2023 comment ficathon

[hyojungss]

format taken from 2020 MINI COMMENT FICATHON by 0323 with permission! it just felt so weird being december 24th and not having 17hols around and i'm glad other people felt similarly T____T

general rules:

• one prompt per comment, try to limit yourself to two prompts per day
• anyone can participate with no deadlines, word requirements or fandom restrictions but the intention is to be a casual place for prompts and writing, not to replace an event like 17hols
• multiple fills per prompt is fine
• cross-posting is fine
• anonymous prompting or posting is fine
• filling your own prompt is fine
• please warn for sensitive content at your discretion 
• link to view this page in site style: x

prompting:

 

Please use the following format:

 

Characters/Ship (optional) - Prompt (song lyrics/quote etc. etc.) - Canon/AU/Either (optional)

 

If you choose AU, describe what AU you are looking for. e.g. High School AU, Spies AU, etc. You can choose “either” if you have no preference between AU and canon.

 

 

filling:

 

Respond by posting your fic as a reply to the original prompt.

 

In the comment title box, title your fics with:

 

Title – Ship – Universe

 

 

IMPORTANT: If your fic is rated R, then format your comment title box this way:

 

Title – Ship – Universe – [R]


list of fills:
as far as the eye can see by luckyzukky - nmixx lily 
just follow the feeling by sleepyshamrocks - loona kim lip/haseul
the brain has corridors surpassing material place by virginsuicide - svt wonwoo/junhui
crossroads by goaltender - f1 charles/carlos 
pink and black and blue by luckyzukky - ive wonyoung/yujin 
today seems to be the last day by bookishdagger - svt minghao/bts jungkook
starlight by lachrymosy - bae suzy/got7 jinyoung
coherence by lachrymosy - svt minghao/mingyu
game theory by kisoap - pristin nayoung/svt jeonghan
and none of it matters and none of it ends by deadwine - girl's day yura & sojin
bleeding out, then it was done by pantomimes - jessica/tiffany
cool about it by pantomimes - wjsn bona/dawon
don't read the last page by intoparadise - fromis_9 jiwon/nagyung
usurper by stickie - ive yujin/wonyoung
doomsday (death of me) by pantomimes - snsd yoona/seohyun
they might as well be looking at us by kisoap - bae suzy/got7 jinyoung
the more i remember, the more you fade by deadwine - 2521 yurim/heedo
love fool by luckyzukky - akb48/iz*one honda hitomi/yamauchi mizuki
dwindling mercurial high by kisoap - pristin nayoung/svt jeonghan

Comments

[luckyzukky]

any - "how long can you lick a wound before the taste of blood no longer scares you — i'm asking for a friend" (source) - canon

(i hope it's ok to comment a prompt even though we barely know each other i just like ficathons!)

[luckyzukky]

any - "i'm so alive right now" (source) - canon

as far as the eye can see - none - canon nmixx

[luckyzukky]

(i hope self fills are ok!)

as far as the eye can see

[infrequencies]

any - Not all phantoms are bound by floorboards and walls. Don’t you walk around like a haunted house, too? (source) - any

the brain has corridors surpassing material place - wonwoo/junhui - alternate universe

[virginsuicide]

Wonwoo wakes up to the sound of a heart drumming, beating loudly. Hallway shadows have long receded, painting his cheek with the stripes of the night that has long gone. In its absence grows the lightness of the sun, flickering away the last remnants of his memories. It’s afternoon already, and he still hasn’t left. He hasn’t left since.

“Wonu-ya?” Jun’s voice peeks through the haze, hesitant and shaky in the silence like the last beacon of a low-leaded battery weakly dispersing the darkness. “It’s afternoon already, don’t you wanna head back?”

“How long have I been asleep?” It hurts Wonwoo to talk, parched throat scratching into the timbre of his voice.

Jun takes a look at his watch. “It’s 5:17.”

Wonwoo’s been out almost the whole day. He doesn’t remember the day before, only that a splitting headache is there to remind him of a hangover. He takes Junhui’s outstretched hand with a grimace more than a grateful grin.

Afternoon shadows glimmer on Junhui’s face. And whereas the afternoon light from half-open windows is carving him through like a dense paper cutout, the angles on Jun’s face are carved into the back of Wonwoo’s mind.

They are walking hand-in-hand, together out of the house, and into the waiting sunset. But Junhui pauses, hesitant, his hand suddenly leaving Wonwoo’s, disengaging. The lines on his face grow deep.

Wonwoo flickers him a look, perplexed.

“I-I don’t think I can do this,” Junhui mutters after a moment, seconds away from the sunlight, his eyes failing to meet the other man’s. The door is left ajar from the previous night, or was it?

From him to the door are shadows, multiple particles of shadows conglomerating like shrubs and vines and plants of a thick foray. Headlights of a nearby car are peeling away, boring holes into the wall of Wonwoo’s concentration. Junhui’s own shadow is becoming more and more like an apparition.

Junhui starts again before Wonwoo can think, shying away from the threshold where light can reach them. Half of his face remains hidden. “Stay with me,” the man almost pleads.

But there seems to be something more pressing, Wonwoo falters at the distance beginning to stretch between him and the starting engine of the car. Headlights peeling away.

“What?!” Wonwoo takes a hold of Jun’s hand more forcefully, but the man merely evades, shaking his head.

“Go, if you must. Go if you want. I’m staying here,” the deepness of Jun’s voice is starting to waver, almost like Wonwoo is peering through Junhui from down below, submerged in water.

The car belches smoke, wheels reeling sideways. Heart beating fast, drumming loudly. A sense of urgency grips Wonwoo, but he realizes Junhui has been holding him white-knuckled from their house into the world outside. And before Wonwoo can take a last look at his face, he feels himself being ripped apart.

—

Wonwoo wakes up to the sound of a heart drumming, beating loudly. “Junhui?” he mutters.

From beside him, a familiar face turns to look. Wonwoo’s voice scratches from beneath, “What time is it?”

“It’s 5:17,” Junhui smiles at him. “Wonwoo,” he says, slowly, as if tasting the words for the first time. “Wake up.”


5:17, the digital clock says. Wonwoo hasn’t left since.

[lachrymosy]

Any (2nd gen group??) – “When pretty isn't pretty enough, what do you do?” (Olivia Rodrigo, pretty isn’t pretty) – canon

(thank you for doing this risa!!)

and none of it matters and none of it ends – girl's day ahyoung (yura) & sojin – canon

[deadwine]

Very direct inspiration taken from Lee Hyori's Miss Korea, besides the quote in the prompt. cw for mentions of diets/body image.

Ahyoung is forty minutes late to lunch with Sojin because she is late to wake, late to rush to the shop to get her hair done and late because she needs her manager to take some cursory pictures to be floated on her Instagram on a dry day.

The plan was to meet for lunch at Sangam-dong, near the set where Ahyoung was filming her new drama for JTBC. But her schedule had been moved around and Ahyoung didn’t really want to eat in public anyway—or eat at all, for that matter.

When she lands up at the coffee shop, there is a light post-lunch rush picking up and she’s glad to have changed to her better heels before leaving home.

Never mind that it has been a long, long time since she was recognised en masse in a public place.

Sojin is in sweatpants. It’s 3 pm on a Friday, in a café in the middle of Gangnam and Sojin is in sweatpants.

Ahyoung is so stunned she just plops down on the seat across Sojin—no hug, no hello.

“Unnie,” She starts but finds no words to put across her astonishment. She waves her hands up and down at Sojin and blurts out, “What?”

Sojin rolls her eyes. “Do I need to go to the shop when meeting you, Ahyoung-ah? Like you don’t know what my face looks like.”

“You do—you did.”

“Yeah. When I was in my early 20s and we had just debuted. Now…well. It’s not like I’ll get the roles I want if I dress well on my free time, will I?”

Ahyoung isn’t sure the same holds true for her—stumbling onto a semi-respectable second lead role only through dropping several sizes and a screen test that had been more of a profile-check than any scene-read she had been expecting. Also:

“Is it a post-engagement thing? He doesn’t care about those things anymore?”

