#don’t call him Bob Dylan
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HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN + SIENNA MILLER - FACTORY GIRL [2006]
#there’s not enough factory girl/Billy Quinn gifs so I took matters into my own hands#got a spicy set in the works too stay tuned#haydenchristensenedit#hayden christensen#sienna miller#factory girl#edie sedgwick#Billy Quinn#don’t call him Bob Dylan#hayden kisses#spicy#fireside sexytimes#my gifs#not sw
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Also if you listen to a Billy Joel song and think "this kinda sounds like [other musician]" 9 times out of 10 he was doing that on purpose, he's always like "I don't want to sound like me" and he also originally wanted to be a songwriter and wrote music with other artists in mind so that's especially apparent on the early albums. He did write a couple songs with Dylan in mind even though he was like "Dylan would never have covered it he writes his own stuff" lol.
dude that’s so cool , i love when artist kinda take stuff from each other it makes things so much better imo ! but yeah when i was listening to say goodbye to hollywood i was like this is literally the beginning to be my baby 😭 but it was cool i love it when songs do that
#i love how artists always have something to say about bob dylan#one of my favorite artists is a guy named todd snider and he’s a folk singer but one of his earliest songs is sort of a bob dylan knockoff#it’s called keep off the grass and he has this story about it#when he first sang it people told him he was copying bob dylan and he couldn’t do that#and he talks about how he went on a road trip after that and he was saying that he couldn’t copy people#and whoever he was with was like you absolutely can people do it all the fucking time#anyways#this reminded me of that 😭#see now i get all the billy joel lore from sarah and you guys don’t . LOSERS !!#billy joel#townes answers asks !
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i saw ur message abt angus tully requests and🙈🙈 if u feel like it i would love to read a first kiss fic, but honestly i'd read anything !!!!
as you requested... :) word count: 1k
When you first met Angus, you didn’t consider him as someone you could fall for. He was a little short-tempered, a little too sarcastic for your tastes, but he was smart— even though you didn’t go to the same school, he still came into town on Wednesday afternoons and met you at the library to tutor you in biology. Even though Angus could definitely be hard to deal with sometimes, he helped you get the grades that you needed, and you were endlessly appreciative of him.
Your biology midterm was next week, and you and Angus should have by all means been studying, but you weren’t. You were listening to him talk about his school, the prestigious Barton Academy, and how the all-boys school wasn’t exactly conducive to finding a date. “Not that I even wanna go to winter formal,” Angus said, twirling his pencil in his fingers. “But my mom and stepdad say I should.”
“Who’re you taking?” you asked. Your school also had a dance at the end of the semester, but you guys weren’t fancy enough to call it a “formal”. You were also in need of a date, and had briefly considered just going by yourself; you were better off on your own, anyway.
Angus shrugged. “Not a lot of girls for me to ask,” he said. “Not that any girl would wanna go out with me anyway.”
“Oh, whatever,” you scoffed, gently erasing your work on your paper and rewriting the answer. “You’ve gotta have girls swooning all over you.”
Angus barked out a laugh. “You flatter me,” he grumbled. “You think girls give me the time of day? That’s really funny.”
You lifted your eyes from your paper up to Angus’s face, and you scrunched your eyebrows. “I mean, why not?” you asked. “You kinda have that Bob Dylan thing going on; if you went to my school, you would be everybody’s favorite.”
“Mm, but I don’t go to your school,” Angus hummed. “The guys at Barton think I’m just a pest.”
“Well, I don’t think that,” you offered lightly. “I think you’re pretty cool.”
“Thanks,” Angus said softly. “I think you’re… Ahem, pretty cool too.” His cheeks went red as he cleared his throat, and his eyes flicked down to your textbook to break eye contact. Suddenly, he was quiet, his face burning; you had never seen Angus be shy before.
“Angus?” you said. He said nothing, his teeth nibbling on his bottom lip, and you reached out to him, letting your fingertips brush his chin, lifting his face to look at you. You tilted your head as you watched him squirm, but he made no effort to move your hand from his face or try to move you away. “You know what I mean… When I said you’re pretty cool, right?”
