[fic] so here i am (are you ready); aron/minhyun
TITLE: so here i am (are you ready)
PAIRING: gen, implied Aron/Minhyun
RATING: PG
WORDCOUNT: 1810
SUMMARY: (AU) NU'EST is a pop punk band aiming to win the local battle of the bands.
NOTES: Title from Always by Blink 182. Written as a fill for this prompt at kprompts.
There are twenty minutes to the start of the show, or so they're told, by the battle's sound technician who seems too young and too sleepy to be working on a Sunday afternoon. Aaron is tuning his guitar, Minki is attempting to shave patterns into Dongho's undercut, and Jonghyun is no where to be seen. Minhyun feels sweat trickle down his back and briefly wishes there was a fan in room before he shakes his damp bangs out of his face and pulls out his phone to find out exactly where their drummer is.
It doesn't matter that the only available space they found and managed to turn into a makeshift dressing room is the dingy ladies washroom of the battle's already tiny venue. Minhyun is pretty sure no person, man or woman, would even want to use the sticky-floored washroom of an old bar-turned-arcade anyway. It's probably been a good few months since anyone has set foot in the room, let alone cleaned it, and all of them are happy enough just to find a few power outlets and some grimy mirrors so that Minki can preen, Aaron can charge his phone, and Dongho can empty his bladder whenever he wants to. Out of the corner of his eye, Minhyun sees Aaron squint at the mirrors as he pats down his recently-bleached sideburns.
Despite the summer heat and the knowledge that their local competition probably won't get NU'EST anywhere far, Minhyun's body thrums with excitement. They've come a long way since the formation of their friend-group-turned-band, and Minhyun will always be thankful for the fact that he'd met Aaron those couple years ago, one fateful day after school in detention: the only time and place when grades and ages didn't define who you were and who you hung out with in high school. The day they met was the day Minhyun got caught passing a note on behalf of a girl who had a crush on Jonghyun, the same day that Aaron showed up to class with his first piercing. There had been the only two in the room on that day, the teacher in charge having left earlier in order to let them 'reflect' on their wrong-doings together, and the two of them had struck up an unlikely friendship in the span of fifteen minutes that they were left alone before Dongho, Minki, and Jonghyun had snuck in to bring Minhyun a red bean bun and ended up giving the one extra they had to Aaron.
Now the four of them are decked out in black and plaid, not particularly colour coordinated, but enough to show their, "team unity or something like that," as Jonghyun had texted them the night before. Minhyun's palms are sweaty, and he returns Aaron's sheepish smile when he finally notices Minhyun's staring, but when he punches Jonghyun's name into his contact list and gets nothing but a busy tone, he frowns.
"Where's Jonghyun?" Dongho asks, perfectly on cue. Minki's electric shaver is clunky and loud, but Dongho's voice has, and always will be, the loudest out of all of theirs. Minhyun just shakes his head and sighs before flopping down onto the plastic stool next to where Aaron sits on the sink counter with his guitar. Aaron gets a hand on his face almost immediately, and Minhyun lets him smudge out the kohl at the edges of his eyes without much fuss.
(He's much too used to the gentle pressure of Aaron's thumbs pressing into his jaw during a kiss or on other parts of his body at other times, but Minhyun tries not to think of times like those when they're due on stage in fifteen minutes without their drummer.)
Minki scoffs, and the buzz of the shaver stops. "He's probably out trying to talk to Hello Venus with the excuse that they have a standing fan and insist that they let him hang out with them." He brushes bits of hair from Dongho's shoulders before grabbing a box of hair-chalk from his bag. There's an N on the left side of Dongho's head and the crude outline of a heart on the right, and Minhyun knows that Minki would have drawn it with both halves perfectly symmetrical if Minki didn't personally think that it looked edgier lopsided.
Aaron hums a little under his breath. Minhyun thinks it's his guitar solo from Introduce Me to Your Sister, but Aaron stops to talk right before Minhyun can be sure. "He just wants Ara's number. I mean, he's only asked me to help him ask her for it about a hundred times or so since the start of summer break." He kicks at the air, legs a few inches too short to reach the ground while seated on the counter, and Minhyun grabs one of his ankles to stop him from fidgeting.
"Still," Minhyun says, because he can't even imagine how Jonghyun is faring in the event that he has managed to get into Hello Venus' dressing room, "Jonghyun usually comes back when he knows we're opening for a gig, and we always open for gigs because we're still not popular enough to be anything but an opening act."