“No.” Sojin frowns. “Well, yes. But that has nothing to do with this—yah, when will you guys stop teasing him?”

“Never.” Ahyoung says solemnly. “What is it then?”

Sojin’s frown deepens. She throws back a question of her own. “Is presenting yourself in that way still so important to you?”

Ahyoung scratches at an imaginary piece of lint on the sleeve of her cardigan. “When we were promoting…actually, when I first joined the company, I used to think I’ll be able to do anything I wanted if I became pretty. I know it’s silly—and scary, once people’s eyes actually turned to us after we debuted. Scarier, too, ‘cause it was like holding on to something that I knew would never last. Their attention, us…me.” She smiles ruefully. “But I really believed it."

It’s a testament to how much growing they have all done thanks to Sojin that she doesn’t laugh outright. Though she would, were this said with the inflection of a joke. If it was all four of them, three bottles of soju down and the twinkly lights strung up on Minah’s living room wall behind them. She would have.

“And did you?”

“Hmm?”

“Get everything you want?”

Ahyoung exhales. She doesn’t know how to say she, too, wonders if she simply never became pretty enough to deserve everything.

Sojin gets it, perhaps.

Or maybe she just doesn’t care and uses the special privilege that people have by virtue of being by your side for more than half your life—to be blunt and barrel ahead with her opinion.

“Ahyoung-ah, have you considered getting acting lessons again? I have a coach I can put you in touch with.”

Ahyoung blinks and tables the thought. "Have you spoken to Hyeri recently? I think she's moving out for good?"

Sojin watches her and takes a sip of her coffee, leaning back in her chair when she's done. "Yeah. It's a pity but...I guess it has been coming for a while."

"Hmm. Well. It'll be fine. She's young. She has time."

[hyojungss]

Any - "like, damn, here we go again / this story never ends" - Either

just follow the feeling – kim lip/haseul (loona) – canon

[sleepyshamrocks]

“Thanks for coming, unnie,” Jungeun says bashfully. “Sorry I forgot to text earlier. They had us up early for make up this morning, I’m pretty sure my eyes are still swollen from the two hours of sleep I got last night.”

“Kim Jungeun, seriously.” Haseul makes a little hand-wavey flourish at the sweatpants and debut-era sweater she’s wearing. “The security team eyed me on my way in. You look beautiful.”

It’s been nearly a year since they last performed together as twelve, and six since Odd Eye Circle performed as a trio, but Haseul knows that Jungeun hasn’t forgotten, can practically hear the music bursting out of Jungeun’s head. They’re all nervous about the showcase. The Odd Eye Circle redebut, the launch of ARTMS, mark of a new era. A bruise that’s only starting to heal. The waiting room used to be so loud with the twelve of them. Haseul’s itching to pass out sandwiches to everybody, but she’s just a visitor here. She’d gifted Yerim three packs of peach konjac jelly and slid a loose hair pin back to its place above Jinsol’s ear. Jungeun she’d done vocal warm ups with earlier, combing through the new songs while Haseul telegraphed the choreos. An old, aching ritual.

“Besides,” she continues. “Your fans love you already, you rookie.”

“What if they think I’m washed up.” Jungeun smiles, pokes Haseul’s shoulder with a gloved hand. “If I freeze out there will you take my place? You know all of it already. I heard you practiced Air Force One with Yerim until midnight on Monday, our crazy leader.”

“It’s not like it’s a hard song,” Haseul jokes, bunching up her shoulders haughtily. “I’ve done worse back in the old days.”

“I remember,” Jungeun says. “Paint the Town nearly killed all of us.” But Haseul’s really thinking about their pre-debut release, Favorite, the one Jungeun opened for the rest of them just as she’s doing now, young Heejin and her unwavering confidence, Yeojin crying on the second day of dance practice, Haseul sharing a look with Vivi when they learned they’d be dancing in the back for most of it. How scared they’d all been. But it had given them a gift, too: the hunger for a new beginning.

Someone calls out the countdown, setting off a flurry: audio technicians testing the mic packs, their make up artist hurriedly fixing Jinsol’s eye shadow, the back up dancers falling into line. Haseul can only step back. When it’s done, Jungeun takes a step towards the stage, and Yerim and Jinsol join her by her side.

“Good luck,” Haseul tells them, that thing in her throat stopping her from saying more, but her three members seem to understand, and Jungeun flashes her a knowing smile before she disappears beyond the curtains into the cheer of a loving audience.

[lachrymosy]

svt yoon jeonghan/any – “And if you're in love, then you are the lucky one / 'Cause most of us are bitter over someone.” (source) – canon

[sleepyshamrocks]

any - "the unknown path / how many more times will I be able to walk it?" - either

[hyojungss]

any - "what do you enjoy most about being teammates?" (source) - idolverse or sportsverse

* teammates is interchangeable with being "in the same group"

crossroads - c2 - canon - [R]

[goaltender]

Charles can't get his screen turned off quickly enough.

"No," says Pierre, tone flat and affronted. "Charles, mec, no. Was that—"

"It was no one," Charles says in a rush.

He gets an unimpressed look at that.

"I swear to you," he tacks on, trying to telepathically communicate his insistence with a frantic glance in Pierre's direction. Unfortunately, his voice must waver enough to render any argument flagrantly unconvincing, because Pierre only shakes his head before throwing his hands up in protest. Wonderful.

"Are you kidding me?" Pierre presses, words slow-dripping a dense trickle of accusation. Charles takes some offense to that, seeing as they're currently sat in an upscale Italian restaurant and Pierre is the one only eating a chicken salad with dressing on the side, which as far as Charles is concerned makes Pierre the more unserious one between the two of them.

Pierre flips him off when he says as much, because of course he does. Charles rolls his eyes, and then Pierre's face is pinching together. He sits back a moment later to purse his lips, cheeks hollowing and puffing in consideration. When he continues, it's with something akin to pity coloring his voice, "No, but—seriously, Charles. I thought we were done with this."

This, of course, being—

His phone suddenly lights up again, pushing a new slew of notifications into their peripheral vision. This, of course, being the scarlet-letter corroboration of Charles's misguided venture into self-determination. What did Pierre want from him, in asking—the truth? Some white lie skirting at the edge of who they were, of the fact that Charles would never be more or less prone to the asphyxiation of his own instincts, that no corrective surgery could flay the DNA imprint of his open-heart fragility?

At least he has his message previews off, he thinks to himself with a sick twinge of relief. In front of him Pierre makes a disgusted noise, cataloguing the reversed contact name on his screen, the unceremonious hot-pepper emoji, starts muttering, "Mais putain, does he know that we eat lunch at this hour in Monaco? What the fuck is he playing at?"

Charles's pizza is getting cold by now. Grease has long perspired out its cheese pores and started undergoing the unsightly process of congealing beneath the cold A/C air circulating their private booth. He manages to flip his phone onto its screen this time, except. He can already imagine it. The insistent follow-up, Carlos from wherever he was—maybe in a plane bathroom, if the shitty lighting and cramped framing had been anything to go by—his whiny tone demanding Charles's constant eyes and attention.

Charlesss, he'd probably sent. With an exclamation effect for good measure. Helloooo????

"It's not all the time," he tries. "Honestly, it's actually been a while."

This is clearly the wrong thing to say. Pierre's face is almost apoplectic red now, and Charles winces when he exclaims at a decibel wholly unacceptable for their surroundings, "Fuck, you mean it's happened more than once?"

Which.

Are you in the business of sending your teammates dick pics for fun? Charles thinks, momentarily bewildered. Only he knows Pierre possesses nearly zero underlying qualms on going from first base to a semi-consistent sexting basis, what with getting regaled with the full details of his situationship with Kika over two weeks, so Pierre probably, totally would be the type to do that. Poor Yuki.

