128a.
I told myself I wouldn't post until I finished my help_japan fic but it was fluttershy's birthday yesterday and I couldn't not. Happy birthday you ♥
This is a remix of Icarus. It is extraordinarily unorganised and unfinished with only bits and pieces written. I lost the motivation for this parts way through but I still want fluttershy to see it anyway ♥ I hope you like it!
Split into "before" and "after." This is the first part, "before."
feathers and wax; (and a fuckton of hope and ambition) before
Kyuhyun used to have big dreams; that was why he went into law. He knew what it was like to be stuck in the middle of a custody battle at eight, to have no say in his future, to just want it all to end.
Stuck at his father's home with no real goal in life but to study his ass off, he gets into the best law school in the country, taking undergraduate units in family law, ironically, to try get as far away from his parents as possible.
"We're so proud of you, honey," his mother says, engagement ring heavy on her finger as she puts her hand over his, and Kyuhyun draws it away, mouth in a hard line. Her fiancee smiles proudly from next to her, and Kyuhyun combs his hair with his fingers, fixes the cuffs of his wrinkled shirt, straightens the seams of his pants -- anything to avoid them.
"You worked hard for it," his mother's fiancee says, smiling. "We're very proud of you."
"Thanks," Kyuhyun says stiffly before he stands. The light reflects off the edges of his glasses and he flinches, chandeliers and penguin waiters coming into view. "Sorry, I have to go now. Enjoy dinner."
"Kyuhyun--"
"I'll talk to you later, Mother," Kyuhyun says and puts his napkin on the table before leaving.
First chance he gets, he throws his phone into the bin.
At university, he shuts himself in the library or his room, studying hard to get the marks he wants, the marks he feels he'll be happy with -- though he isn't sure what happiness is at this point. He's sure he'll find it sooner or later, and that it'll consist of 90s and 100s.
"You should join us, you know," Hyukjae, his roommate, says as he pulls off a sweat soaked shirt and throws it in the laundry basket. "Get away from those stuffy books -- you gotta have a life."
Kyuhyun stiffens in his chair, pen hovering above the name of an act he knows all too well. "I have a life."
Hyukjae sighs and flops onto his bed, half naked and grinning. "No, you don't. Next time, I'll take you, okay? You should see what it's like."
Hyukjae introduces Kyuhyun to his two best friends in the world; Sungmin and Donghae. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Sungmin smiling politely and Donghae grinning like he just got all the candy in the world, Hyukjae hesitantly says they're together. Kyuhyun shrugs.
"You like who you like, right?" he says, and Sungmin cracks out a grin and Donghae reaches forward to crush Kyuhyun in a hug.
"You're my new favourite," Donghae says cheerfully before Sungmin punches him on the shoulder.
It's been a while since Kyuhyun's felt this satisfied with life; after distancing himself from his parents, he thought the only satisfaction he could glean was from cold hard facts and stories of lives more jaded than his. Of happy endings brought about from a flawed system.
"There's more to life than that, you know," Hyukjae says as he watches Kyuhyun study a textbook, fingers marking five different pages in order of significance.
"I would hope so," Kyuhyun says, flipping a page and skipping depressing stories of children being abandoned.
"...You should get out more, what did you do in high school, sit around and mope all day?"
Kyuhyun's lips thin. His high school life mirrors his university one precisely. Hyukjae's eyes widen.
"Oh, shit, sorry, I didn't mean to... But no really, you should get out more, live life a little. You wouldn't want to end up as one of those depressing little kids, would you?"
Kyuhyun refuses to answer for one long minute, Hyukjae's face gradually growing pinched and worried.
"Don't tell me--"
"If I go, will you shut up?" Kyuhyun viciously highlights a line in his textbook.
"Does that mean yes?'
Kyuhyun shuts his book with a sigh and turns around, and Hyukjae bounds over, grinning and arms stretched out.
"Fine, yes," Kyuhyun says, and Hyukjae suffocates him in a hug.
"Favourite!" Hyukjae sings, and Kyuhyun can't help but smile at that.
"We're his only friends," Sungmin says apologetically, Donghae's arm heavy on his shoulders. "So sorry if you get bored of us."
"He would never," Donghae says cheerfully before pecking Sungmin on the cheek. "Who would get sick of this lovely face?"
Sungmin bats Donghae's hand away from under his cheek, frowning. "I was just saying--"
"But you're prettier when you're not talking," Donghae says and attacks Sungmin with a kiss. Sungmin pushes him for a moment before he sighs in it and melts, arms coming up to cradle Donghae's head tenderly.