"We're popular enough to get a place in the show, and that's good enough for me," Dongho mumbles, just as Minki colours the heart in his hair a bright green. Minki rolls his eyes. "In a town like ours, with only three budding live bands, it'd be ridiculous if we didn't get a place, Dongho."
Minki signals vaguely at Aaron, and Aaron grabs his backpack and tosses him a packet of blotting sheets without batting an eye, before reaching in again to pass a bottle of water to Minhyun, who takes it with a smile. Aaron almost leans his back onto the dirty mirror before he catches himself at the last minute and hops off the counter before his head hits the surface and he has to bleach his hair again for more hygienic reasons than style. Minhyun let's out a muffled laugh, lips half open over the mouth of the bottle, and Aaron tugs at one of his ears before speaking again. "Not to mention that if and until we choose to really get out of here and go somewhere with NU'EST, the town's love for ska will pretty much ensure Hello Veus' win at every battle of the bands unless we start playing ska," Aaron says.
Minhyun nods slightly into his water, and it's not as if he doesn't think about it sometimes, of fame and entertainment companies and fans who don't consist of their friends and reluctant family members. He knows it's something they all think about, leaving their tiny town and heading for city rushes and their name in lights, but Minhyun also knows that that kind of life would probably mean getting split up and offered different contracts, and Minhyun might just be 18 years old, but he knows doesn't want anything that isn't this, isn't them, isn't NU'EST, isn't all for one and one for all, no matter how cheesy and naive that might be.
He'd told Aaron about this once, maybe a year or so after they'd met and only a few months after they decided to mess around with music together. NU'EST hadn't even been their name then, but Minhyun remembers how he'd felt stretched out on his bed with the others on futons on the floor, only Aaron still awake to listen to him mumble his way through content thoughts and musings about friendships and music and dreams. Aaron just smiled at him in the dark of Minhyun's bedroom, head propped up on his arms at the edge of Minhyun's bed with Minhyun curled towards him as he talked and talked and talked. It was more of a one sided spiel of words than a conversation, but Aaron had laughed softly and ruffled Minhyun's hair in quiet understanding.
(Aaron had also bumped their foreheads together in his painful attempt to climb onto Minhyun's bed that resulted in Minhyun rolling off the bed and into Aaron's blankets with a suppressed squawk that may or may not have been muffled by Aaron's lips on his, but once again, Minhyun tries not to think of their relationship when they're five minutes away from opening with Jonghyun still no where in sight.)
The door to the ladies room suddenly crashes open, and Jonghyun stumbles in with a beam on his face. There's a bright pink lipstick mark on his cheek, and even Minki raises an eyebrow in amusement. Jonghyun's smile turns into a smirk. "Helped Ara fix her very much unbroken hair-straightener," he explainss, and the crack in his voice takes the edge off the smugness he's trying so hard to give off. Aaron mentions something about Agumon, and Jonghyun waves a hand at him to pipe it down. "For the leader of Hello Venus, the other girls sure like to mess with her."
Minki walks over to flick him in the forehead. "For the leader of NU'EST, you sure as hell are late to get ready with your own band." Just then, the PA system crackles and the sound guy calls them to take the stage. Dongho punches Jonghyun in the shoulder and straightens out Jonghyun's very plaid and very neon vest before grabbing his bass and tugging Jonghyun out of the room, Minki on their heels. Minhyun watches Aaron sling his guitar over his shoulder and lets him take Minhyun's hand, his palm equally sweaty but equally warm, and just as comforting as the first time in detention and he'd put his hand on Minhyun's shoulder and asked him his name, silver helix-piercing gleaming now just as it did in the middle of the stuffy classroom when they'd first met.
The crowd is smaller than expected but still enough to fill the venue, and the lit screens and buttons of the game machines blink out from the darkness where they've been pushed into the corners of the arcade to make space for where the stage takes up most of the room. They're all in position, Minki behind his keyboard and Jonghyun with both drumsticks in his hands and lipstick stain still on his cheek, Dongho and Aaron with their guitars plugged in and ready. Minhyun sees his sister wave at him from the crowd, and Aaron's piercings reflect the stage lights when he introduces them as the opening act.
"Hey you guys. I'm sure you guys already know us, but if you somehow have forgotten our cute faces already, we're your local punk pop band, NU'EST, and this our first song today is called Face."
Aaron steps back and nudges Minyun forward with a hand on one hip, the touch gentle and familiar. Minhyun steps up to his mic, waits for Jonghyun's beat, then opens his heart and sings.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
1. the too-young and sleepy sound technician is supposed to be seventeen's lee jihoon u____u
2. thank you to anon for the prompt, and to anyone who reads this!