It's pointless to argue. I thought we were done with this, he'd said, and Charles nearly scoffs at that, because he can't remember a time when Pierre really thought anything of much at all, or even the last time he'd given Charles's relationships more consideration than some simple stubborn transient judgment, glimpses of interventive sympathy created in the image of his own moral propositions. They were both more than content to avoid acknowledgement of the cankerous underbelly of Charles's desires, the sores that threatened Pierre's visceral repulsion to injury.

"It's not all the time," Charles repeats, awkward and flushed. He fiddles with his tablecloth, making a show of wiping oil off his fingers that isn't actually there, sinking into his chair in hopes that the back might finally swallow him up. Shield his body from the open scrutiny of Pierre's judgment. "Just, uh… you know. Here and there."

As in—Charles's win in Bahrain. Australia, Grand Slam, driver's room. It had meant nothing at all. After padel, sweaty and gross and uncoordinated, hot slide of skin against skin. A shoddy hook-up call in his apartment, too-small and barely lived-in, forcing arms over his own until he could drown the white noise out.

Carlos isn't shy about himself, or his body. And he gives as good as he gets.

They hadn't touched in Singapore, but Charles doesn't tell Pierre that.

Pierre asks, "And… uh. So you're okay with that?"

Charles shrugs, because at this point he doesn't know what else to do. His lips feel numb, stinging with the phantom touch of an allergic reaction, the inflammatory contact of his cowardice.

He says, short, "You couldn't understand."

It's a shoddy guilt-trick tactic. Pierre knows it; it only ever works on him when Pierre's been worn down enough to grant Charles observation of their unspoken mercy rule.

"Try me."

Nosy bastard.

The thing was, he really couldn't understand.

"Carlos doesn't…" Charles sighs, running his fingers through his hair, cropped unusually short over the crown of his head. He feels at the fuzz near his scalp, sighs again, considers his angle. "You see, Carlos doesn't care about me."

At that, Pierre takes a breath.

Charles knows what's coming before he even says it, his heart jackhammering with it. After all, he hadn't spent two years praying at the man's altar to fail to recognize the twitchy slant of Pierre's eyebrows when he was wont to mention—him.

"But Sebastian did?"

Yes. No. No, of course not. No.

Charles scoffs, and unwavering surety washes over him with such force it nearly tugs him out to sea.

"Of course not," he says.

But we both know I wanted him to, he doesn't say. That I spent too long believing he might, one day. Isn't that funny?

It'd been embarrassing, near the end, to kneel at the coffin of a dead man, sinking his teeth into the same carcass he'd spent so long cherishing, like a stubborn yapping dog hitting at the squeaky core of a decimated chew toy. Trying desperately to make something of himself under Seb's watchful gaze; Seb letting him, always. Saying nothing as Charles pulled and pulled until he tore the meat of his ribs out. He'd wanted. Needed. Hated himself for it.

Carlos, though.

Carlos, he could humiliate. Every tenth, every grid position, every overconfident photo snapped in the privacy of his room or a dingy bathroom—he gave as good as he got. It was Charles's favorite thing about him, about being teammates. The more Charles beat him into submission, the more Charles demanded, the more the static quieted. Maybe pretending at it could lessen the agony of his sincerity.

"Of course not," Charles repeats. Conviction growing. "But it's okay, this time. It means nothing."

If it didn't, maybe Alex would care, so. There was nothing to worry about.

He doesn't tell Pierre that he'd waited for an invitation after Singapore, too proud to be hurting but not even-keeled enough to feign total indifference. He'd wanted to—he doesn't even know, anymore. To swipe his phone open to an innocuous, Are you up? message, direct and formal, to be able to say, Sorry, not this time, find someone else willing to get down and pamper your ego?

Carlos hadn't even bothered. Had probably busy getting blasted beyond belief on watered-down shots and Lando's cocaine. Whatever.

"You're too nice for psychological warfare," Pierre snorts, and he's laughing now, even if it's a bit weary and muted. "Just. Don't get too caught up in it, okay?"

"Not about to take relationship advice from you, sorry," Charles jokes, ignoring the niggling feeling crawling up his neck. He looks down at his plate, appetite properly gone. Thinks of the messages on his phone, the photo he'd been sent, whether it would be better or worse to withhold himself.

I'm at lunch, asshole, he could send back.

Scared, then? Carlos would probably say, from the safety of his business-class seat. They only ever spoke in taunts and jest.

Fucking hell.

It's a matter of pride, at this point. Charles stands up.

"Going to take a piss," he announces, slipping his phone into his back pocket. Pierre eyes him dubiously, watching the sweeping arc of his hand, the swift and calculated movement. It's only as Charles is shuffling away that he hears a strange choking noise reverberate from behind him.

"No," Pierre calls after him, faux-retching when Charles spins around to look at him. His skin has taken on a putrid shade of green now, upper lip curled in vivid contempt. "Oh, you're disgusting. Ohhh, I'm going to be sick."

Charles says nothing. A photo speaks for itself.

—

R-ish for suggestive themes, c2-ish for not actually really being c2, F for writing this on my phone over dinner for no reason

[luckyzukky]

any - "as far as i can tell, nobody's listening" (source) - any

[luckyzukky]

any - "i know you love me, but do you think of me, romantically / i will wear my denim and i will bleach my hair and i will do anything to get ahead" (source) - any

[hyojungss]

any - "i figure everyone in a room is in love with you" (source) - either

pink and black and blue - wonyoung/yujin (implied) - canon ive

[luckyzukky]

(elsewhere. warning for disordered eating)

She looks cute right now, with her hair done up in pigtails, giant red bows as big as her fists adorning them, as she sits still in her dressing room chair, a stylist tending to her makeup. She can barely see in front of herself with the makeup brush in her face.

Wonyoung looks forward, straight towards the mirror, as much as she can. She resists the urge to blink as the stylist turns her head towards herself and takes an eyeliner pencil to her eyes.

If Wonyoung wasn't a nice girl, was as wretched and twisted as she's made out to be, she'd grab that eyeliner pencil and stab the stylist with it, or better, stab herself with it, give herself something to cry over that's true and tangible. No big pouty eyes, swelling with tears, glistening pathetically; all her guts spilled out on the floor, tears dramatically smearing her makeup, nastily marring her face, all romantic.

It's never like that, though. If she were to stab herself right now, the stylist would ask her if she's ok, and she'd be handled delicately, with a firm and commanding touch, but still delicate, fragile.

With time, ever since her redebut with IVE, she's realized, most of all, that she wants to feel, experience. She wants more than what she has - that's one thing the netizens are right about. She wants more, more, more. She wants to reach up as far as she can from their dorm's rooftop and grab the moon and squeeze it in her scrawny fists, as hard as she can, until it cracks.

Wonyoung sighs, and Wonyoung sits pretty in her dressing room chair and smiles when she's told to by her stylist, and Wonyoung gets up when her makeup is done and walks to the corner of the room.

---

"You're looking cute today," Yujin says, winking as she comes in, all playful, as expected of her. She's become more flirty this comeback, with the new haircut and dramatic eyeliner; Wonyoung knows what kind of audience she's trying to attract, and she thinks Yujin is smart for that, knows that those fans will support her until the bitter end. Good for her.

Bad for Wonyoung, though, as she has none of those charms, too girlish, too beautiful instead of edgy, boringly girl next door instead of sharp and cutting. Too beautiful. The netizens would feel so vindicated if she ever thought that out loud.

Wonyoung smiles in return, delicate, the corners of her mouth peaking upwards slightly. Cheerfully, she says, "thank you, unnie!" and nods her head as she does, preparing to leave for the stage, when Yujin tilts her head in a way that makes Wonyoung know she should stay just a bit longer. They've known each other long enough that Wonyoung can read her cues.

Yujin's biting at her lip, enough to almost worry a cut into it. Wonyoung would chastise her if it was her place, but it isn't.

"Are you feeling up to performing today? Have you been eating enough?" Yujin says, giving Wonyoung a once over, and it makes Wonyoung blush, the back of her neck heating up.

