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works in progress
Note: Current WIPs. Anonymous feedback meme
pacific rim au, kris/lay/lu han
When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at a nearly-identical version of himself: the gangly arms and brute jaw, the same shell-shocked expression, a few centimetres short. Behind him, a swath of inky black, a skyline carved out like the teeth of a graveyard: late April in Vancouver. The predilection of an imminent storm. Something in his chest seizes, a three-year ache, rooting itself like a spine. “Jesus,” he mutters, nearly brings a hand up to scrub over his face before he remembers the glass of his helmet. “Lu Han-”
The ground beneath them shudders again, the worst kind of déjà vu. “Lu Han,” he shouts, barely hearing himself over the sudden explosion of sound: the Kaiju surging up out of English Bay, sending a cascade of water crashing down past the barrier of sand and trees; slim red fingers hooking into the thick of the West End, tearing into the earth like it’s digging for a warm, molten core. Over the clash of sound, a roar that sets his teeth on edge and the shatter of glass, he sees himself start to run and follows, breathing harsh and loud inside his Drivesuit.
He never remembers how long he stays running, but when his younger self stops, he does too. Hears the shriek, deafening, of the Kaiju as it falls in a spray of royal blue, crippling what’s left of East Pender Street. When he looks up, he sees it: the ugly grey head rearing back up to blink, electric blue, at the Jaeger that looms over it. Against the backdrop of a city in flames, smoke dusting the sky, the Jaeger reaches out, lifts the Kaiju, and drives a giant, bayonetted fist between its eyes.
contemporary dance au, taemin/kai
In his head, Taemin can play out the choreography: sweeping moves across the stage, the dramatic grand allegro. Taemin, chasing after his own shadow, his own fantasy. “You’re my muse,” Taemin bluffs, the first time he shows Jongin the sketch.
Jongin rolls his eyes. “Right, this isn’t about your narcissism.” But Taemin could tell he liked the idea: loved doing lyrical, adopting imperfect characters that he could show to an audience like the pale vein of a wrist, exposed. The role was made for him: Narcissus’ shadow, a mad obsession, masquerading as love. As if the force of want could make him real.
Jongin, halfway through the notation, clears his throat and laughs. Taemin shifts, rolling off Jongin’s back to look at him. “You think you can lift me?” Jongin says, sceptical.
“Sure,” Taemin grins, all bravado, and flexes a bicep.
Jongin has a shit poker face. For a moment, he’s silent, fighting all expression off his face, and then he splutters out a sound, halfway between a cough and a sneeze. Taemin, eyes narrowed, punches him, launching himself after him so that Jongin’s knocked back against the floor, pinned under him. “What was that?” Taemin says, grabbing him by the collar, while Jongin laughs, loud and unrestrained. “Say that again-”
band au, chanyeol/tao
Their first, real band practise together, Chanyeol vanishes once Kris calls five. The room feels too hot, leadened by exertion; he feels thrown off, like he’s trying to make room for something he doesn’t have space for. They’d spent the past week in the same room, mostly Kris and Zitao playing simple riffs together, getting a feel for each other, roping Chanyeol in whenever they went unplugged. “Chanyeol records second guitar and backing vocals, too,” explained Baekhyun, who was mostly there for band solidarity and to fill Zitao in.
Chanyeol was sitting on the floor, tuning up. He unclamped his clip to thumb an E, fingers warming at the first touch of steel. Even without looking up he could tell Zitao was looking at him as Baekhyun said it, as if filing it to memory, paired with an image. In front of him, the tuner veered left towards Zitao and stuttered.
Outside, he taps out a cigarette, frowning distantly. The wind forces him to stand with the sun in his eyes, smoke spilling out into the street. He watches the cars passing by, but mostly he’s keeping time: adagio, 4/4 for convenience. He’s less than halfway through his cigarette when time’s up. He only notices Zitao standing at the top of the stairs when he turns to head back inside, sun-flooded eyes going cool with relief. His vision swarms back on the dark silhouette cut against the blinding whitewash, burning itself into a lingering negative when he blinks. Zitao doesn’t look up from his phone until Chanyeol’s shadow is floating over him in a momentary eclipse, but by then, Chanyeol is already walking past him, the smell of smoke chasing his heels.
chew au, lu han + tao
Fact number one: two months ago, Lu Han was assigned a new partner.