PAIRING: gen, implied Aron/Minhyun
RATING: PG
WORDCOUNT: 1810
SUMMARY: (AU) NU'EST is a pop punk band aiming to win the local battle of the bands.
NOTES: Title from Always by Blink 182. Written as a fill for this prompt at kprompts.
There are twenty minutes to the start of the show, or so they're told, by the battle's sound technician who seems too young and too sleepy to be working on a Sunday afternoon. Aaron is tuning his guitar, Minki is attempting to shave patterns into Dongho's undercut, and Jonghyun is no where to be seen. Minhyun feels sweat trickle down his back and briefly wishes there was a fan in room before he shakes his damp bangs out of his face and pulls out his phone to find out exactly where their drummer is.
It doesn't matter that the only available space they found and managed to turn into a makeshift dressing room is the dingy ladies washroom of the battle's already tiny venue. Minhyun is pretty sure no person, man or woman, would even want to use the sticky-floored washroom of an old bar-turned-arcade anyway. It's probably been a good few months since anyone has set foot in the room, let alone cleaned it, and all of them are happy enough just to find a few power outlets and some grimy mirrors so that Minki can preen, Aaron can charge his phone, and Dongho can empty his bladder whenever he wants to. Out of the corner of his eye, Minhyun sees Aaron squint at the mirrors as he pats down his recently-bleached sideburns.
Despite the summer heat and the knowledge that their local competition probably won't get NU'EST anywhere far, Minhyun's body thrums with excitement. They've come a long way since the formation of their friend-group-turned-band, and Minhyun will always be thankful for the fact that he'd met Aaron those couple years ago, one fateful day after school in detention: the only time and place when grades and ages didn't define who you were and who you hung out with in high school. The day they met was the day Minhyun got caught passing a note on behalf of a girl who had a crush on Jonghyun, the same day that Aaron showed up to class with his first piercing. There had been the only two in the room on that day, the teacher in charge having left earlier in order to let them 'reflect' on their wrong-doings together, and the two of them had struck up an unlikely friendship in the span of fifteen minutes that they were left alone before Dongho, Minki, and Jonghyun had snuck in to bring Minhyun a red bean bun and ended up giving the one extra they had to Aaron.
Now the four of them are decked out in black and plaid, not particularly colour coordinated, but enough to show their, "team unity or something like that," as Jonghyun had texted them the night before. Minhyun's palms are sweaty, and he returns Aaron's sheepish smile when he finally notices Minhyun's staring, but when he punches Jonghyun's name into his contact list and gets nothing but a busy tone, he frowns.
"Where's Jonghyun?" Dongho asks, perfectly on cue. Minki's electric shaver is clunky and loud, but Dongho's voice has, and always will be, the loudest out of all of theirs. Minhyun just shakes his head and sighs before flopping down onto the plastic stool next to where Aaron sits on the sink counter with his guitar. Aaron gets a hand on his face almost immediately, and Minhyun lets him smudge out the kohl at the edges of his eyes without much fuss.
(He's much too used to the gentle pressure of Aaron's thumbs pressing into his jaw during a kiss or on other parts of his body at other times, but Minhyun tries not to think of times like those when they're due on stage in fifteen minutes without their drummer.)
Minki scoffs, and the buzz of the shaver stops. "He's probably out trying to talk to Hello Venus with the excuse that they have a standing fan and insist that they let him hang out with them." He brushes bits of hair from Dongho's shoulders before grabbing a box of hair-chalk from his bag. There's an N on the left side of Dongho's head and the crude outline of a heart on the right, and Minhyun knows that Minki would have drawn it with both halves perfectly symmetrical if Minki didn't personally think that it looked edgier lopsided.
Aaron hums a little under his breath. Minhyun thinks it's his guitar solo from Introduce Me to Your Sister, but Aaron stops to talk right before Minhyun can be sure. "He just wants Ara's number. I mean, he's only asked me to help him ask her for it about a hundred times or so since the start of summer break." He kicks at the air, legs a few inches too short to reach the ground while seated on the counter, and Minhyun grabs one of his ankles to stop him from fidgeting.
"Still," Minhyun says, because he can't even imagine how Jonghyun is faring in the event that he has managed to get into Hello Venus' dressing room, "Jonghyun usually comes back when he knows we're opening for a gig, and we always open for gigs because we're still not popular enough to be anything but an opening act."