It almost makes her angry, though, how casually Yujin says that out loud, "have you been eating?" - how could she, how dare she, even, if she wants to become the person they think she is, that Yujin says something like that with stylists in the room, even their group mates. She knows it's no secret, how she's gotten to be so thin, how she worries her fans and fuels her haters with it; but to hear it out loud, with company, fills her with some kind of rage that she knows she's intrinsically unworthy of.

Here's the thing: Wonyoung wants to feel, but more than anything, she wants to be allowed to feel.

In An Yujin's presence, her groupmate of several years, beyond IVE and IZ*ONE, even on the stage of Produce 48 all those years ago, all she feels is restrained, held back, like something wild and untamed is thrashing from within her, despite how weak and light she feels, despite the satisfaction that comes from those feelings. She still feels that beast, chained and leashed but still flexing its gnarled fingers from within her stomach, just waiting for the moment to start scratching at the walls for freedom.

She glances back at Yujin, who stares back at her with a plaintive (pitying, sorry) expression. Delicate, fragile.

"I'll be ok, Yujin unnie," she says, smile feather-light and soft. "I just woke up tired today. I didn't get much sleep after yesterday's constant shooting! The flashes stuck in my eyes even when they were closed. It was hard to sleep."

Yujin looks about ready to raise an eyebrow. She knows Wonyoung's lies, clear as day to her, opaque to anyone else, even the rest of their IVE bandmates. They haven't learned yet, but Wonyoung thinks maybe Rei is catching on.

Yujin beckons for her to sit down, pats the seat beside her. Wonyoung briefly wonders how much time they have left before they go on stage, but pushes it out of her head, as she's sitting down before she can really think about it. She notices Yujin's hand on the seat as she turns to face Wonyoung, and Wonyoung's facing her, too, now. She stays looking at Yujin, the bright, sharp, determined look in her eyes and her gentle lips, marred by the slightest smirk on her face. Yujin leans in close, her hand on the seat sliding closer, her eyes so, so close to Wonyoung, cutting through any of her thoughts.

Yujin's hand, the one not on the seat, rises to Wonyoung's shoulder, and she first notices it when she feels it before she sees it. She's still staring at Yujin's eyes, almost dizzy from how long she's been looking into them, how bright they are and how that brightness stabs back into her eyes.

Yujin is sharp: she cuts through anything and knows how to give as hard as she gets. Wonyoung, briefly, thinks that this comeback is made for her, with the kicks and piercing eyeliner and baggy jerseys. Maybe it was: maybe they're focusing on Yujin this era, more than Wonyoung.

Maybe it's good for the both of them, she thinks, as she feels Yujin's hand slide from her shoulder to the side of her face. Yujin grips tight, and Wonyoung sees her tilt her head, ever so slightly.

"I don't think there's a single person in this room that isn't just a little bit in love with you," she whispers, and that beast in Wonyoung's stomach cries out, something equally pained and confused.

"What do you mean by that?" Wonyoung whispers back.

"You know what I mean," and Yujin is right.

Yujin abrutly removes her touch, turns away from her and gets up. Wonyoung's gaze follows her as she walks away, pushes through the double doors and out of the room.

Except Yujin is wrong. There's one person in the room that isn't just a little bit in love with Wonyoung, and it's not Yujin, or the stylists, or the managers, or the cameramen.

Wonyoung sits and stares at the doors, slightly ajar in Yujin's wake, and wonders when Yujin became so mature.

[goaltender]

any - "i could rip you to shreds but i choose not to / so i bare my fangs just to let you know that i like you" - any

usurper - yujin/wonyoung - models au

[stickie]

There's a new girl today.

She’s pretty, young, and thin, all legs, and Yujin imagines she probably looked just as much the same a year or two ago.

New Girl is clearly lost.

No one offers to help, and Yujin sizes her up from her makeup chair, the uncertainty of not having anyone to direct her making New Girl falter, glancing around, skittish.

Their eyes meet.

Yujin expects New Girl to look away first, but she stares right back instead. She sees New Girl straighten up, shoulders firmly set, and start making way towards her.

Maybe New Girl thinks Yujin could be a friend.

“I’m Jang Wonyoung.”

Wonyoung smiles at her.

Yujin bares her teeth.

Up close, New Girl is even prettier.

She’s close enough that Yujin can see her pores, the few small whiteheads dotting the side of her nose, barely noticeable if not for the redness there, the girl clearly having picked at it. Her teeth are nice and straight and white except for the bit of red lipstick on her left incisor.

Yujin can’t say she likes the color.

“An Yujin.”

She raises an eyebrow questioningly, feeling the barbell shift as she does, still not used to the piercing even though it’s been a month already. She hadn’t quite minded at the time when management suggested it. It’ll make you edgy. So Yujin had gotten her hair cut short, pierced her eyebrow, and started wearing more black.

Wonyoung is dressed in clothes and heels that look like they don’t fit her quite right, stuff that Yujin used to wear. Pretty, but forgettable. Yujin admits that she looks gorgeous all the same.

“First shoot?”

Wonyoung tenses up, and Yujin pretends not to notice.

“Second.”

“You can follow me today if you want.”

Yujin slips out of the chair as the makeup noona finishes, gaze flicking upwards to look Wonyoung in the face with sincerity.

“You’ll be great.”

She tries to sound reassuring. It works for the most part. Wonyoung lights up with a naivety that delights her, and Yujin bites her lip hard enough to sting. To hold her tongue.

Yujin can’t wait to eat her up.

Fresh meat.

[luckyzukky]

any - "if i showed fear, people would sniff me out / i’d be eaten by demons / so i disregard my heart wherever i am" (source) - any

[girlrock]

any - "you know the score / it ain't limited to your knowing looks and touches anymore" - any

don’t read the last page - fromis_9 jiwon/nagyung - tenet au

[intoparadise]

The people on the street down below reached the end of their countdown when Jiwon slid an arm around Nagyung and kissed her.

“Just in case,” she said, smiling sheepishly. The it’s our last didn’t need voicing.

It was never going to be just anything with Jiwon. Just a drink, just a kiss, just the end of the world. Just her head on the shoulder of the girl destined to save it, watching fireworks crest over the balcony. Not when Nagyung had already crossed over the new year twice before, once in reverse. Not when this Jiwon didn’t know her, or the future at stake, not yet.

“Don’t say things like that,” Nagyung said, sharper than she meant to. She was ruining the moment, but Jiwon had always been good at tipping her off balance, even before she figured out how to.

Jiwon just laughed. “Where did they find you? The princess of optimism.” Nagyung pulled back to find her eyes full of mirth. “Good thing I have you.”

“Good thing,” Nagyung repeated, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Instead of giving Jiwon the opportunity to say something worse, Nagyung leant over to kiss her again. She was tired of this conversation, the web of white lies and secrets Jiwon wanted Nagyung to keep from her.

But Nagyung was good at pretending. It was why Jiwon chose her.

+

If Jiwon could’ve revealed one thing about her past and Nagyung’s future, it should’ve been this.

“Who are you?” Jiwon said. She was normally remarkably bad at staying still, but now she was frozen, face shuttered. This wasn’t the voice she used on people she was about to kill, but it was close. The only reason she hadn’t tried to yet was because they were sitting in the middle of the airport, tucked away and tucked together, but in public nonetheless. “No one I work with knows my name.”

I do, Nagyung thought.

“I can explain,” she said.

Could she? Jiwon liked her, immediate and obvious, a buzz of satisfaction that went right to Nagyung’s head. But Jiwon didn’t trust her. No matter how well Nagyung knew her, she couldn’t know how she would take it. This slip-up could cost her.

It was an impossible task, knowing that every move she made was just as likely to push them off course as to lead them closer to accomplishing their mission. Nagyung wanted to curse Jiwon for entrusting her with it. She wanted to curse herself for wanting to do whatever Jiwon needed her to.

When Nagyung was done, Jiwon sighed, slumping into her seat. “I should have known.” Nagyung wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be so hard on herself for not seeing what her future self wanted to hide, but Jiwon was already back in motion. “I thought you were just”—she glanced over, realization in the corners of her eyes and the dawn of a smile on her mouth. “Really good at your job.”

