwan. But I really am glad that I got to spend my last moments with you. Now go! We’ve wasted so much time. You have to catch up to Mingyu and Hansol, and protect them. You have to survive.”

The mob of Risen thunders down the path behind them, surrounding the cliff’s edge. Seungkwan just stares at him.

Chan can only keep up his front of bravery for so long before he starts shaking. “Um... Seungkwan? This is the part where you go.”

“I’m sorry, Chan. I can’t do it.”

Seungkwan turns to the bridge posts and with large, wide swings of his axe, he cuts through the rope so that the heavy wooden planks crash against the cliff on the other side, the impact echoing through the valley.

In the distance Mingyu and Hansol hear that sound and turn around in horror.

Chan, too, is frozen in shock. “Seungkwan... why would you do that?!”

“You know why!”

“But my epic speech... We didn’t both have to die!”

Seungkwan takes him by the shoulders. “Your idea, while tactically sound or whatever you want to call it, is unquestionably ridiculous. What am I supposed to tell everyone else? That the baby of the army who we practically raised ourselves decided to put on a brave face and sacrifice himself, and I just let him?”

“I’m— I’m not a baby,” Chan interjects, stammering, but there’s absolutely no bite to his words.

“No, it’s just not going to happen,” Seungkwan continues. “They’d never let me go for it, and I’d never let myself go either. It’d be unforgivable. I don’t care what you have to say.”

“But we’re going to die, Seungkwan!” The Risen close in around them, and Chan raises his sword.

“Stop,” Seungkwan says, looking Chan in the eyes, the most fearless person he’s ever seen. “We’re not going to go down without a fight. We can save the world together. Don't you want to be there to see it?”

A/N: the next chan line goes “heh i guess i was too legendary to die anyway”

because it would be tasty: the other teams are 96z as seungcheol’s guard / jihanseokhao for the other stones

*

*

#2 - 1200w - eviscerated

Ship/Member: Junhui/Soonyoung, Junhui & Minghao
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: the thought experiment of soonhui exes, au
Permission to remix: Yes
A/N: also heavily inspired by everything by muna

***

Wen Junhui
hey do you want to come over
i’ll make you pancakes for lunch :D

Xu Minghao
either you want something from me or you bought another contraption on the dark web?
A PANCAKE MAKER?
the plastic in those has to be bad for your health, I won’t eat them

Wen Junhui
fine, i’ll make them in the pan! mingyu showed me once, it can’t be that hard
and yes, i need your help

*

Junhui’s pancakes are rubbery and awful. Minghao eats the dubious food at the coffee table, seeing as Junhui’s proper kitchen table is covered in unsorted mail.

“I’m disgusted, you know that.” He leans his weight on his palms, flat against the beige carpet, wool pressing into his skin. “Mingyu would be ashamed.”

“He only taught me once.” Junhui pouts, and Minghao almost, almost feels a little bad for saying it out loud. “Never mind that, I did what I said and I fed you.” He lifts the half-eaten plate from in front of Minghao’s face and promptly deposits it into the kitchen sink. The sunlight streams nicely into his apartment, it’s a shame he lives here alone. Beautiful boy who makes enough from his stray commercial acting gigs to pay full rent without living here full-time, even if it’s in the suburbs of the city.

“Okay, so what did you want from me?”

“A little company,” Junhui admits with a flair of drama, “and also, I need help clearing my phone storage.”

Minghao gives him a look. “You made me come here for that? You’re not—” He stops, and clears his throat.

“I said, I wanted a little company,” Junhui repeats. “I said that part first.” He smiles a little sadly.

Minghao does feel bad now. And he’s not trying to make it his job to take care of Junhui but every time he comes over here the guilt sorts of eats at him, as if it’s his fault Junhui’s alone.

“What’s on your phone?”

“I don’t know,” Junhui says, “it won’t tell me why it’s full, the storage screen just loads forever. I need space to download that new game everyone’s talking about, Wonwoo said there’s an event going on so I better hurry up and get it.”

Minghao rolls his eyes. “Give it here.”

Ten minutes later Minghao’s booted up Junhui’s laptop and connected his phone via cable. A glass of lemonade is sitting next to it, but Minghao hasn’t touched it because Junhui never puts enough sugar in. “You have a shit ton of videos on here, Junhui. Do you never delete anything?”

