Big Bang turns fairy tale
Title: Once upon a time
Character(s) / pairing(s): Seunghyun / Jiyong (more like TOP / Jipunzel) + the rest of the group.
Rating: PG
Word count: 3750
Note: So this happened. Don't ask. Or maybe do. All I know is that I had fun writing it and I hope you have even more fun reading it? :D A fic inspired by this super cute fan art which in turn was inspired by the (fantastic) Fantastic Baby mv. Enjoy!
Summary: In which TOP climbs a tower and the only way he falls is in love. Maybe.
(Artwork by haxie @ tumblr)
Once upon a time
Once upon a time there had been a fair princess locked away in a tower. Legend had it her hair was long as the tower itself, and her voice so sweet the prince whom she sang of would undoubtedly fall in love before he'd even laid eyes on the princess.
And today might be her lucky day, because 'lo and behold! A strange vehicle made its way towards the tower. It was not a vehicle one would expect to see in a story like this: it was a car, and a bright red one at that. From it blasted music, loud enough to detect a voice saying wow fantastic baby, followed by a series of various electronic sounds. It certainly was something else.
More important than the music or the car, however, were the persons seated in it. Four of them there were.
Could one of them be the prince in this story?
First there was a blond-haired guy (though it seemed to be of the dyed kind) with a happy smile on his face. He seemed to be enjoying the music and the pleasant breeze wafting through his locks. Next to him sat a guy with short-cropped dark hair and equally dark sweatshirt. His fingers were tapping a rhythm to the music.
Then on the front seat could be found a man with quite the hairdo: brilliant blue of a shade that could easily be mistaken for candy but that he somehow managed to make look dignified. He also wore an illustrious outfit that would not be ill-fitting for a gentleman on some or other official ceremony. Could this, perhaps, be our prince?
Finally, managing the steering-wheel with one arm (the other casually leaning on the the car door) was a guy with a mohawk and dark sunglasses. He left a tough impression but his smile was undeniably kind.
After some time and various choruses of wow fantastic baby (the song seemed to be put on repeat) the car stopped at the foot of the tower. All four of them stared up in unison. Up close it seemed even taller than before.
“What now?” the blond guy asked from the backseat.
“We make ourselves known to the princess and announce that we've come to rescue her,” the guy next to him answered with equal excitement and confidence. Perhaps he'd done this kind of thing before. Or fantasized about doing it, anyway.
The maybe-prince cleared his throat. “Let me do it,” he said.
He stepped out of the car and braced himself: feet firmly planted on the ground, gaze upwards. He cleared his throat once more and then shouted, in a voice remarkably deep and far-carrying, “My name is T.O.P and I am here to rescue you, oh princess!”
There was silence for a couple of seconds. Just when the four companions were starting to wonder if their quest had been for nothing, a window far-up opened and a head popped out.
“Rescue me, you say?” the head (of course belonging to the princess) called.
All four of them nodded in unison. The black-haired guy was straining his neck to get a better look at the princess - legend spared no superlatives to describe her beauty, after all.
“Do you maybe have a rope?” T.O.P shouted back. He then frowned a little at his own words. Already he wished they'd come better prepared.
“No, I don't have a rope,” the princess answered from high above and there was a momentarily crestfallen expression on all four of their faces. “But I do have hair.”
And with that, the princess lowered her locks out of the window - all the way down to the foot of the tower.
The prince's mouth fell open, as did the other's: hearing it legend and seeing it for real were two different things entirely. Legend had had one detail very wrong, though, for the hair was not golden but orange in colour, with dark extensions in-between.
Perhaps the princess had got bored in her long wait and decided to liven things up a bit. Very excusable, given the circumstances.
T.O.P tentatively extended a hand to touch the hair. Despite it being several meters long and belonging to a legendary princess it did feel like real hair. The others watched with rapid attention.
Things didn't seem to go fast enough to the princess' liking though, because she shouted, “Hey, get me out of here!” shaking the four of them out of their hair-admiring reverie.
The princess was rather in a hurry, it seemed. Understandable, after having been locked up there for who knows how long. One would get bored.
“I'm coming!” T.O.P answered in his loud voice, but simultaneously wondered how exactly he was going to get there with nothing but hair to help him.
Wasn't it some sort of crime to use a princess' locks as ladder?
Then again, the owner of said locks had suggested herself he uses it and seeing as there was a noticeable lack of actual ladders, he supposed that made things altogether morally justified. Plus, as the princess had just now loudly informed him: she wanted to get out of there.
Well then.