Angus took a breath, and he nodded quietly. “I meant the same thing,” he admitted. “Only, I… I’ve never had a girlfriend before. I don’t know how to do this.”
Your hand dropped from his face, and you took up his hand from the table, twining your fingers together with his. His skin was soft and cold, and his grip was immediate and strong. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before,” you told him. “A real boyfriend, at least.”
“What’s a real boyfriend?” Angus asked, leaning forward in his seat to get closer to you.
“I don’t know,” you whispered. “I mean, like… I’ve never had a guy get all shy around me or anything. Act like he really likes me, and isn’t just dating me to cheat off of me in history class.”
Angus chuckled breathlessly. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that with me,” he said, and you smiled. “Umm… Can I… Kiss you? I’ve kinda wanted to ever since I met you…”
“Have you ever kissed anyone before?” you asked.
“Have you?” Angus asked quickly.
“I asked you first,” you smiled, and Angus huffed as he chuckled.
“Um, no,” Angus coughed. “I’ve always gone to all-boys schools… Last time I had a girl I talked to regularly, I was in preschool. And that doesn’t really count, I think.”
“Probably not,” you agreed. “I’ve kissed one other guy before. It was the boyfriend who would cheat off of me, and he kissed me sometimes, but… Never anything else.”
“Okay, so you’re marginally more experienced than I am,” Angus said and jokingly rolled his eyes. “You can’t get mad at me if I’m a bad kisser.”
“I would never,” you told him. You both hesitated for a moment, trying to read each other’s minds, and, before you could speak first, Angus cupped your cheek with his soft palm and leaned in, pressing his lips to yours. You didn’t hesitate to lean into his kiss, reaching out and wrapping your fingers around his thin wrist, and he sank into you, letting himself relax.
You finally broke the kiss with a big smile, and Angus chuckled, and you shifted away quickly when your teeth clacked together. “Was that good?” Angus asked, nervously pressing his lips into a thin line as his eyes stayed locked on yours. “Why’re you laughing, was it that bad?”
“No, sweetheart, I’m not laughing at you,” you chuckled, shaking your head. You watched his cheeks go pink again at the pet name, and you said, “I’m just… Happy.”
“Good,” Angus said. His hand reached for yours, pressing his fingers between yours, and he said, “Right... What were we talking about?”
“Well, we were talking about, like, biology and stuff, for my exam next week,” you said. “But then we started talking about your winter formal and my school dance, and how we didn’t have dates.”
“Oh, right,” Angus said. “Umm… I-I guess, maybe, if you want, I could go with you to your dance.”
“As my date?” you asked, and Angus nodded. “I think I’d like that a lot. And maybe I can be your date to the winter formal?”
“As long as you can deal with the stuck-up pricks at my school,” Angus grumbled, and you grinned, leaning in and kissing Angus’s cheek.
“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”
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Icarus and the Sun | S.H.
Pairing: Steve Harrington x Female Reader
Summary: Reader's in love with her best friend. Considering she can’t tell him about this particular secret, she instead entrusts it to her diary, neglecting to remember Steve’s old habit of reading said diary.
Warnings: fluff (finally!), best friends to lovers, a little bit of kissing, multiple references to the greek myth about icarus and daedalus, glorification of bob dylan, spoiler free!
Word count: 3.4k
a/n: hi besties ! sorry i’ve been quiet lately but vol.2 dropped so here’s a lil somethin’ i wrote just for you <3 it’s one of my veeeery favourite works so far. i’m a firm believer in best friends to lovers supremacy and i figured it was time i gave y’all something sugary sweet instead of the usual mountain of angst. let me know what you think ! p.s. asks are open, come chat with meee !
Certain as the crashing tide always rises and the conflagrant sun always sets, you’re positively resolute that the secret you’re so strenuously harboring will always remain just that; A secret.