"See what I have to deal with," Hyukjae says, sighing, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Third wheeling for months? It'd be disgusting if they weren't cute."
"I do have a job to do, you know," Kyuhyun says, and checks the number on a book before slotting it in right above Sungmin's head. He might be moaning a little.
Donghae pulls away from Sungmin with a grin, a bit breathless, though it's nothing compared to Sungmin's flushed cheeks and panting.
"So sorry, Kyuhyunnie," Donghae says, and reaches over to straighten Sungmin's shirt.
"You really shouldn't doing this in a library," Hyukjae says, taking out a book and flicking it open.
"Love knows no bounds," Donghae says, and Hyukjae grins.
"So, hobbies?" Sungmin asks, eyes bright, and Kyuhyun clears his throat.
"Studying," Hyukjae says, and Sungmin rolls his eyes.
"Besides studying."
"Studying," Hyukjae repeats.
"No--"
"All he does is study," Hyukjae says, and Kyuhyun frowns, thumb stroking the spine of a book.
"Kyuhyun? Really?"
He clears his throat again before stuffing the book in place.
"I used to play the piano. And sing," he says, and Sungmin sits up. Donghae and Hyukjae copy him a moment later. That was before the divorce, though. A long time ago.
"Sing, you said?" Hyukjae asks, and Kyuhyun's eyebrows crinkle.
"A singer," Donghae says a bit breathlessly.
"It's been a long time," Kyuhyun mutters, and begins wheeling his empty cart away before Hyukjae grabs at his ankle. He looks down. Hyukjae grins.
"Let's go noraebang."
They make him join their band, currently untitled -- "It's a work in process," Sungmin says -- five minutes into the noraebang session, right after he cracks in Boohwal's song.
"Lead vocalist," Kyuhyun repeats, dubious.
"It has a ring to it," Hyukjae says, watching Sungmin and Donghae duet a trot song, butt checking each other. "You have a really nice voice."
"Um, thanks?"
"Has no one ever complimented you before?" Hyukjae says, grinning as he pushes at Kyuhyun's shoulder. "Don't look so embarrassed."
Kyuhyun gives him a sidelong glance, taking in Hyukjae's wide grin, his fringe flopping attractively just below his eyebrows, into his eyes, before Kyuhyun grins and starts viciously tickling Hyukjae.
"OH BABY BABY," Donghae screams into the mic and starts egging him on.
beach dj doc song - kyuhyun never been to the beach, they drag him to one, car crash on the way
Interlude
Trapped in a car surrounded by three dead bodies, the bodies of the people he loves most in the world, is a level of hell that Dante never described.
Life just wasn't worth it.
The three of them always had more life than him. It feels unfair -- it is unfair -- for things to turn out this way.
He considers killing himself three times while in the hospital.
When he wakes up that first time and feels pain in every inch of his body, deep in his bones and heart.
When he opens his eyes to see his mother standing by his bedside, her ex-fiancee-now-husband standing beside her, an arm around her shoulders.
When he's told he might never speak again.
Rehabilitation is hard. Seeing his mother is harder.
"I just want you back--"
"What you want isn't important here, Mother. What I wanted ten years ago was to live with you -- not Father. Did you care? No, you didn't give a shit about what I wanted, so why should--"
"We thought th-that would be best for you, Kyuhyun, to live with your father. He knew what was best for you."
"He didn't care about me, he just cared about how good I could look in front of his colleagues and friends. Why should I care about him? Why should I care about what you want? You didn't care--"
"Your father did what he thought was right, and you should respect that, Kyuhyun."
"I don't have to respect--"
"Your father passed away in March, Kyuhyun, pay some respect to the dead."
When he gets discharged, he goes straight back to studying, straight back to immersing himself in textbooks.
He lost eighteen months -- the best nine months of his life with the three best people he'd ever known, followed by the worst nine months in rehabilitation.
Eighteen months gone.
Eighteen months gone and he could just slip back into his old life just like that, like nothing had ever change.
"Forget me."
"I can't, you're my son."
"Forget me. Make a new life with your husband, have children, call them yours. But don't contact me."
"Kyuhyun--"
"Just leave me alone. You want me to happy, right? Well, I'd be happy if we had no contact."
"Kyuhyun, don't--"
"I'll take care of the hospital fees, don't worry about them. Just forget me. That's all I ask, Mother."
"I-is that what, what you really want?"
"Yes, please, Mother."
"If-if that's what you really want, Kyuhyun."
"It is. Thank you."