Nagyung ducked her head. She had thought she was being careful. Booking hotel rooms with only one bed, leaning into Jiwon whenever she touched her, and looking at her in the way Nagyung didn’t think she could unlearn was, admittedly, not very careful.

“So this—” Nagyung edged her hand towards Jiwon’s until their fingers bumped together. “It’s just part of the job description?”

“No,” Jiwon said. Nagyung already knew this. She hadn’t known Jiwon would too. “Not for me.”

+

Those first few days, on a late night while Jiwon was asleep, Nagyung typed Jiwon a message for her to find years from now. Why was it so important everything go as it should, if her memories of the future were living proof that they would succeed?

Jiwon had no way of answering, but Nagyung was too greedy. She had just lived all the years she had known Jiwon without her. She missed Jiwon and she was right in front of her.

The answer never really mattered. Nagyung knew she would do whatever it took to keep the future and their life together intact, for Jiwon. The end of the world couldn’t stop her from that.

[deadwine]

any - "Despite knowing that I would never be able to find someone like you again, I drew us closer to a breakup" (heize ft. 10cm, stranger) - any

today seems to be the last day- minghao/jungkook - canon (nebulously)

[bookishdagger]

Jungkook is self-aware enough to know this is probably a bad idea. This, his hand creeping higher and higher on Minghao’s thigh under the table, their friends unable to tell the flush on Minghao’s face isn’t a result of the round of shots they ordered for the table. This, the press of his shoulder against Minghao’s in the taxi, just close enough for plausible deniability. This, Minghao in his bed, his hair now grown long and a bit shaggy, fanning out across Jungkook’s pillow, just begging to be touched.

They aren’t supposed to be doing this, is the thing. Not because it could ruin their friendship but because of—the other thing. The stolen glances and quiet kisses that turned into something more, into long, rambling FaceTimes that serve more as an excuse to see each others’ faces than anything else.

Or, well. Served. They’re on a break, at the moment. I need some space, Minghao had said. I love you too much, to let it end like this. Jungkook had agreed, at the time. He wonders what it means, that he can’t hold true to that.

It could be an olive branch, a bridged gap. The edges of a wound drawn together until new skin forms, until not even a scar remains to commemorate the break. If this was a drama, a story, this—Minghao’s hand gripping Jungkook’s shoulder so tightly Jungkook can practically see the bruise forming, Jungkook chanting Minghao’s name like a prayer, too far gone to remember how to say anything else—would be a turn of the page. A new chapter, one step closer to an and they lived happily ever after.

Instead, once they lay side-by-side on Jungkook’s bed, cheeks flushed and breath heavy, and Jungkook feels a warm glow of satisfaction that goes beyond the waves of pleasure that had crested at the control of Minghao’s careful, experienced hands, Minghao makes a small sound. It could be a cough. Were it anyone else, Jungkook would be able to write it off as just that. He knows Minghao too well, though, and so isn’t surprised when Minghao speaks.

“We shouldn’t have—,” Minghao says, too frustrated for complete sentences. “You—I told you that I wanted a break. This is not a break.”

“Does it have to be a break, though? If we can still do this—if it’s just like before—“

“It’s not just like before, Jungkook-ah. You know that.”

Too much lies unsaid between them, too many rough edges time away may have smoothed down into something more manageable, something fixable.

Jungkook has found he’s too impatient for that. I love you too much, he should have said, to let you get away, even for a little bit. How could I even pretend you’re not perfect for me?

Look at where that’s gotten him, though—Minghao’s hunched shoulders, cast into stark relief by the beam of moonlight shining through his bedroom window, the methodical way Minghao measures out his words, most careful when he has something he wants to ensure isn’t lost in translation.

“I’m going to call a taxi,” Minghao announces, crouching to pick up his shirt where it had landed on the floor in the hurried shedding of clothes and frantic kissing of only forty-five minutes before.

Jungkook can’t say no or stay, please. Once Minghao has made up his mind, it’s an uphill battle to convince him to reverse course. Jungkook could have done it, once. Could still try, might even succeed. But he doesn’t, only manages to croak out an “Okay. Let me pay for it, at least.”

Minghao sighs. Doesn’t disagree. When they were dating, dating for real, Jungkook remembers, they used to alternate—whose apartment they would meet up at, whose card would pay for the other’s taxi. Minghao’s acquiescence doesn’t feel like the victory Jungkook had wanted, in light of that.

If you guys break up, Mingyu had asked, upon learning of their relationship, words uncharacteristically guarded and careful, I don’t think—-I think you’re it, for Minghao. What will you do if it goes wrong? What are we supposed to do?

Jungkook, buoyant and euphoric with new love, had responded almost instantly. He’s it for me too, Mingyu-yah. You don’t even have to worry about that.

Now, Jungkook stands awkwardly in the doorway as Minghao leaves with only a small wave and a half-smile, somehow a stranger in his own home. He can practically feel it—the snapping of the olive branch, the widening of the gap, the wound not even scarring over but bursting open, red and raw. Even as Jungkook feels an ache in his chest, a sting in his eyes, he knows—he was the one to set the match, burning the bridge between them.

[lachrymosy]

Any – “in this world love has no color— yet how deeply my body is stained by yours” (source) – any

they might as well be looking at us - suzy/jinyoung - canon

[kisoap]

(Warning for mention of diets and restrictive eating)

Suzy considers between the perfumes lined up on the luxury department store display. “You can’t look so glum,” she chides cheerily after catching Jinyoung’s reflection in the glass, choosing a diamond-cut bottle and spritzing the sample. She holds out her wrist to Jinyoung with the same smile that the nation fell in love with over a decade ago. “It’s our day one.”

Jinyoung looks vaguely unimpressed beyond the guarded expression marring his first-love-manipulator brand of handsomeness. “If anything, isn’t this more convincing?”

“You’ve played the part before,” Suzy reasons in return, feeling the picture-perfect grin minutely slip on her face.

Jinyoung continues, “I’d only let myself get dragged around to be your designated shopping bag holder if I was head over heels in love with you,” out to draw blood himself.

Suzy bats her lashes at him and takes a step closer. “You know what that’ll do to my ego,” she threatens, giving the tabloids planted by management the best vantage point of her drawing her face closer to his from where they’re eyeing them from the Dior section.

He pulls his face mask down and reaches for her arm, placing his thumb precisely over her pulse. It suddenly thrums to life like a livewire at the contact. “You’ve always liked scents like this,” he points out casually. The worst was that he was right, even though Suzy always imagined he’d forgotten all about her years ago.

Suzy rips her wrist from his hold a little too hastily to imitate indifference. She pulls the waterfall of her hair away from her neck and presses the scent to her nape, a silent instruction of where Jinyoung should place his fingers next. “It suits me,” she replies.

She wonders what Jinyoung’s thinking about when he meets her gaze evenly again. He agrees, eyes flitting down to her jugular, so blatant that it has to be an accident, “A little too well.”

*************

[BREAKING] 2026 New Year’s couple is Suzy and GOT7 Jinyoung

[+45, -5] Congrats congrats!!!
[+20, -1] I knew something had to be going on between them ㅋㅋㅋㅋ They were flirting throughout their entire drama press tour
[+13, -1] Wowowowow first love type + first love type…
[+4, 0] Their face chemistry is crazy… my eyes are having a feast ㅠㅠ
[+2, -1] They started as idol trainees together back in JYP when they were teenagers. Now they’re starring in a drama together and even fell in love for real. When you think about it, don’t they seem fated?

*************

Jinyoung’s on a diet, but so is Suzy. She studies the contents of his fridge with an analytical dexterity that only years of monitoring her appearance on screens could condition into her like instinct. Nothing between the pre-portioned chicken breast and steamed vegetables neatly packed into tupperware falls within her daily allotted calorie count though. There’s a gaudy fruit arrangement sitting on the bottom shelf, probably a new year’s gift from some ongoing brand deal, looking out of place compared to everything else. Suzy places it on the kitchen countertop, the plastic wrap cold and crinkling like static as she balances it in her arms.