It’s trivial, you think, arduous, to venture into the plethora of prominent memories you benevolently share with your best friend and attempt to pinpoint the precise genesis of your affections.
Would it be helpful to reminisce upon the exact juncture in which love became love?
Would it be helpful to identify when, in your mind, his eyes stopped being brown? When they instead transformed into the purest shade of delectably rich milk chocolate. When the sticky, syrupy sweet pools of golden honey began to hold such a brilliant tepid glow to them that the sun itself could have seemed dull in comparison; the world itself could have seemed dull in comparison.
Would it be helpful to establish the specific moment that his laughter was no longer a sound? When the aforementioned laughter transmogrified into a mellifluous, harmonious symphony. When no vinyl or cassette tape that you owned could compare to the melodic original composition of his euphonic joy.
Would it be helpful to remember the first time a friendly touch led way to an ever-hastening heartbeat? When the gentle grazing of his fingertips against your skin set a metaphorical wildfire to the surrounding area, leaving the searing warmth no choice but to take up semi-permanent residence within your body, the remaining smoke loosely floating its way through your airways and constricting your heart in a biting display of affection.
Would any of this prove helpful? Considering you’ve inadvertently managed to fool Steve into a smooth and blissful ignorance of these feelings, why should it be helpful to dwell on the origins of your tender yearning?
The verisimilitude of the situation is as follows; You’re desperately in love with your best friend and he’s none the wiser to it. This is precisely how it should always remain; A secret held as though it were an oath, forged in love and kept in fear. You’ve not a doubt in your convoluted mind that the revelation of your feelings would negatively alter the course of your friendship, which is simply not something you’d ever be willing to risk.
But it’s been tearing you apart. The sheer density of the secret weighing you down is nearly unbearable and you need to emit your innermost sentiments before the tear gives way and splits you in two; One half of you finally free from carrying around the burden of unrequited love, whilst the other wanders around aimlessly, aching on the precipice of being demolished from the unwavering mass of her devotion.
For obvious reasons you find yourself unable to relinquish this information to Steve, the only person you would ordinarily trust with a secret so immense. Taking the current circumstances into account, you’re left with only one viable option to break your internal confidentiality.
Your diary.
The juvenile undertones of writing to your diary about this situation are not lost upon you, but desperate times call for the invocation of desperate measures.
You don’t fight the triumphant simper that overtakes your lips when you manage to skillfully locate the well-worn diary, comfortably wedged on the bottom shelf between the sturdy wood of your trusty bookcase and your near-deteriorated copy of Little Women.
You’re instantly regretting the gentle blow of air you gave in an attempt to efface the wispy layer of dust coating the cover, your throat constricting as you breathe in the primitive particles. It’s been longer than you thought, you suppose, since you last publicized your internal conflicts in the pages of your diary.
Here goes nothing.
“-And it’s like, yeah, I get it, you wanna watch Top Gun, so does every other teenage girl on earth, that’s why we don’t have it right now!” Steve sibilates exasperatedly, tumbling jauntily onto your bed and landing on his back in the space beside you.
“I don’t really get the whole Tom Cruise thing,” You start, referencing the noticeable crush of whichever teen-aged girl it is that’s gotten under Steve’s skin at the video store today, “If we’re talking heartthrobs, he’s not coming anywhere near Rob Lowe.”
“Wha- Rob Lowe? Seriously? C’mon (y/n), did you even watch About Last Night? The best thing about that movie was Seger on the soundtrack.” Steve retorts, turning on his side to face you directly.
You make the intrepid decision of cultivating direct eye contact, instantly filling your insides to the brim with equal parts gratitude and regret.
His eyes hold all the warmth in the world, and you know this for a fact because the sun itself is resting contentedly inside of them. The longer you look, the more fervently the warmth spreads through you, and yet you can’t resist it. You find yourself no different from Icarus, flying ever-closer to the sun solely to bask in its warmth. And just like Icarus, you crave the proximity, consequences be damned. It was the death of him and you’re sure it’ll be the root of your own demise, but at this very moment you can’t find it within yourself to descend the smallest of distances, not even as you feel the wax starting to melt the feathers from your own back, dripping down carelessly into the sea below, you’ve simply no sense to heed Daedalus’s warning. This is the end, you think, and what a seraphic way to die.