He grabbed a handful of orange hair and lifted himself off the ground. So far so good. He looked over his shoulder for moral support for his princely mission. His blond friend gave him two thumb-ups and a bright smile; his mohawk friend nodded confidently; and his friend in black shared one of his usual motivational phrases that was no less effective for all its repetitiveness because of the enthusiasm with which it was uttered. All right then. Saving The Locked-Up Princess mission was officially a go!
Using the hair as rope, T.O.P slowly climbed the tower, step by little step. The hair was surprisingly sturdy: never again would he doubt the qualities of it. He could even go so far as saying that it felt and smelt nicer than rope, too. A multitude of benefits.
His four companions watched on from the ground, music still resonating from the car's boxes. It was ever the same song: apparently this fantastic baby was the soundtrack of their quest.
But said quest was altogether not very easy: beneath his distinguished uniform T.O.P soon started to sweat. It didn't help that most official clothes had never heard of the word practicality. The thought of the princess anxiously awaiting his arrival, however, gave him strength. She was probably looking at him right now. He couldn't help but picture her in his mind. Somehow the hair he was currently clinging onto didn't fit the traditional princess image - but undoubtedly she was very beautiful still.
The higher he climbed, the more distant the music became. His friends were still actively jamming to their apparent anthem, but he could hear nor see it - at this point there was just the sound of the wind and...
“Hey, hurry up will you?”
…the princesses' voice. T.O.P sighed from exhaustion and braced himself for the last couple of meters. The princess was admittedly a little less sweet-voiced than he'd imagined - but then again, it couldn't be a pleasure to have someone use your hair as a rope. In order to save you from a tower in which you'd been imprisoned for ages, no less.
Focus. This was not the place nor time to get sidetracked.
But finally! As he strained his neck a window came within sight. He couldn't make out the princesses' face, but would see soon enough. Three, two, one more heavy step - and there he was. With an effort he heaved himself onto the windowsill and into the tower.
He'd made it.
He took a deep breath to calm himself and then smiled at the princess waiting for him - except his smile faltered the next split second because 'princess' didn't seem to be the right word for her.
Or him.
“You're... not a princess,” T.O.P managed.
“Glad you noticed,” the princess - prince - said, busying herself - himself - with retrieving all the hair from outside. Seeing as there was rather a lot of it, that could take a while.
Remembering his princely duties just in time, T.O.P shook himself out of his state of shock and offered, “Here, let me -”
“No, it's fine,” the other prince (was he even a prince?) promptly replied. 'Damsel in distress' seemed less accurate by the minute.
At least the rejection gave our hero the opportunity to get a good look at the reason of his quest. As already noted, the guy had very orange, very long hair, though it was speckled with black. T.O.P vaguely wondered how much hair-dye it must have cost to get the job done. And after that if he ever washed his hair - before you'd finished everything the part you started would already have gotten dirty again.
The interesting looks didn't stop with his hair, because on his face he had applied some kind of glittery substance and his eyes were rimmed with dark eyeliner. On top of it all he wore a black-and-white striped suit made of fine silk.
One couldn't accuse the guy of mundaneness. That much was certain.
“Are you done observing me?” the guy said, and T.O.P quickly lifted his gaze from the other man's shoes (pointed and black) to his face. It seemed that during his staring, ahum, observation round the object of his scrutiny had managed to haul all the hair back in.
The man smirked a little and then roamed his eyes slowly over T.O.P's body, clearly thinking it his turn to observe. T.O.P started feeling slightly self-conscious, aware of his sweaty body and hair that was probably windswept -
“Good to know princes still come handsome,” the guy concluded with satisfaction and T.O.P couldn't quite prevent a surprised oh. This whole situation turned odder by the minute and he didn't even dislike it. Maybe the height was doing things to his brain. Such as convincing him that staring back was a good answer to that statement..
“So, what is the name of my rescuer?” the guy then asked, leaning back against the wall and looking up at him with an expression that was both flirtatious and slightly mocking.
“My name is T.O.P,” he answered, still experiencing inexplicable concentration difficulty as the other man stared at him.
“T.O.P short for what?”
“I'm... not exactly a fan of my middle names,” T.O.P confessed, once more regretting royals' naming habits.
The guy seemed to think it over for a second and then said, “Well, I'll just call you TOP then. Fitting enough as you've just now climbed to the top, eh?”
TOP actually had to laugh at that because this whole situation was absurd and after this no-one could accuse him anymore of a lame sense of humour. He should inform his friends once he got back.
“So what's your name name, then?” he asked, feeling that the conversation was becoming a little one-sided.
“I go by the name of Jipunzel,” the guy proclaimed with sudden gentility, and did a little bow with matching hand gesture that TOP was pretty sure had been outdated for centuries.
“Actually, I have a full name,” Jipunzel went on, back to his forward self in a second, “but if you're not telling I won't either, so let's just keep it Jipunzel, yes?”