"We're popular enough to get a place in the show, and that's good enough for me," Dongho mumbles, just as Minki colours the heart in his hair a bright green. Minki rolls his eyes. "In a town like ours, with only three budding live bands, it'd be ridiculous if we didn't get a place, Dongho."
Minki signals vaguely at Aaron, and Aaron grabs his backpack and tosses him a packet of blotting sheets without batting an eye, before reaching in again to pass a bottle of water to Minhyun, who takes it with a smile. Aaron almost leans his back onto the dirty mirror before he catches himself at the last minute and hops off the counter before his head hits the surface and he has to bleach his hair again for more hygienic reasons than style. Minhyun let's out a muffled laugh, lips half open over the mouth of the bottle, and Aaron tugs at one of his ears before speaking again. "Not to mention that if and until we choose to really get out of here and go somewhere with NU'EST, the town's love for ska will pretty much ensure Hello Veus' win at every battle of the bands unless we start playing ska," Aaron says.
Minhyun nods slightly into his water, and it's not as if he doesn't think about it sometimes, of fame and entertainment companies and fans who don't consist of their friends and reluctant family members. He knows it's something they all think about, leaving their tiny town and heading for city rushes and their name in lights, but Minhyun also knows that that kind of life would probably mean getting split up and offered different contracts, and Minhyun might just be 18 years old, but he knows doesn't want anything that isn't this, isn't them, isn't NU'EST, isn't all for one and one for all, no matter how cheesy and naive that might be.
He'd told Aaron about this once, maybe a year or so after they'd met and only a few months after they decided to mess around with music together. NU'EST hadn't even been their name then, but Minhyun remembers how he'd felt stretched out on his bed with the others on futons on the floor, only Aaron still awake to listen to him mumble his way through content thoughts and musings about friendships and music and dreams. Aaron just smiled at him in the dark of Minhyun's bedroom, head propped up on his arms at the edge of Minhyun's bed with Minhyun curled towards him as he talked and talked and talked. It was more of a one sided spiel of words than a conversation, but Aaron had laughed softly and ruffled Minhyun's hair in quiet understanding.
(Aaron had also bumped their foreheads together in his painful attempt to climb onto Minhyun's bed that resulted in Minhyun rolling off the bed and into Aaron's blankets with a suppressed squawk that may or may not have been muffled by Aaron's lips on his, but once again, Minhyun tries not to think of their relationship when they're five minutes away from opening with Jonghyun still no where in sight.)
The door to the ladies room suddenly crashes open, and Jonghyun stumbles in with a beam on his face. There's a bright pink lipstick mark on his cheek, and even Minki raises an eyebrow in amusement. Jonghyun's smile turns into a smirk. "Helped Ara fix her very much unbroken hair-straightener," he explainss, and the crack in his voice takes the edge off the smugness he's trying so hard to give off. Aaron mentions something about Agumon, and Jonghyun waves a hand at him to pipe it down. "For the leader of Hello Venus, the other girls sure like to mess with her."
Minki walks over to flick him in the forehead. "For the leader of NU'EST, you sure as hell are late to get ready with your own band." Just then, the PA system crackles and the sound guy calls them to take the stage. Dongho punches Jonghyun in the shoulder and straightens out Jonghyun's very plaid and very neon vest before grabbing his bass and tugging Jonghyun out of the room, Minki on their heels. Minhyun watches Aaron sling his guitar over his shoulder and lets him take Minhyun's hand, his palm equally sweaty but equally warm, and just as comforting as the first time in detention and he'd put his hand on Minhyun's shoulder and asked him his name, silver helix-piercing gleaming now just as it did in the middle of the stuffy classroom when they'd first met.
The crowd is smaller than expected but still enough to fill the venue, and the lit screens and buttons of the game machines blink out from the darkness where they've been pushed into the corners of the arcade to make space for where the stage takes up most of the room. They're all in position, Minki behind his keyboard and Jonghyun with both drumsticks in his hands and lipstick stain still on his cheek, Dongho and Aaron with their guitars plugged in and ready. Minhyun sees his sister wave at him from the crowd, and Aaron's piercings reflect the stage lights when he introduces them as the opening act.
"Hey you guys. I'm sure you guys already know us, but if you somehow have forgotten our cute faces already, we're your local punk pop band, NU'EST, and this our first song today is called Face."
Aaron steps back and nudges Minyun forward with a hand on one hip, the touch gentle and familiar. Minhyun steps up to his mic, waits for Jonghyun's beat, then opens his heart and sings.
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
1. the too-young and sleepy sound technician is supposed to be seventeen's lee jihoon u____u
2. thank you to anon for the prompt, and to anyone who reads this!