At a glance, Zitao was the definition of green, fresh out of the Academy, cute ideas about fighting crime for the good of society. When Director Jung introduced them, Lu Han took one look at him and protested, “Sir-”
He quailed under the look Director Jung gave him - his face remained smiling, but broadcasted your pay grade is in my hands - but once they’d left his office, Lu Han said encouragingly, “Are you sure you want to work Homicide? I think you’d do well in the Undercover Division.”
Zitao just smiled. “Since we’re going to be working together, there are some things you should know about me,” he said.
Great, Lu Han thought, Kumbaya, which is when Zitao dropped the bomb.
jesse james au, g-dragon/seungri + g-dragon/top
Hyunseung was the snake in Eden, deceptively harmless until he had you clamped between his teeth. But the idea of Jiyong caught, more than the idea of payoff, was what gripped him. Jiyong was like a wild animal - once bitten, twice violent, all teeth, savage and beautiful and fucking invincible. Jiyong dead he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and felt the beginnings of an itch. The glassy eyes and still mouth, fingers that couldn’t play with a knife, lips that wouldn’t make him want promises from. The bounty, Hyunseung kept saying, but he wasn’t listening.
He watched Jiyong punch Hyunseung in the mouth, instead, the blood and spit flecking on Jiyong’s knuckles and Hyunseung’s pale skin. The black spiral of Jiyong’s earring, curving out from the back of his earlobe in a loop, ended in a point near Jiyong’s jaw. Eventually Hyunseung stopped fighting back, each of Jiyong’s blows finding home the only sound. Another minute, two, and then he let go, sat back and looked at Hyunseung’s face with a tender, almost helpless expression, fingers touching his cooling, bloody mouth. As if he knew how to regret.
Then Jiyong looked up and stared at him. For months he would dream of this: looking down, afraid to meet Jiyong’s eye, and all the while Jiyong saw him like a mirror, looked into him and saw a lifeless reflection of himself, tangled with conflicting desires - Jiyong dead, Jiyong alive, Jiyong.
Jiyong laughed.
virgin suicides au, sulli/victoria
Victoria was the one who kept things: a string of fake pearls, the plastic tiara from ten-year-old Sulli’s Halloween costume, an empty tube of lipstick that they’d shared, giggling as they fought for the mirror and blew kisses at their reflections, lips red. Scraps of notes they’d passed during French lessons and photographs of the two of them as children, holding their father’s hands or hands cupped in a docile V under their chins, one of Sulli’s socks slipping down to her shin.
Sixteen years old and Sulli didn’t want to be the princess anymore, wore black and teased her hair on Halloween and waited by the door for trick-o-treaters. “It’s poisoned,” she said, tongue red from the lollipops she’d been eating, and held out her basket of candy.
After the incident, their father unlocked Sulli’s diary with a luggage key, looking for signs, running his finger down the seams where she’d ripped pages out. Two days prior, she’d taken a half-used matchbook from the kitchen, the one they used to light votive candles and birthday cakes. She brought a sandwich on a dish to her room, finished the sandwich, and burned the pages in the china plate. Then she opened the window and dumped the ashes onto the rosebushes below.
age regression, taemin/kai
When Taemin wakes up, it’s to Jongin shifting under the arm he has slung over his waist. His eyes still feel heavy, dead, and he lets Jongin wriggle ineffectually, making a low sound in this throat. It comes out congested with sleep, barely anything more than a quiet, discomfited groan. At the sound, Jongin stills, leaving Taemin to drift back towards sleep, but after a minute, he can feel Jongin’s gaze on him, oddly alert.
“What,” Taemin mumbles, lifting his head to pillow it a little higher. He peels an eye open blearily and jolts at the eyes that blink back at him, wide and curious.
He’s seen enough baby pictures of Jongin to recognise him, after the shock wears off: by the mouth turning down with petulance, if nothing else, when Taemin says, hoarsely, “Jongin?” In a sleep daze, he tries to remember yesterday night - Jongin, lashes still wet from the water he’d splashed over his face, burrowing under the covers, knocking knees with him. Half-asleep, Jongin had slid a hand to the back of Taemin’s neck, dragging him closer for warmth - adult, twenty-year old Jongin. He rubs his eyes, squinting until his vision swims back, clear, and looks at Jongin again.