“(y/n)? Did you hear me? ‘Cause usually you’d be fighting me to the death right now or something.”
“Yeah- Yeah I heard you, I just- I thought you needed a long silence to really soak in the idiocy of your words. You know, let it marinate a little.” You snap out of your reverie, grateful there’s no residual burn from your trip to the sun.
“Oh I’m marinating like a big juicy steak right now,” He scrunches his nose in a darling display of antipathy, a visible opposition to your words, “I just don’t get what you see in that guy.” There’s a certain deflation laced amongst his words as the sentence dies off. He wants to say more, he longs to say more, but at the potential of anything interfering with your friendship, he bites his tongue instead.
“Whatever. And to think I never said anything about that Jane Fonda poster you used to have hanging in your room.” You state with a deadpan delivery, quickly erupting into a fit of laughter once you catch sight of Steve’s mouth gaping like a fish, a playful expression of mock betrayal painting itself like a masterpiece upon his heavenly features.
It’s then that he regrets holding it in, with the canorous sound of your laughter floating impeccably through the air, with the empyrean sight of your face delicately scrunched up in amusement, with your hand right within perfect holding distance, practically begging to be intertwined with his own, it’s then that he wants to blurt it out. Hey (y/n), did you know that I’m wildly in love with you? Hope this doesn’t mess with the friendship we’ve had since we were six, he thinks, yeah that won’t backfire at all.
Your laughter gently subsides and you’re all too aware of Steve’s eyes on you as you cast your gaze upon the ceiling, as desperate as you are to bore your eyes into his own once again, you still feel the tepid remnants of your previous vacation to the sun inside, and you’re not ready to head back into the miraculously searing warmth just yet.
They take their time, his eyes, exploring each carefully crafted curve and bend delicately lining the gentle expanse of your face. They stop and ponder at how such true beauty can emanate from behind your eyes, even when they’re not directed at him.
There’s a shine to them, he notes. A glimmer of the moon he’s almost certain is carefully encased behind the irises of your eyes. When they look at him, really look at him, he can see the glisten of that fractured moonlight, gently casting its glow upon a quiet dark night. When they sparkle after one of his particularly atrocious jokes, he sees a shooting star soaring swiftly through the sky, illuminated by the moon aside it, he can almost feel it falling from your eyes and landing gently inside the confines of his own heart where it’s sure to thrive, fuelled by his admiration of it, fuelled by his admiration of you.
The modulation of your ringing doorbell snaps the two of you from your thoughts, leaving you both vexatiously unaware of how similar the meanings of those thoughts are.
“Not it!” You call, your voice combining with Steve’s.
“Noes goes!” Steve states, hurriedly placing his finger to the tip of his nose, not attempting to hide the confident and optimistic smile resting upon his tender pink lips.
“Ugh, no fair. You’re the one who wanted to order pizza in the first place! I have a perfectly good frozen one that could’ve been in our stomachs by now.” You gripe, reluctantly pulling yourself up from your bed and away from the ever-present warmth of your best friend.
“Yeah, ‘cause I’m gonna let you near an oven again. I still have nightmares about the last ‘pizza’ you cooked for me. No thanks.” He throws up air quotes around the word pizza, as if you had intentionally burnt the thing to an unrecognizable crisp. He’s the one who still ate it.
“Alright, fine. Just trying to offer you a nice home-cooked meal and this is the kind of thanks I get.” You sigh, placing a hand above your heart to further dramatize your dialogue.
He lets out a soft chuckle as he repositions himself on the bed, now laying his head on your pillow. You almost whisper an unintelligible thank you to the universe as you’re now certain your pillow will carry the delectable scent of Steve’s shampoo.