Jinyoung comes back from the gym just as Suzy’s wrinkling her nose, draining the contents of a failed protein shake. “I would’ve picked up breakfast for you, if you asked,” he says, perfectly polite, taking in the smear of whey powder she left on his refrigerator door handle.

“It’s fine,” she dissuades. Jinyoung didn’t live in a luxury high-rise, but his place was bright and tidy in a way that suited him and surprised her all the same. They were in their thirties now but Suzy suddenly felt like her fifteen-year-old self again standing in the middle of Jinyoung’s kitchen, hopelessly immature and stuck mooning over the school girl crush she never could quite flush out of her system, even after long being disillusioned with the idea of romance. “There’s not a lot I can really eat these days, anyway.”

Jinyoung wets a washcloth in the sink and walks behind her to wipe off the stain. “I used to get in trouble all the time,” he remarks, “Covering for you snacking in the practice room when we were trainees.”

He’s not even that close to her, but Suzy can’t help but tense up. The sex had been a good but unintentional side effect of their contracted situationship, and a part of her knew that Jinyoung only allowed it because they went way back and he pitied her carnivorous girlish loneliness that bit off its mangled leash every time in his presence. That, and she was Bae fucking Suzy. It was almost scientifically proven that he couldn’t say no.

Suzy rolls her eyes. “They were more worried about your obvious feelings for me.” It wasn’t the truth, but she hoped Jinyoung would admit it. He was already making a lot of exceptions for her. He had to know she was selfish enough to attempt monopolizing all of them.

“We were young,” is all he says on the matter, brushing past the six years of radio silence, her petty refusal to follow him on Instagram, and the way he broke her heart when she was eighteen, turning down her confession to protect her then-burgeoning career with a sense of self-effacing tact. He’d left her to cry in her dressing room and wonder when he’d become so grown up in the two years she debuted and supposedly left him to trail after her wake.

Suzy picks at a skewer of shine muscats like flower petals, watching Jinyoung’s back as he wrings out the washcloth. He loves her, he loves her not. He used to love her, and then her astronomical fame intimidated him, and he convinced himself otherwise. All of those seem like lies when she really thinks about it, but Jinyoung won’t let on about what part about it is and isn’t her own thought-up fiction. And now she’s in one of his old GOT7 concert tees and slipping a grape in her mouth, all against her better judgment. “Don’t discount a love story for the ages,” she tries to tease over the hairline fracture in her superstar facade.

He tugs down the hem of her sleeve that had flipped up. “I wouldn’t dare,” Jinyoung promises with a smile in tandem, so earnest that he has to be making fun of her, breath ghosting over her cheeks. Like this, he has to know that she’s thinking of tilting her face up to kiss him.

Instead, Suzy bites down into the grape she’s been holding between her teeth. Its sweetness bursts in her mouth as her heart cracks apart again.

*************

Dispatch January 1st Couple Suzy and Jinyoung’s Drama Kicks Off 1st Week with Strong Ratings

[+36, -1] It was seriously freaking fun and the chemistry between the leads is no joke
[+29, -2] The almost-kiss scene made my heart flutter… As expected, the level is totally different when you’re actually in love
[+20, 0] I’m kinda mad that no one cast them in a drama together sooner ㅋㅋ
[+13, -1] Saturday, come faster!!

*************

Her sister scrapes the cheesecake off the back of her spoon. “You used to like him so much.”

“Unnie.”

“I’m just saying,” she defends on the other side of Suzy’s dining room table. “You never really got over him, either.”

Suzy sighs overdramatically and sets her fork down on the dessert plate. “I’m doing a favor for an old friend,” is her rehearsed rationalization of it all.

Her sister raises her eyebrows at her in disbelief. “It’s his first project since his service,” Suzy continues to insist, “And the viewership ratings and good press haven’t been a slouch to me, either.”

“He broke your heart, Suzy,” her sister feels the need to remind her. “At this rate, you’re going to let him do it again.”

Suzy picks up her fork and starts stabbing the cheesecake’s top layer until the cream is covered with prong marks. “It’s just a business relationship,” she grumbles into her palm. “And anyway, he doesn’t see me like that. I’m not stupid enough to be in love with him after all this time.”

Her sister snorts, “Except that you totally are.”

Suzy glares in reply. “I regret telling you anything.” After spending her entire career loved by the public, Suzy couldn’t help but feel desensitized to the brunt of it, directed at her by strangers watching her projected on screens worldwide. They liked her for the carefully curated image she let them see, and while it wasn’t a complete lie, there was only so much that pixels and cameras could capture. To them, she was Suzy, girl in the video, the nation’s first love. Beautiful and untouchable and everything they fantasized she’d be.

But then there was Jinyoung, her own first love. Suzy wondered for years if it was supposed to feel this heartachingly tender, as easy to bruise as overripe fruit, desperate for reciprocation but too overly self-aware of such desperation that she ended up deadlocked into inaction instead. How deeply he had buried himself into her being that she couldn’t extricate these feelings from instinct.

“He’ll turn me down,” Suzy predicts, smiling at her own foolishness. How else was the girl on the billboard supposed to accept her storybook downfall when all she was known for was how prettily she cried during her screen test?

“Suzy-yah,” her sister says, gaze soft. “It’s okay to want to try.”

*************

Suzy and Jinyoung’s Drama Behind-the-Scenes Cut is Crazy…

[+51, -1] It’s only a 5-minute video and 4 minutes of it have gone viral ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
[+46, -3] What’s up with them?? Be happy and in love forever you two ㅠㅠ
[+29, -1] 1:08 Jinyoung looks so lovestruck watching Suzy’s scene. And 2:25 and 3:56... When will someone look at me like that…
[+23, -6] Everyone who still thinks they’re faking it ~ Watch this ~~~
[+21, -2] The production team knew exactly what we wanted ^^b Keep it up, keep it up!

*************

“You can start seeing someone else again next April.”

Jinyoung looks away from his pretentious whiskey to stare at her. He’s all done up for their drama’s rooftop wrap party, and so is she. “What are you talking about?”

“We should date for at least a year.” Her stylist told her the lace collar adorned with rhinestones of her mini-dress was overkill, and that she’d freeze to death from the length for a mid-February night. But surprisingly her voice doesn’t waver at all as she delivers the rest of her pitch. “The public’ll get sick of hearing about us eight months in, you know.”

Jinyoung takes a well-timed sip of his drink, even without twenty cameras capturing every possible angle to catch the best shot. “Right,” he spurs on with mild intrigue.

“They can announce our breakup in January, and then you should pretend to be miserably heartbroken for at least three months.” She draws herself close enough to Jinyoung that she could loop her arms around his neck and still semi-convincingly pass it off as an accident. “Six months for me, or else they’ll call me a slut.”

The corner of Jinyoung’s mouth quirks up in amusement. “You can just tell me you’re not interested, Suzy,” he deadpans, point blank.

Now it’s Suzy’s turn to stare at him, dumbfounded. “And are you?” that awful girlish loneliness says in her voice before she can swallow it down. “Interested?”

“I thought that this was finally our chance, after all these years,” Jinyoung confirms with a betrayal of hope. “Maybe I was just being silly, though, thinking you’d feel the same.”

Suzy feels the sting of a double-crossed blade across the stones of her heart. “Then why didn’t you say yes when I confessed to you?”

Jinyoung regards her with a quiet devastation. “You know it wasn’t the right time.”

In that moment, he’s every bit the man in the movie that Suzy dreamed of when she was a teenager, before she knew a few others and fell into bed with them and found out that the silver screen wasn’t all that it was talked up to be. But Jinyoung made that naive part of her that she’d locked away surge up from beneath the floorboards, washing over her until the rose-tinted glasses and monochrome realism of her colossal fame coalesced into a singular image. Her bitter first love and the one she thought had gotten away. Little did she know that the tide had the mercy to bring him back to her.