TOP was more than fine with that if it meant getting them out of here sooner. He looked around him. The room was bigger and cleaner than the tower had suggested: there were several pieces of furniture, most of them made from dark oaken wood. At last a detail that didn't seem out of place in this story.
“Nice place,” TOP commented.
Jipunzel didn't answer. Right, perhaps not the time for standard courtesy manners.
“Shall we go then?” he asked instead.
“Gladly,” Jipunzel replied with the careless arrogance royals seemed born to converse with. But when TOP eyed his hair, he fixed him a scathing stare. “There's no way you can use my hair again. It's a one-way ticket, as you should be aware.”
All pompousness aside Jipunzel was right, because though he himself could climb down again there was no way it would hold Jipunzel as well, it being his own hair. It defied the laws of physics as well as common sense. Which seemed to be a mysteriously hard thing to come by this day.
“Then what do you propose?” he asked.
Jipunzel sighed exasperatedly. “Do I have to do everything myself?”
Which TOP thought was a bit of stretch because after all, he'd just climbed a fifty-meter tower using only somebody's hair. Out of the sole goodness of his heart.
Meanwhile Jipunzel sat down on one of the comfy plush chairs in the room (all things considered it wasn't the worst place to be locked inside) and lifted his arms above his head. After stretching like a particularly spoiled cat he said, not in a very displeased voice, “Seems like we're both stuck here then.”
“Eh?”
“You'll get used to it,” Jipunzel assured him.
“Eh -”
“Well, the first couple of weeks are the hardest. Sudden claustrophobia, madness because of the inability to escape, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Eh.”
“But since we're here with the two of us I'm sure we can find a way to make things more pleasant,” Jipunzel concluded and batted his eyelashes at him in a way TOP wasn't sure was appropriate.
Though wholly enticing.
Wrong train of thought.
“I'll call out to the guys,” TOP suggested desperately, “they'll get help for us.”
“Good luck with that,” Jipunzel said as he inspected his nails.
“Then let's make a rope out of your hair! That should work?”
The icy stare was back instantly.
“I'm not cutting my hair.”
“Then the only thing left is jumping!”
“Do you want to die?”
TOP lifted his hands in slight despair. “Then how on earth do we get out of here?”
“Well,” Jipunzel said slowly, “we could always take the stairs.”
His brain screeched to a halt.
“What?”
“Stairs,” Jipunzel explained as though to a child, “one use them to ascend and descent in a place.”
“I - of course I know that - the point is that there are no stairs here.”
“Of course there are,” Jipunzel said flippantly, “how else do you think they put me here?”
TOP stared. Not so much because he was actually pondering that question except - well yes, how else had they put him here?
Jipunzel looked at him innocently.
“You -“
“Yes?” Jipunzel queried and then suddenly grinned.
Not an unappealing sight weren't it for the fact that Jipunzel was obviously having a blast mocking him.
“There are stairs!” TOP exclaimed, not able to keep the accusing tone out of his voice. Here he had been thinking of jumping as a viable solution while all the way mr. Obnoxious Prince over there had known the answer.
Jipunzel was still grinning when he remarked, “Say, why are you glaring at me rather than kissing me in celebration?”
“No such thing until we're actually out of here.”
“A good promise and a good motivator,” Jipunzel said. “Let's go.”
And he jumped up to walk towards a tapestry on the other side of the wall. TOP had not been paying attention to it before this moment - there were more important matters when rescuing a prince(ss) from a semi-locked tower after all.
About that.
“Why didn't you just come out and say there were stairs?” It appeared he had still not entirely got rid off the accusing tone. Give it a sentence or five.
“Where's the fun in that?” Jipunzel countered, as though such logic was accepted by each and everyone.
On the upside: there was no need to jump now. Living outweighed being lied to by a not altogether unattractive and undoubtedly spoiled royal who also happened to have been alone and bored out of his mind for way too long.
Right.
He walked over to Jipunzel.
“I assume those stairs are hidden by this lovely hunting scene here?” TOP said as he also looked at the tapestry. It depicted quite a number of figures he assumed to be deer and men running in a broadleaf forest. Bit hard to tell though because the fabric had started fading.
“Uhuh,” Jipunzel hummed in merry agreement. “A hunting scene with thirteen poor deer to be exact. Well: two poor deer and eleven whose future is still undetermined. And always will be: will they get caught or escape? Alas, time won't tell.”
TOP stared at the tapestry. With a little bit of imagination he could see the deer running away, twigs breaking, shouts of the men chasing them filling the air. Two deer had fallen already. Wounded or worse.
He suddenly imagined Jipunzel thinking up a sequel to the story on lone winter nights when there was nothing else to do but think about this. Relate, even. There was a quaint feeling in his chest that might be sorrow for the poor deer but could also be inexplicable fondness.