You’d likely have retracted those unspoken words of gratitude if you didn’t turn out of the room and head for the door so quickly. Perhaps if you waited just a moment more, you would have seen the somehow charming look of physical discomfort on Steve’s face as he feels a rigid protrusion from underneath your typically plush pillow.
He lifts his head, perplexed. After sliding his hand beneath the pillow, his nimble fingers form a grip on the source of his discomfort. He can’t repress the smile that graciously overtakes his lips as he pulls it out and discerns what it is.
Your diary.
He hasn’t seen the thing in ages, you had stopped writing in it years ago. His smile grows as he vividly remembers an excerpt from the time he’d read it in seventh grade, Bob Dylan is the greatest songwriter alive, and so incredibly handsome too… He teased you about it for months, it even led you to arguing over which of his albums is the best, a disagreement the two of you haven’t settled to this day. You, being of sound mind, are aware that Blonde on Blonde is one of the greatest albums ever written, but Steve swears it doesn’t top Highway 61 Revisited.
He lets out a diminutive snicker at the memory and decides he’s going to find that page and dredge up the old jokes he used to not-so gallantly taunt you with.
His lithe fingers move quickly and precisely as he gently unwraps the twine enveloping the book closed. There’s still a pen inside, acting as a bookmark. Maybe she had the same idea, he smiled to himself as he opened the diary to the marked page, his eyes wandering toward the first sentence scrawled across the slightly curled up piece of paper.
It’s hopeless to feel this way, and even more conceivably lame to be writing about it in a diary like a middle-schooler, but I have to get it out somehow and it’s not like I can tell Steve
Can’t tell Steve what? He thinks, eyebrows creasing together in confusion, we tell each other everything. Well, almost everything. Another thought occurs to your best friend, should I be reading this? But then he remembers that you likely haven’t touched the book in years, this is probably something you’ve long since forgotten about, just more fuel for the jokes he’s sure to aim your way. So he reads on.
I mean how would that conversation even go? “Hi Steve, I know you only see me as a friend considering we’ve been that to each other for over half our lives, but did you know that I’m completely in love with you? Oh you didn’t? Cool, well I’ll just see you later I guess” I don’t even know why I wrote that because I’m getting nauseous just thinking about it.
There’s no point in telling him anyway, he’d never feel the same way. And then I would ruin our friendship. Oh god I don’t even want to think about that. Why would I say that? This whole thing was entirely unhelpful. Another great idea (y/n)! So, bye I guess? Do you write that in a diary?
A quick glance at the date scribbled across the top of the page informs Steve that this was written only yesterday.
There should be a word for what Steve is feeling right now, a word to describe the complete and utter happiness, bewilderment, and relief coursing through his body. You loved him? You loved him? He can’t count on both hands how many times he’s backed out of telling you how he feels, ruled by the fear that his affections could be unrequited. Come to find out you feel the same way in all regards. There should be a word for what he’s feeling, but all he can think about is how grateful he is for the existence of words in general; For words, your words, are how he found out that you love him.
He’s donning a splendid, blinding smile. He feels as though it’s splitting his face in two, but he couldn’t subdue it if he tried. He’s aware that there’s a conversation to be had about privacy and personal boundaries but his grin just keeps growing, it’s nearly touching his ears when you finally return to your room, plates in your grip as you simultaneously and near-unsuccessfully attempt to juggle two glasses of water in your hands.
“Ummm. Little help? Please?” You murmur confusedly, taking in the paradisiacal sight of Steve’s broad smile.
“What? Oh-Uh yeah, yeah I gotcha.” He speedily grabs a plate and a glass from your hands, the gentle brush of his fingertips against your hand causing a trail of goosebumps to form along your flesh.
“What are you smilin’ about? You’re watching one of those Fonda aerobics tapes in your mind, aren’t you? Little perv.” You’re joking, but as heavenly as the view is, you’re questioning the sincere origins of his smile.
“Huh? No actually, I was- I was just thinkin’ about your diary. You remember this?” He’s still smiling that blissful smile as he holds up the aforementioned diary, wholly unaware of the dread that’s now coursing throughout your body.