Note: Current WIPs. Anonymous feedback meme
pacific rim au, kris/lay/lu han
When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at a nearly-identical version of himself: the gangly arms and brute jaw, the same shell-shocked expression, a few centimetres short. Behind him, a swath of inky black, a skyline carved out like the teeth of a graveyard: late April in Vancouver. The predilection of an imminent storm. Something in his chest seizes, a three-year ache, rooting itself like a spine. “Jesus,” he mutters, nearly brings a hand up to scrub over his face before he remembers the glass of his helmet. “Lu Han-”
The ground beneath them shudders again, the worst kind of déjà vu. “Lu Han,” he shouts, barely hearing himself over the sudden explosion of sound: the Kaiju surging up out of English Bay, sending a cascade of water crashing down past the barrier of sand and trees; slim red fingers hooking into the thick of the West End, tearing into the earth like it’s digging for a warm, molten core. Over the clash of sound, a roar that sets his teeth on edge and the shatter of glass, he sees himself start to run and follows, breathing harsh and loud inside his Drivesuit.
He never remembers how long he stays running, but when his younger self stops, he does too. Hears the shriek, deafening, of the Kaiju as it falls in a spray of royal blue, crippling what’s left of East Pender Street. When he looks up, he sees it: the ugly grey head rearing back up to blink, electric blue, at the Jaeger that looms over it. Against the backdrop of a city in flames, smoke dusting the sky, the Jaeger reaches out, lifts the Kaiju, and drives a giant, bayonetted fist between its eyes.
contemporary dance au, taemin/kai
In his head, Taemin can play out the choreography: sweeping moves across the stage, the dramatic grand allegro. Taemin, chasing after his own shadow, his own fantasy. “You’re my muse,” Taemin bluffs, the first time he shows Jongin the sketch.
Jongin rolls his eyes. “Right, this isn’t about your narcissism.” But Taemin could tell he liked the idea: loved doing lyrical, adopting imperfect characters that he could show to an audience like the pale vein of a wrist, exposed. The role was made for him: Narcissus’ shadow, a mad obsession, masquerading as love. As if the force of want could make him real.
Jongin, halfway through the notation, clears his throat and laughs. Taemin shifts, rolling off Jongin’s back to look at him. “You think you can lift me?” Jongin says, sceptical.
“Sure,” Taemin grins, all bravado, and flexes a bicep.
Jongin has a shit poker face. For a moment, he’s silent, fighting all expression off his face, and then he splutters out a sound, halfway between a cough and a sneeze. Taemin, eyes narrowed, punches him, launching himself after him so that Jongin’s knocked back against the floor, pinned under him. “What was that?” Taemin says, grabbing him by the collar, while Jongin laughs, loud and unrestrained. “Say that again-”
band au, chanyeol/tao
Their first, real band practise together, Chanyeol vanishes once Kris calls five. The room feels too hot, leadened by exertion; he feels thrown off, like he’s trying to make room for something he doesn’t have space for. They’d spent the past week in the same room, mostly Kris and Zitao playing simple riffs together, getting a feel for each other, roping Chanyeol in whenever they went unplugged. “Chanyeol records second guitar and backing vocals, too,” explained Baekhyun, who was mostly there for band solidarity and to fill Zitao in.
Chanyeol was sitting on the floor, tuning up. He unclamped his clip to thumb an E, fingers warming at the first touch of steel. Even without looking up he could tell Zitao was looking at him as Baekhyun said it, as if filing it to memory, paired with an image. In front of him, the tuner veered left towards Zitao and stuttered.
Outside, he taps out a cigarette, frowning distantly. The wind forces him to stand with the sun in his eyes, smoke spilling out into the street. He watches the cars passing by, but mostly he’s keeping time: adagio, 4/4 for convenience. He’s less than halfway through his cigarette when time’s up. He only notices Zitao standing at the top of the stairs when he turns to head back inside, sun-flooded eyes going cool with relief. His vision swarms back on the dark silhouette cut against the blinding whitewash, burning itself into a lingering negative when he blinks. Zitao doesn’t look up from his phone until Chanyeol’s shadow is floating over him in a momentary eclipse, but by then, Chanyeol is already walking past him, the smell of smoke chasing his heels.
chew au, lu han + tao
Fact number one: two months ago, Lu Han was assigned a new partner.