She wipes her nose with the back of her hand from the cold. “It hurt, though,” she confesses. Distantly, she thinks that there must’ve been something better to say but can’t think of what that would be.

“I know,” Jinyoung says an awful lot like an apology, tucking her ice cold hands into the pockets of his suit jacket. “I’m sorry,” he says an awful lot like I love you.

Suzy rests her cheek on his shoulder. At some point, Jinyoung begins to sway them back and forth in a sad excuse of a slow dance for two past idols, off rhythm to a popular song at least 50 BPM faster than the pace they’re moving. Their trainee selves would pity their plight if they saw them now. But then again, they didn’t understand the ache of it in their starry-eyed youth.

“Should we restart the clock?” suggests Suzy, feeling hopelessly optimistic for once.

“Our day one for real?” Jinyoung’s laugh reverberates against her jaw.

She pulls back to look at him. “Who said it wasn’t real?” Like this, he has to know that she’s thinking of tilting her face up to kiss him.

The corners of Jinyoung’s eyes crease with crow’s feet. “Place your bets,” he grins back. And that’s really all the go ahead Suzy needs to press her mouth to his, indulging in her own melodramatic ending.

[infrequencies]

any - yes & no by natalie wee (full text) - either

reasons to not kiss him:

1. you weren’t raised to love tender.
2. when he’s around all you do is tremble. when he’s around you want to get on your knees. look how much power he has over you. it’s dangerous.
3. he’s too good at forgiving and you’re too good at violence.
4. you know what they say about monsters. you know what happens to the boys who love them. are you going to do that to him?
5. your hands don’t know how to be gentle. think about the last beautiful thing that shattered in your palms. the fresh rosebuds crumbling between your fingers like a bruise. you wolf-boy, you war machine. you wouldn’t know how to hold something magic and not destroy it.
6. if you hurt him it might kill you
7. if you hurt him you might kill yourself.
8. you are very bad at rehabilitation. this is one addiction you’d fail to give up. he’s going to ruin you for all other kisses and all other boys and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to forget his name.
9. you still aren’t sure he isn’t a dream.
10. if you kiss him, you might wake up.

reasons to kiss him:
1. because he's beautiful
2. because he asked
3. because he preceded please with, i'm not afraid of you

unsure if the source has alt text but (suicide cw)

[0323]

any - please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh i could recognize anywhere - canon

starlight – bae suzy / got7 jinyoung – canon

[lachrymosy]

(Dearest Shida, I hope you appreciate me throwing this back to 2013 LJ with sad jrzy!)

The first thing Suzy thinks when the credits roll and people start getting up from their seats is that Jinyoung is both a better and worse actor than she’d realized. The second is that although it would be inappropriate to call him, she wonders if she could get away with it, perhaps passing it off as a mistake, or pretending that less had happened between them than really had. The third is a sudden recollection that the last time she called him, his number had been disconnected.

She gets up from her seat. No one notices her, not even in the fluorescent lights out in the hallway, as she strides across threadbare carpet in old tennis shoes and walks out into the soft light of dusk. Neon signs hum in front of her eyes and clumps of people pass by like dead leaves rusting along the gutter. It is as though she is invisible, observing the world from outside a glass case. Or perhaps she is the one in it.

She loops her scarf over her face and turns to walk toward the parking lot where she’d left her sensible car. Junho teased her about it when she bought it, asking what someone of her status was doing with a regular old Hyundai. She didn’t know how to explain the magnetic urge to go anywhere in the country by herself, even though she knew she’d never do it. She never went anywhere by herself, not anywhere that mattered anyway, as though isolation would be the first step toward insignificance. She hates being alone, still. She just hates being perceived more.

It takes twenty minutes to drive to Jinyoung’s apartment in her sensible Hyundai, and then another ten minutes to decide whether or not to get out of the car. He probably doesn’t even live here anymore; in their line of work it is rare to stay in one apartment for too long, and technically, he was gone for two years. But she also knows Jinyoung, his inclination to precise habits and pretentious tastes. This apartment has an incredible view of the river and floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. It’s unlikely he’s moved.

Sometimes the world around her feels very small. She hesitates to post anything on Instagram without her manager vetting it first, fearing backlash for unanticipated transgressions. She frets over wayward pimples and the hint of crow’s feet around her eyes while looking into the mirror at night, alone in the quiet. She looks at photos of herself and tries to remember what it felt like to really believe she’d be happy if she were pretty enough. But as she presses the buzzer to Jinyoung’s apartment, the world feels very big, and she even smaller within it.

The gate unlocks immediately, without Jinyoung’s face appearing in the doorbell screen. She pauses, sucks in a breath, and goes in. She knows the way.

When they were trainees, Jinyoung believed in destiny, though he wouldn’t call it that. He believed in the rightness of things, the simple equation of talent plus work equaling a correct measure of fame, doled out in its proper time. They would get what they had coming to them, because they deserved it, he insisted, in a half-lit practice room as Suzy bandaged up her bloody ankles and gritted her teeth against her growling stomach. She wanted to believe him, really.

Later, when she was more famous than he and her group had fractured and shattered, she discovered he’d grown more cynical. Part of the machine, he said, and the machine was breaking down. He gave angry but beautiful speeches about the ways the company had failed them from inside the safety of his own apartment, but outside, he seldom said a word. He was angry but deferential, clinging to a belief in the rightness of things, a belief which Suzy already knew would crumble within the decade. If she’d learned anything, it was that no one—not the company, not the fans, not even each other really—wanted to hear what their idols had to say.

The elevator doors open to Jinyoung’s floor. She walks through the corridor, listening to a growing hum of voices. When she reaches the apartment, the door is ajar, and when she pushes it open, she sees the backs of many people, smells the sticky-sweet scent of alcohol, and hears the deep reverberation of Jinyoung’s laugh.

She stops in the doorway, trying to understand the scene in front of her. The party makes little sense until she spots a cake over someone’s shoulder and realizes this is a private celebration for Jinyoung’s film. No one seems to notice her standing at the threshold, almost like she isn’t really there. She sees Bambam and Yugyeom in the crowd, too far-gone to notice her, but she only hears Jinyoung’s laugh.

She used to think there was something inevitable about the two of them—his jealousy bothered her less than it should have; his avoidance more than she liked. It just seemed like they started together, so when it was all over, they’d find each other in the wreckage of their silly dreams. She forgot, after a while, consumed with the white-hot demands of fame like a moth flying into a flame. Later she remembered, having found herself alone, and she tried to pull them back together again. But he was already too far away.

Silently, she steps back out of the apartment and stands in the empty hallway. Perhaps he saw her and will come after her. She imagines it, turning it around in her head like a scene from a drama, freeze frame on the emotional kiss. But she knows he didn’t, and he won’t, because this is simply the real destiny. If you want to become stars, you will be fixed in the night sky, cold and distant, to be seen but never touched.

The lot of the brightest stars is to end up alone.

[luckyzukky]

any - "and still, on the days i want to be alive the sunlight leaves me stunned like a kiss" (source) - canon

[luckyzukky]

any - "i buried my face in his couch and i realized, for the first time but certainly not the last, that apologizing could be a weapon. you can apologize until people think you’re crazy. your whole body can become an apology." (source) - any

coherence – Minghao/Mingyu – undefined

[lachrymosy]

We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Minghao can’t quite tell the difference between the fiction and the truth, though perhaps the truth is the fiction. There is only the coherence you imagine.

“I’m in love with you,” he says. “I don’t expect you to feel the same.”

He imagined this, in precise detail, right down to the shock widening Mingyu’s eyes, the tilt of his head as he tries to think of something to say. Mingyu believes himself to be the kind of person who cares about his friends, so he wets his lips with his tongue and his eyes dart around the room in search of a script he can read. Minghao already knows the options laid out before them, each as solid and inevitable as the heavy thud of his back as he leans against the wall.