Oh god, oh god, oh god. Please tell me he didn’t read it. Please, please, please.
“Y-yeah, mmhmm, yep. ‘Course I remember the ‘ol girl,” What are you saying right now? “Spent many a night wishing I never wrote about Bob Dylan on the cover of Street Legal,” You attempt a giggle but it verbalizes more as a nervous wince, “Definitely got your fair share of torture material out of that thing, didn’t you?” You end off with a shaky smile, disastrously attempting to quell the nerves soaring through your veins like a jet plane.
“Yeah. Yeah I did.” He states with that same smile, walking closer to you and discarding the plate and glass you’ve been clinging onto for dear life, placing them swiftly on your nightstand alongside his own. “Thought it would be fun to do a dramatic reading tonight, y’know? Bring some attention back to your love for old Bobby,” He’s still smiling as he takes another small step toward you, he’s still smiling and you think you’re going to pass out because you’re almost positive that he’s seen it, “I was gonna spend some time on it too, y’know? Really craft out my jokes.” He takes one final step toward you, and though every bone in your body is screaming for you to look away, you chance a look into his eyes once more.
You’re surprised by the sheer admiration you find inside them, dancing in perfect rhythm alongside the sun. “But then I read somethin’ else.” His voice is lower now, a quiet harmony of earnest elation and disbelief, almost as though he’s the one who can’t believe this is all happening. “I read somethin’ else and I need to know that it’s real. That you really mean what you wrote,” He’s almost whispering as he finishes his final sentence, bringing up a gentle hand and resting it tenderly on your cheek, his thumb grazing back and forth slowly as he gazes into your eyes, “Please tell me that you mean it.”
You can almost hear Daedalus now; See? It didn’t work out for you either and you had Icarus as an example! Because you did fly too close to the sun. The wax melted, trickling away like warm water, and the feathers followed suit, leaving you too close to the sun with no means of transportation. But you didn’t plunge into the hungry sea below. You didn’t meet a salty oceanic demise, because you had a paramount advantage over Icarus; The sun rose for you.
Suck it, Icarus.
It took you a moment, to recapture the breath Steve knocked out of your lungs with his lighthearted monologue, to think of anything besides the perfect sensation of his skin resting against your own, his thumb still rubbing indistinguishable shapes onto your cheek. When you belatedly muster up the courage to respond, you’re already smiling, “I’ve never meant anything more in my whole life.”
That’s all Steve needed to hear, that’s all he’s ever wanted to hear. His eyes flicker down to your lips and back up to your own eyes, a silent request to stop talking about it and instead show each other just how desperately you both want this. You barely have time to nod your head before his lips are on your own.
There’s no word deserving enough to describe the way you feel when his lips brush delicately against your own, gentle and precarious, as though he’s expecting you to pull away, you don’t. You move in closer to him, deepening the kiss ardently as you place your arms around his neck, gingerly weaving your fingers through the hairs resting against the nape of his neck. He kisses you back fervently, his hands having found a new home on your waist, letting out a deeply delectable hum of bliss when you give a light tug to the tresses of his hair.
“God, I love you so much (y/n).” Steve murmurs against your lips, only pulling away long enough to utter the words before bringing your lips back to his own.
When you finally make the mutual decision to come up for air, you’re tenderly resting your forehead against Steve’s own, content to live in this moment for as long as humanly possible.
“I love you Steve. You probably figured that out by now but just thought I’d tell you, you know, in case you can’t read.”
“Oh yeah? Thanks, wouldn’t wanna let my illiteracy stand between me and my girl.” His girl? Guess the whole diary thing actually was a great idea.
“You know that was, like, a complete invasion of my privacy, right? Reading my diary? It wasn’t cool in seventh grade and it’s not cool now! Well- Actually, I guess it is kinda cool just this once ‘cause we- Just, don’t do it again, okay? I mean it.” You’re giving Steve your best attempt at a stern tone but you’re aware of the bright smiles covering both of your faces during this speech.