At a glance, Zitao was the definition of green, fresh out of the Academy, cute ideas about fighting crime for the good of society. When Director Jung introduced them, Lu Han took one look at him and protested, “Sir-”
He quailed under the look Director Jung gave him - his face remained smiling, but broadcasted your pay grade is in my hands - but once they’d left his office, Lu Han said encouragingly, “Are you sure you want to work Homicide? I think you’d do well in the Undercover Division.”
Zitao just smiled. “Since we’re going to be working together, there are some things you should know about me,” he said.
Great, Lu Han thought, Kumbaya, which is when Zitao dropped the bomb.
jesse james au, g-dragon/seungri + g-dragon/top
Hyunseung was the snake in Eden, deceptively harmless until he had you clamped between his teeth. But the idea of Jiyong caught, more than the idea of payoff, was what gripped him. Jiyong was like a wild animal - once bitten, twice violent, all teeth, savage and beautiful and fucking invincible. Jiyong dead he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and felt the beginnings of an itch. The glassy eyes and still mouth, fingers that couldn’t play with a knife, lips that wouldn’t make him want promises from. The bounty, Hyunseung kept saying, but he wasn’t listening.
He watched Jiyong punch Hyunseung in the mouth, instead, the blood and spit flecking on Jiyong’s knuckles and Hyunseung’s pale skin. The black spiral of Jiyong’s earring, curving out from the back of his earlobe in a loop, ended in a point near Jiyong’s jaw. Eventually Hyunseung stopped fighting back, each of Jiyong’s blows finding home the only sound. Another minute, two, and then he let go, sat back and looked at Hyunseung’s face with a tender, almost helpless expression, fingers touching his cooling, bloody mouth. As if he knew how to regret.
Then Jiyong looked up and stared at him. For months he would dream of this: looking down, afraid to meet Jiyong’s eye, and all the while Jiyong saw him like a mirror, looked into him and saw a lifeless reflection of himself, tangled with conflicting desires - Jiyong dead, Jiyong alive, Jiyong.
Jiyong laughed.
virgin suicides au, sulli/victoria
Victoria was the one who kept things: a string of fake pearls, the plastic tiara from ten-year-old Sulli’s Halloween costume, an empty tube of lipstick that they’d shared, giggling as they fought for the mirror and blew kisses at their reflections, lips red. Scraps of notes they’d passed during French lessons and photographs of the two of them as children, holding their father’s hands or hands cupped in a docile V under their chins, one of Sulli’s socks slipping down to her shin.
Sixteen years old and Sulli didn’t want to be the princess anymore, wore black and teased her hair on Halloween and waited by the door for trick-o-treaters. “It’s poisoned,” she said, tongue red from the lollipops she’d been eating, and held out her basket of candy.
After the incident, their father unlocked Sulli’s diary with a luggage key, looking for signs, running his finger down the seams where she’d ripped pages out. Two days prior, she’d taken a half-used matchbook from the kitchen, the one they used to light votive candles and birthday cakes. She brought a sandwich on a dish to her room, finished the sandwich, and burned the pages in the china plate. Then she opened the window and dumped the ashes onto the rosebushes below.
age regression, taemin/kai
When Taemin wakes up, it’s to Jongin shifting under the arm he has slung over his waist. His eyes still feel heavy, dead, and he lets Jongin wriggle ineffectually, making a low sound in this throat. It comes out congested with sleep, barely anything more than a quiet, discomfited groan. At the sound, Jongin stills, leaving Taemin to drift back towards sleep, but after a minute, he can feel Jongin’s gaze on him, oddly alert.
“What,” Taemin mumbles, lifting his head to pillow it a little higher. He peels an eye open blearily and jolts at the eyes that blink back at him, wide and curious.
He’s seen enough baby pictures of Jongin to recognise him, after the shock wears off: by the mouth turning down with petulance, if nothing else, when Taemin says, hoarsely, “Jongin?” In a sleep daze, he tries to remember yesterday night - Jongin, lashes still wet from the water he’d splashed over his face, burrowing under the covers, knocking knees with him. Half-asleep, Jongin had slid a hand to the back of Taemin’s neck, dragging him closer for warmth - adult, twenty-year old Jongin. He rubs his eyes, squinting until his vision swims back, clear, and looks at Jongin again.