“Must have been lonely out here,” he said suddenly, (under)stating the obvious but meaning something more.
“Not anymore,” Jipunzel answered as he gave TOP a meaningful look and then extended an arm toward the tapestry. As he pulled, the deer disappeared and an opening came in its place, revealing an old stone staircase.
There was a moment of silence. It somehow felt like a solemn occasion. Still TOP couldn't help voice the sudden question that appeared most logically in his mind: “Why have you never used these yourself?”
“Would if I could, of course,” Jipunzel replied, “but there's some kind of spell to it. Can't go through it alone, have to have a prince charming alongside me.”
He looked sideways and gave a flirty smile that did things to TOP's nether regions. “And as luck would have it there's one beside me right now.”
"I am a prince,” he agreed.
“And charming,” Jipunzel supplemented.
“If you say so?”
“I do say so,” Jipunzel said and then held out his hand. After a second TOP grabbed it.
Jipunzel smiled. “Let's go.”
And together they stepped through the tapestry hole.
It took ten minutes of bumping into respectively each other, cobwebs and the hard stone floor (reminder for next mission: bring a torch) before they'd reached the bottom of the staircase. TOP raked a hand through his hair to remove the cobwebs, then extended an arm to do the same for Jipunzel before thinking better of it. That might take a day or two. The majority of his hair still couldn't be seen, trailing behind him up and round the winding staircase.
“Here we are then,” TOP said.
“Not entirely yet,” Jipunzel said and pushed open the door. Sunlight streamed in. With it came the excited voices of TOP's friends - and as they stepped out, the three of them appeared.
“You made it!” the guy with the mohawk exclaimed.
“Not that we ever doubted you,” the black-haired guy supplemented and the blond guy nodded in solemn agreement.
“Thanks,” TOP said with a large grin, feeling like he wouldn't stop grinning for quite a while. He looked back at the tower; the door couldn't be distinguished from the bricks in the wall. He hoped this would mark the last of the region's strange lock-royals-in-towers policy.
Next to him Jipunzel meaningfully cleared his throat.
Right, he was being impolite. Couldn't be that he'd somehow lost his manners on the way down.
“Guys, this is Jipunzel,” TOP introduced him to his friends, “and Jipunzel, these are Taeyang, Daesung and Seungri,” he said as he pointed at each of them.
There was a short silence as everyone looked at each other. Then Taeyang scratched his head. “Is it me or does she look like a guy?”
“Of course I'm a guy,” Jipunzel scoffed.
Immediately all three pair of eyes widened, then turned towards TOP. “Eh, long story,” he said. Actually, he realised that he wasn't very aware yet of the story here himself but he was sure Jipunzel could tell him on the way home.
And maybe after that. And after, after that.
Again Jipunzel cleared his throat meaningfully.
“Yes?” TOP asked as he promptly stopped thinking about showing Jipunzel around the gardens on a sunlit day and other pleasant day dreams that would hopefully come true.
“Remember that promise you made?” Jipunzel said. Around the edges of his lips danced a telltale smile that TOP didn't entirely like. Or perhaps very much did and that was the whole problem.
He felt his mouth go a little dry.
“I do,” he said, because an honour-bound man such as himself remembered such things, “but maybe - “
“- you're not one to keep your promises?”
“- we should wait till we're alone,” he corrected him with extra emphasis, aware of his friends' unabashed stares. He no doubt wouldn't hear the end of this for the rest of the season. He should learn to speak in riddles.
Jipunzel smiled again in that way of his.
It should be sinister except that it felt more like a promise.
He swallowed. All the more reasons to get out of here.
“Let's go,” he said, and gestured towards the car.
Jipunzel gave the vehicle a strange look but still took to this product of modernity better than might be expected. “I like the colour,” he decided. TOP smiled. He did not say such cheesy and disgusting things as I like you as well.
But maybe did think them.
Taeyang sat down in the driver's seat with Seungri next to him, leaving the places at the back for him, Jipunzel and Daesung. He gestured at the seat in the middle.
“Let's sit next to each other,” he said and Jipunzel complied with a happy shrug. He seemed more than pleased to get out of this place. TOP was as well. It all felt like a mission accomplished - and then something.
“As long as you two don't start snogging now,” Daesung warned as he sat down on the other side and shut the car door. Seunghyun gave him an affronted stare.
“Jipunzel is a princess - eh prince. Of course he wouldn't do that kind of thing.”
Jipuzel merely sort of smirked and placed his hand on Seunghyun's thigh.
“...ehm, well let's get out of here,” Seunghyun hastily said, and covered Jipunzel's hand with his own.