The library job is only part-time and the convenience store fires him after he falls asleep twice on the graveyard shift. He doesn't have time to look for another job with final exams looming and he's
>>
This is a remix of Icarus. It is extraordinarily unorganised and unfinished with only bits and pieces written. I lost the motivation for this parts way through but I still want fluttershy to see it anyway ♥ I hope you like it!
Split into "before" and "after." This is the first part, "before."
feathers and wax; (and a fuckton of hope and ambition) before
Kyuhyun used to have big dreams; that was why he went into law. He knew what it was like to be stuck in the middle of a custody battle at eight, to have no say in his future, to just want it all to end.
Stuck at his father's home with no real goal in life but to study his ass off, he gets into the best law school in the country, taking undergraduate units in family law, ironically, to try get as far away from his parents as possible.
"We're so proud of you, honey," his mother says, engagement ring heavy on her finger as she puts her hand over his, and Kyuhyun draws it away, mouth in a hard line. Her fiancee smiles proudly from next to her, and Kyuhyun combs his hair with his fingers, fixes the cuffs of his wrinkled shirt, straightens the seams of his pants -- anything to avoid them.
"You worked hard for it," his mother's fiancee says, smiling. "We're very proud of you."
"Thanks," Kyuhyun says stiffly before he stands. The light reflects off the edges of his glasses and he flinches, chandeliers and penguin waiters coming into view. "Sorry, I have to go now. Enjoy dinner."
"Kyuhyun--"
"I'll talk to you later, Mother," Kyuhyun says and puts his napkin on the table before leaving.
First chance he gets, he throws his phone into the bin.
At university, he shuts himself in the library or his room, studying hard to get the marks he wants, the marks he feels he'll be happy with -- though he isn't sure what happiness is at this point. He's sure he'll find it sooner or later, and that it'll consist of 90s and 100s.
"You should join us, you know," Hyukjae, his roommate, says as he pulls off a sweat soaked shirt and throws it in the laundry basket. "Get away from those stuffy books -- you gotta have a life."
Kyuhyun stiffens in his chair, pen hovering above the name of an act he knows all too well. "I have a life."
Hyukjae sighs and flops onto his bed, half naked and grinning. "No, you don't. Next time, I'll take you, okay? You should see what it's like."
Hyukjae introduces Kyuhyun to his two best friends in the world; Sungmin and Donghae. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Sungmin smiling politely and Donghae grinning like he just got all the candy in the world, Hyukjae hesitantly says they're together. Kyuhyun shrugs.
"You like who you like, right?" he says, and Sungmin cracks out a grin and Donghae reaches forward to crush Kyuhyun in a hug.
"You're my new favourite," Donghae says cheerfully before Sungmin punches him on the shoulder.
It's been a while since Kyuhyun's felt this satisfied with life; after distancing himself from his parents, he thought the only satisfaction he could glean was from cold hard facts and stories of lives more jaded than his. Of happy endings brought about from a flawed system.
"There's more to life than that, you know," Hyukjae says as he watches Kyuhyun study a textbook, fingers marking five different pages in order of significance.
"I would hope so," Kyuhyun says, flipping a page and skipping depressing stories of children being abandoned.
"...You should get out more, what did you do in high school, sit around and mope all day?"
Kyuhyun's lips thin. His high school life mirrors his university one precisely. Hyukjae's eyes widen.
"Oh, shit, sorry, I didn't mean to... But no really, you should get out more, live life a little. You wouldn't want to end up as one of those depressing little kids, would you?"
Kyuhyun refuses to answer for one long minute, Hyukjae's face gradually growing pinched and worried.
"Don't tell me--"
"If I go, will you shut up?" Kyuhyun viciously highlights a line in his textbook.
"Does that mean yes?'
Kyuhyun shuts his book with a sigh and turns around, and Hyukjae bounds over, grinning and arms stretched out.
"Fine, yes," Kyuhyun says, and Hyukjae suffocates him in a hug.
"Favourite!" Hyukjae sings, and Kyuhyun can't help but smile at that.
"We're his only friends," Sungmin says apologetically, Donghae's arm heavy on his shoulders. "So sorry if you get bored of us."
"He would never," Donghae says cheerfully before pecking Sungmin on the cheek. "Who would get sick of this lovely face?"
Sungmin bats Donghae's hand away from under his cheek, frowning. "I was just saying--"
"But you're prettier when you're not talking," Donghae says and attacks Sungmin with a kiss. Sungmin pushes him for a moment before he sighs in it and melts, arms coming up to cradle Donghae's head tenderly.
"See what I have to deal with," Hyukjae says, sighing, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Third wheeling for months? It'd be disgusting if they weren't cute."