“Oh really? I didn’t realize they took up that much space,” Junhui says. He leans over Minghao’s shoulder to get a look at what he’s scrolling through. “Hey— that’s—”

Minghao closes the file explorer window.

“You know, when people break up with someone and don’t stay friends, they usually get rid of all this stuff. Things that remind them of, well, their ex.”

“I didn’t see any harm in it,” Junhui says, arms crossed over the coffee table, looking away from Minghao.

“You have so many pictures with him,” Minghao says.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Minghao splutters. “Well—”

To be fair about it. Minghao doesn’t exactly have an objective standpoint on this situation. He introduced them at the dance studio, he was the one that encouraged the ever-nervous Junhui to talk to Soonyoung at all. And before long Junhui was talking about him all the time, Soonyoung this, Soonyoung that, “Soonyoung always sends fun emoticons to my animal pics, Soonyoung’s so cute, Soonyoung doesn’t ignore my texts like you do sometimes,” and Minghao was equally happy for him and equally resentful about it. Soonyoung’s all-consuming love can burn out, he’d seen it before. Everyone else is left in the aftermath. In the end he was right that it wasn’t sustainable.

Minghao wishes he didn’t believe in manifestation.

“Do you look at these often?”

Junhui grabs the phone, takes it gently in his hands. “Here, let me show you my favorites.”

First is the picture of the four of them at the dance academy, standing together after the showcase in which Minghao, Soonyoung and Chan performed for family and friends. Minghao thought Junhui didn’t have enough friends sometimes, which was more obvious when he was awake and alone late at night and Minghao, trying to fix his sleep schedule, would charge his phone on the other side of the room. He woke up one morning and at the top of his most recent notifications was you’re all I have, you know? Junhui never means to guilt anyone, which made the feeling worse.

Soonyoung bowed three times at the end of their performance, sweaty but grinning like he’d won the world or something identically huge. The image of Junhui clapping stood out to Minghao amongst everyone else in the crowd and he thought— well, why had he never thought of it before?

“This is Junhui,” he’d told them next to the mirrors, and Chan shook his hand and smiled, and the first thing out of Soonyoung’s mouth, to absolutely no one’s surprise, was “Do you know how to dance?”

Junhui didn’t at all but was willing to embarrass himself in front of the three of them after the lights were dimmed and all the other families went home. When the night was over Junhui had Soonyoung and Chan’s numbers and Minghao felt a forged sort of relief. Minghao forwarded the photo of them that’d been taken on Chan’s phone over to Junhui, and Junhui replied thank you with a bunch of heart emojis. For the first time, Minghao sent them back.

Second is a selfie of Soonyoung and Junhui, posing outside next to metal statues of an otter and frog respectively. ^^ they look like you guys, Soonyoung said, after Junhui’d sent the picture in their group chat. The botanical garden in the city has a kids’ playground and in its center is the pond where those statues have sat for many years. Minghao remembers being told about this date— “It’s not a date,” Junhui had complained, but Minghao knew him well enough to know when not to believe him— and at the time Junhui hadn’t been able to stop smiling.

Third is a video cropped out of a behind-the-scenes film of Soonyoung and Junhui practicing tiger poses at the back of a commercial set. On the table next to them is a cardboard holder and two drinks that Soonyoung must have brought for when Junhui was on break, the ice melting away as they spend more of it talking and joking around than anything else. Soonyoung’s wearing his fluffy vest, it must have been the following autumn.

Fourth is a Snapchat of Soonyoung lying in a field of wildflowers. His eyes are closed and the wind blows into the microphone, brushing petals into his charcoal-colored hair. The camera inches closer to his face, and when it reaches past his nose Soonyoung’s eyes open wide. The text on the screen reads “Jeju”. Minghao doesn’t know when this one is from.

Fifth is a photo of a striped kitten, walking across a brick wall in what looks like a local neighborhood.

“I saw it last week, it reminded me of him,” Junhui says softly. “I wanted to text him and hear him say it was cute.”

Minghao takes a sip of the lemonade. It’s sweet, after all.

“Did Soonyoung teach you how to make lemonade too?”

“He’s all over my life,” Junhui says, devastated. “I can’t get rid of him.”

Minghao takes a deep breath in.

“You don’t have to,” he says, creating a new folder on Junhui’s desktop, naming it Things to Remember. “I’ll help you.”