“Got it, no more diary reading. Hey, just to be clear, do you maybe think I’m so incredibly handsome?” He jokingly references your seventh grade diary entry once again with a ravishing smile, leading you to internally debate whether you should throttle him or kiss his delicate lips. You choose the latter, again.
“At the risk of slandering a legend, Dylan’s got nothin’ on you.”
“Woah! Big talk. I must be special.”
“Rob Lowe on the other hand…”
“Ha Ha,”
“That was a joke right? I’m better than Rob Lowe?”
“Sure Steve.”
Certain as the crashing tide always rises and the conflagrant sun always sets, you’re positively relieved that the secret you’ve been so strenuously harboring is no longer a secret, but is instead the genesis of something new entirely.
You flew too close to the sun and lived to tell the tale.
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Make You Feel My Love
James Potter x reader
words; 938
song; Make You Feel My Love by Adele (Bob Dylan) (19 as fics)
warnings; family problems (nothing new, lets be fr), mentions of self harm scars
wowza. lemme tell yall, my head is pounding so hard I feel like I'm being run over by a train a thousand times over and country music is being blasted in my ears (im jk, i love country music sometimes)
im working on requests guys i PROMISE please believe me
anywho, if you wanna send in more requests I highly encourage it. I get so giddy when i get new ones :)
HAVE FUN YALL
OH HERES THE TEA TOO i'm a ghosty girly rn and SAM AND COLBY are so nice to my brain rn. and my eyes. and bc i get ahead of myself all the time, should i write for them? maybe, maybe not.
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
“L/n!” Sirius called out and Y/n sighed.
“What now?” She muttered to herself, already having a bad day.
“I wanted to ask why you’ve been so quiet lately, quite annoying to not have my argue buddy argue with me.” He teased and Y/n silently swore as tears filled her eyes. She doesn’t usually cry at this kind of stuff, on a normal day she’d reply back with something witty and clever, but today was not her day. Having received a letter where she was scolded by her parents, and almost receiving detention for getting frustrated in potions, it wasn’t going well.
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love
“Shut it, Pads.” James said and stood in front of him, pulling the girl into a warm hug. “You’re alright, love, I know todays been hard. Sirius is a dimwit, s’all.”
“How rude.” Sirius pouted.
When the evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
James quickly climbed up the steps to the Astronomy tower, being as quiet as possible to avoid the groundskeeper finding him. He pushed open the door and sighed in relief, only to have his smile drop as he found a figure hunched over, body shaking as they were too engrossed in their tears to hear the door open.
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love
As James got closer to the figure, a light gasp left his lips as he recognized them as the girl he loved.
“Oh, Y/n.” he said gently and pulled her into his arms, silently rubbing circles into her back as she sobbed more.
I know you haven't made your mind up yet
But I will never do you wrong
“Just take your time, sweetheart. I’ll wait for you.” James said, winking at Y/n as she rolled her eyes and set her book down.
“James, you really don’t have to. You should find someone who’s ready to be in a relation-” She was cut off by James’ finger on her lip, successfully shushing her.
“Nonsense. I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
I've known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong
“I’m gonna marry her one day.” James said lovingly, his hand supporting his head as he stared at Y/n in potions.
Sirius looked at him amused, “Oh, really?”
“Mhm.” He hummed.
“You mean the girl who won’t even go out with you?”
Remus hit Sirius’ arm, “Shut up, Sirius. I think it’s cute.”
Remus smirked at his boyfriend and booped his nose, “I think you’re cute.”
I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue
I'd go crawling down the avenue
“James, what the hell happened?” Y/n asked worriedly as she ran into the infirmary.
James smiled and winced as his split lip stung, “I got in a fight.” He said with a shrug.
“You idiot.” Y/n breathed and Sirius laughed.
No, there's nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love
“He was heroic. They were talking crap about you-”
“Pads!” James exclaimed.