What does it mean to be in love, really? Is Minghao crying now because he feels it, or because this is how he’s supposed to feel? Is he in love or is he in love with the story, the taunt of heartbreak, the hollow ache where hope had once languished in his chest? Being in love is really just hope, a projected future, scripting another person into the story you’d like to tell. Scripting yourself as someone he’d fall in love with.

The fiction hurts more than the truth. The truth is that he’s sitting on Mingyu’s couch in the semi-dark and waiting for an answer. The fiction is the one happy future he imagined, where the scene ends with a kiss instead of silence. The truth is that nothing really makes sense, frayed plot lines ending in empty air.

“I’m sorry,” Minghao says into the darkness. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, I’m sorry,” says Mingyu, but then he says nothing else. Into his silence one might read the potential for a plot twist. The truth is, he’s still looking for something to say to make this all mean something.

“I’m sorry,” Minghao repeats, tasting the words, following the path to the end. “I didn’t mean to ruin everything.”

But he did. Deep down he wanted to destroy the bud of hope before it came into bloom. Before he let himself live in a fairy tale. Who are you, if you are not telling yourself a story about yourself? A jumbled mess of experiences and memories. A question, unasked. An impression, a thumb against a bruise.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” says Mingyu.

Minghao laughs. “I’m sorry,” he says sincerely. “That I made you play this part.”

[luckyzukky]

any - "i can be used for different things that much too / selfishness and conceit are different, you know" (source) - canon

[luckyzukky]

any - "hold me however you want" (source) - any

[deadwine]

any - "Today the wind that has been alive for thousands of years grabs a strand of my hair and flies far away. However, there is no one I love so, inevitably, today I love you." (kim kyung ju, dreamer) - any

[deadwine]

any - "You’re a bad person, you’re a bad love. You took all of my heart, But you don’t give me yours." (rio/night off, nevertheless) - any

doomsday (death of me) – yoona/seohyun – actresses au

[pantomimes]

a/n: warning for mentions of death and blood but no one really dies or there's any real blood lol. also there's barely any acting-related stuff in this but just know they're all actresses.
title from doomsday by lizzy mcalpine.

It’s a mistake, the first time it happens.

Seohyun is stressed and tired and all she wants to do is grab her car and leave this club, but she can’t—not when it’s Tiffany’s birthday, not when they haven’t seen each other in almost a year.

So she stays. Pretty, polite, polished. Barely touches the glass of champagne Sooyoung hands her. “You should pick up smoking,” Hyoyeon says jokingly, takes one last drag before she abandons the cigarette in the ashtray. “It will be good for you.”

Seohyun, without missing a beat, declares, “That thing will kill you.”

Which is ironic, Seohyun realizes later, when Yoona approaches her like a fox lured by the smell of her prey, claiming she forgot her chapstick and needed to borrow hers. She knew it was a lie, a cheap excuse to get close to her, but still. She decided to play Yoona’s game, just for one night.

“I’ve been wanting this for so long,” Yoona confesses later, when her face is between Seohyun’s legs, the victorious grin dancing on her lips confirming her words. Seohyun doesn’t tell her anything back—barely has time to, because Yoona dives in and she forgets she needs to wake up at five in the morning, forgets she has to film with the asshole she calls a co-star, forgets she shouldn’t be giving herself to Yoona like this.

Not this easily, at least.

When it’s over, they don’t kiss. Nor do they talk about what that means for their friendship, if it means something to Yoona at all. To be honest, the only confirmation that Seohyun isn’t going insane and didn’t imagine the whole thing are the hickeys spread all over her neck and thighs, the reflection of her bruised skin mocking her in the mirror.

Never again, Seohyun tells herself the morning after, applies makeup over the purple marks, and in a matter of minutes it’s like Yoona never sunk her teeth into her, never drew more blood than she should’ve.

Pretty, polite, polished. She’ll be fine. She always is.

+

Seohyun could label the other times as mistakes, sure, but she’s never been too good at lying to herself.

It would always happen at group gatherings—Yuri’s birthday, the premiere of Sooyoung’s new movie, Taeyeon and Tiffany’s wedding. Yoona never invited Seohyun over to her apartment, or to the movies, or anything like that. It was as if they were complete strangers the second their friends weren’t around.

Sunny, bless her heart, tried to warn Seohyun once, when they were spending the summer at Hyoyeon’s beach house. “Yoona, she’s—she’s not for you. Just—don’t hurt yourself, okay?”

And she should’ve listened. But later that same day she let Yoona rip her clothes apart and fuck her underneath a waterfall while the rest of their friends were asleep. God, why didn’t she listen?

That thing will kill you, her own words echo in her mind, begging her to do something, anything, about the miserable situation she dragged herself into. Instead, she lets Yoona sit beside her on the couch, lets her rest her head on her legs, and shivers pathetically when Yoona grabs her hand and says, “Your nails are too long, Seohyun-ah. We should fix it.”

+

It wasn’t all bad, the moments she shared with Yoona. Short-lived, sure, but not bad.

The more they find themselves in a situation similar to the one during Tiffany’s birthday party, the nicer Yoona was about it. Sometimes she'd even stay in bed with Seohyun and they would talk—not about what they were doing, no, but it was nice, still.

She even opened up to Yoona about her nightmare of a co-star, how he'd treat her like she was nothing, like she didn't deserve to be there. How she'd take a deep breath, keep her chin up, and try to ignore how much his behavior bothered her.

Yoona said she'd kill him for Seohyun, all she had to do was ask and she'd pull the trigger. It was lovely, in a twisted way—she had no idea she had someone else's blood in her hands already.

It's those little things, those moments of bliss, that makes it harder for Seohyun to call it quits. If Yoona was kinder, if she cared just a little bit, she’d be cruel to Seohyun. She’d shove her into a wall and tell her how much of a pathetic freak she is and make this whole thing easier.

Yoona called me awful things, she could tell their friends, and they'd hold her as she sobs her heart out. Sunny would be the nicest about it, even though she was the one to warn her all those months ago. Hyoyeon would be angry, seething, excusing herself every twenty minutes to go to the balcony and light a cigarette.

That thing will kill you, would hang on the tip of Seohyun's tongue, but she wouldn't dare to utter it out loud. Gone are the days where she could judge Hyoyeon—or anyone, for that matter—for not caring about their own well being.

She dragged herself into this, didn't she? 

She'll have to drag herself out of it, then.

+

Seohyun is in the middle of Yuri’s annual Halloween party when she decides it's time. 

She already said goodbye to her friends, an excuse about how she has to wake up early for filming the next day flowing out of her mouth with ease when Tiffany begs her to stay a little longer. She rushes through the crowd of strangers, barely apologizing when she stumbles against a few of them on her way out, desperate to leave that place as fast as she can because if Yoona sees her trying to leave without saying goodbye she’ll follow her outside, and god knows that if Yoona takes her hand in hers and asks her to go upstairs she won’t have the strength to tell her no.

Seohyun unlocks her car, slides in, and rests her forehead over the steering wheel. Her entire body is shaking, her throat is closing up, and she thinks she might actually draw blood if she doesn’t stop gripping her thighs like that.

Being mean is not Seohyun’s strongest suit, but she figures that if Yoona isn’t going to play that part, it’s her duty to do so.

Seohyun won’t die for Yoona, or for whatever it is that she feels for her. She refuses to.

So she grabs her phone, prays that she’s doing the right thing, and starts typing.

seohyun • 11:11 pm
don’t talk to me ever again
actually, forget i ever existed

yoona • 11:12 pm
yah
are you out of your mind?
seohyun-ah
how could i?
how could i ever?

Seohyun takes a deep breath, turns her phone off. She might crash and kill someone—or herself—if she gets another text from Yoona while she's on the road.

She fixes her hair in the rearview mirror, hands a generous amount of money to the guard that opens the gates for her and finally starts to make her way out of the parking lot. Out of Yoona's life.

Pretty, polite, polished. She’ll be fine. She always is.

[luckyzukky]

any - "get / dressed & stop drinking so much, have some / eggs, though, enough with the pills already / let me kiss your elbows & knuckles / good afternoon & goodbye" (source) - any