Challenge #25 - comment ficathon
[PROMPTING IS NOW CLOSED]
Welcome!
In the spirit of the holidays we've decided to forgo the traditional weekly challenge this week to run a comment ficathon. Prompting will close on the 1st 8th of January 2017, but remember there is no deadline if you still want to fill up a prompt. I won't be choosing a winner for this week so feel free to ( Read more... )
Welcome!
In the spirit of the holidays we've decided to forgo the traditional weekly challenge this week to run a comment ficathon. Prompting will close on the 1st 8th of January 2017, but remember there is no deadline if you still want to fill up a prompt. I won't be choosing a winner for this week so feel free to ( Read more... )
set in early/mid 2017
i... barely know svt sorry if i royally screwed up their personalities
(1/2)
It takes three mornings of waking before dawn, exhausted but unable to fall back asleep, before Junhui realises why.
“The bird,” he says, peering down at Jeonghan in the bunk below his. “Where’d it go?”
Jeonghan cracks an eye open and mumbles, “The fuck, man?”
Junhui leans over further so he can see the window, a square of pre-dawn grey, at the foot of Jeonghan’s bed. The railings creak ominously under his weight. “There was a bird living in the tree right outside this window. It sang every morning, remember?”
“You’re going to be living in the tree if you don’t go the fuck back to sleep,” Jeonghan grunts, and rolls over. Mingyu, barely awake, laughs from the other side of the room, and that’s the end of that.
People often tell Junhui that he’s very determined.
“It’s almost scary sometimes,” Chan comments mildly, and Junhui says, “Huh,” and doesn’t look away from the line of his shoulders in the studio mirrors.
Junhui just knows exactly what he wants and how to keep it to himself. Both are things he learned in that first, lonely year before Minghao arrived. Is it just him, he wonders, or do they all end up like this? He thinks about Minghao, about Jieqiong, about the few words he’s exchanged with Yixing and decides yeah, it’s probably all of them.
He and Jihoon go for a walk at midnight in the middle of January. It’s something of a tradition between them, even if right now it’s mostly just fucking freezing. Jihoon doesn’t like to be alone but the dorm is always too loud, and Junhui is so very good at being quiet. His eyes follow the powerlines, and Junhui knows he’s writing lyrics in his head.
Junhui’s not sure why he goes. Maybe it has something to do with those first few months in Korea, when he’d wander the corridors in the hopes of running into Jieqiong just so he wouldn’t have to go a day without speaking a full sentence. There are few memories more comforting to Junhui than turning a corner to find her leaning against a wall or in the doorway of the girls’ practice room, like she’d been waiting for him too.
Jihoon frowns up at the dark sky, his breath fogging silver, and asks, “What inspires you, Junhui?”
“Inspiration?” Junhui shivers, shoving his hands deeper in his pockets. “It’s when you find something...” He pauses, sifting through the words in his head. “Something bigger than you. Something that’ll always be there, even if you look away.” Like a language that you rarely speak but connects you to a billion people you’ve never met. Like a girl that can cross seas and make a whole country fall in love with her.
“Shit, dude.” Jihoon kicks at a loose square of pavement and shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Sounds like I’m not the one who should be writing lyrics.”
Reply
“Maybe it’s a migratory bird,” Hansol says one morning, as Junhui stares out the window again.
“A what?”
“You know, birds that fly south for winter, where it’s warmer.”
“Do those exist?” Junhui asks. “Birds that live in more than one place?”
“Uh-huh,” he says, “it’ll be back in spring,” and Hansol, who Junhui’s still not sure what to call when the cameras are off, would probably know.
He sees her again just as winter tips over into spring. In the corridors, just like old times, when they were two teenagers with their dreams and not much else.
“Hey,” she says, in that same easy, easy way she does everything. “It’s been a while.”
“Yeah,” he says, “it has,” and he’s not a desperately lonely sixteen-year-old anymore but her voice still sounds a little like home. “You were really good, last year. All of it.”
Jieqiong smiles, brighter than the spring sun that’s falling in through a window over her shoulder. “Look at us now, huh,” she says, turning so they’re side by side, backs against the wall.
Sometimes it feels like she can hear every thought in his head. During that first week Junhui had wanted to go home more than anything. Jieqiong had walked into the room, taken one look at him and said, “Don’t worry, it’ll get easier,” smiling like it was really that simple, and he’d realised that maybe it was.
Junhui hopes she knows what he’s thinking now because he doesn’t know how to say it in any language. He’s thinking about how tired she looks, how thin she is, and how he doesn’t mind waking up to silence for half the year if it means Jieqiong knows she’ll always have a safe place to land.
She rests her cheek against his shoulder and closes her eyes and yeah, Junhui thinks, she knows.
Junhui falls asleep and dreams about a future, years from now, where summer never ends. When he wakes up there’s a bird singing. It sounds a lot like home.
Reply
thank you for writing <3
Reply
also i can't believe you prompted angsty canon layhan why would you do that to me
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
this made me feel stuff thank you for this! <3
oh and I can't even tell that you barely know seventeen
Reply
Leave a comment