"I do have a job to do, you know," Kyuhyun says, and checks the number on a book before slotting it in right above Sungmin's head. He might be moaning a little.
Donghae pulls away from Sungmin with a grin, a bit breathless, though it's nothing compared to Sungmin's flushed cheeks and panting.
"So sorry, Kyuhyunnie," Donghae says, and reaches over to straighten Sungmin's shirt.
"You really shouldn't doing this in a library," Hyukjae says, taking out a book and flicking it open.
"Love knows no bounds," Donghae says, and Hyukjae grins.
"So, hobbies?" Sungmin asks, eyes bright, and Kyuhyun clears his throat.
"Studying," Hyukjae says, and Sungmin rolls his eyes.
"Besides studying."
"Studying," Hyukjae repeats.
"No--"
"All he does is study," Hyukjae says, and Kyuhyun frowns, thumb stroking the spine of a book.
"Kyuhyun? Really?"
He clears his throat again before stuffing the book in place.
"I used to play the piano. And sing," he says, and Sungmin sits up. Donghae and Hyukjae copy him a moment later. That was before the divorce, though. A long time ago.
"Sing, you said?" Hyukjae asks, and Kyuhyun's eyebrows crinkle.
"A singer," Donghae says a bit breathlessly.
"It's been a long time," Kyuhyun mutters, and begins wheeling his empty cart away before Hyukjae grabs at his ankle. He looks down. Hyukjae grins.
"Let's go noraebang."
They make him join their band, currently untitled -- "It's a work in process," Sungmin says -- five minutes into the noraebang session, right after he cracks in Boohwal's song.
"Lead vocalist," Kyuhyun repeats, dubious.
"It has a ring to it," Hyukjae says, watching Sungmin and Donghae duet a trot song, butt checking each other. "You have a really nice voice."
"Um, thanks?"
"Has no one ever complimented you before?" Hyukjae says, grinning as he pushes at Kyuhyun's shoulder. "Don't look so embarrassed."
Kyuhyun gives him a sidelong glance, taking in Hyukjae's wide grin, his fringe flopping attractively just below his eyebrows, into his eyes, before Kyuhyun grins and starts viciously tickling Hyukjae.
"OH BABY BABY," Donghae screams into the mic and starts egging him on.
beach dj doc song - kyuhyun never been to the beach, they drag him to one, car crash on the way
Interlude
Trapped in a car surrounded by three dead bodies, the bodies of the people he loves most in the world, is a level of hell that Dante never described.
Life just wasn't worth it.
The three of them always had more life than him. It feels unfair -- it is unfair -- for things to turn out this way.
He considers killing himself three times while in the hospital.
When he wakes up that first time and feels pain in every inch of his body, deep in his bones and heart.
When he opens his eyes to see his mother standing by his bedside, her ex-fiancee-now-husband standing beside her, an arm around her shoulders.
When he's told he might never speak again.
Rehabilitation is hard. Seeing his mother is harder.
"I just want you back--"
"What you want isn't important here, Mother. What I wanted ten years ago was to live with you -- not Father. Did you care? No, you didn't give a shit about what I wanted, so why should--"
"We thought th-that would be best for you, Kyuhyun, to live with your father. He knew what was best for you."
"He didn't care about me, he just cared about how good I could look in front of his colleagues and friends. Why should I care about him? Why should I care about what you want? You didn't care--"
"Your father did what he thought was right, and you should respect that, Kyuhyun."
"I don't have to respect--"
"Your father passed away in March, Kyuhyun, pay some respect to the dead."
When he gets discharged, he goes straight back to studying, straight back to immersing himself in textbooks.
He lost eighteen months -- the best nine months of his life with the three best people he'd ever known, followed by the worst nine months in rehabilitation.
Eighteen months gone.
Eighteen months gone and he could just slip back into his old life just like that, like nothing had ever change.
"Forget me."
"I can't, you're my son."
"Forget me. Make a new life with your husband, have children, call them yours. But don't contact me."
"Kyuhyun--"
"Just leave me alone. You want me to happy, right? Well, I'd be happy if we had no contact."
"Kyuhyun, don't--"
"I'll take care of the hospital fees, don't worry about them. Just forget me. That's all I ask, Mother."
"I-is that what, what you really want?"
"Yes, please, Mother."
"If-if that's what you really want, Kyuhyun."
"It is. Thank you."
The library job is only part-time and the convenience store fires him after he falls asleep twice on the graveyard shift. He doesn't have time to look for another job with final exams looming and he's
>>