Sirius’ eyes widened, “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
Y/n rolled her eyes, “You want me to kiss you booboo?” She asked in a baby voice and James’ eyes widened. Even she was surprised that those words just spilled from her mouth. Nevertheless James nodded enthusiastically, and Y/n pressed a soft kiss to his lips.
He smiled dremaily as she pulled away, “It still hurts, I think you need to do it again.”
The storms are raging on the rolling sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain't seen nothing like me yet
“You can go now. It’s okay, I understand.” Y/n said gently, her eyes puffy as James quietly observed the self harm scars on her thigh.
James looked up quizzically, “And why would I do such a thing?” He asked.
Y/n shrugged, “I don’t know. They aren’t pretty. Rather disgusting.” She mumbled and James shook his head, pressing a soft kiss to her thigh.
“I don’t think so. I think they’re a part of you, so although the circumstances aren’t perfect, they must be. Because you are in my eyes, perfect. For me. You’re perfect for me.”
I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
Nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the Earth for you
“Alrighty, so, we can use floo powder because that would be easiest, considering I absolutely hate apparating. And then after, we’ll check into our hotel, have some great ‘just-got-to-greece-for-a-sexy-honeymoon-because-we-just-got-married-woo-hoo’ sex, and then go for din- what are you looking at?” James asked, cutting himself off as Y/n stared at him lovingly.
She shrugged, “You, duh.”
James' face turned red as he cleared his throat and continued talking about the entire plan he made for the vacation, although the both of them knew his plans would be replaced with loads of honeymoon love making (wink wink).
To make you feel my love
Y/n smiled softly as she snuggled into her husband's side, fatigue taking over after their big day. James gently rubbed circles on her skin, thanking God for how lucky he was to have such a magnificent woman as his wife.
“I love you.” He whispered, softly kissing the top of her head.
“I love you, more.”
“Nah.”
To make you feel my love
taglist (if you want to be added ask in the comments);
@loving-and-dreaming @1lellykins @poetrypirate
#aanoia#romance#marauders era#remus lupin#the marauders#james & peter & remus & sirius#sirius black#james potter x reader#harry potter#marauders map#hp marauders#marauders#james potter
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Here at GQ, we first met Chalamet six years ago, just as the rest of the world was also discovering it had developed a thirst that could only be quenched by this strange new creature—the sensitive and beguiling mop-haired kid who played Elio in Call Me by Your Name. Women wanted him…and wanted to be him. Men, the same. It was confusing and awesome; a breakout moment of a kind we haven’t seen since DiCaprio, or maybe more like Brando and Dean.
For that first cover, we photographed Chalamet during a January snowstorm (one so severe it became known as a “bomb cyclone”) in a decrepit old mansion just outside of New York City. When Chalamet’s lips started turning blue as he shivered for Ryan McGinley’s camera in a freezing-cold bathtub wearing only spring’s best lightweight, stone-colored double denim, I remember telling myself: Don’t kill Timothée Chalamet. The world will never forgive you. He survived. He thrived. He lost the Oscar. He won our hearts.
In 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, we returned to Chalamet. He was hiding out in a cabin in Woodstock. He had finished shooting Dune: Part One and was now downshifting, immersing himself in the life and catalog of Bob Dylan. With Dan, Timmy unpacked his complicated thoughts, feelings, fears, and aspirations duringa very transitional moment when he’d become extremely globally famous in a neck-snappingly short period of time. Meanwhile, Timmy and photographer Renell Medrano tripped around Woodstock, making pictures by fields, campfires, and creeks.
And now, part three. I won’t step on Dan’s story by prefacing it in any way, other than to say this: To read these three pieces together is to map the complex mental and emotional landscape of an era-defining figure as he evolves—a person who is, at once, both just like you and me and not at all like you and me. He’s universal and he’s singular. It’s hard to explain, but of course you know what I mean because this is exactly his appeal.
When I first read the manuscript of Dan’s piece I remember thinking, If only every person on earth got to have their story told in such a rich, profound, ennobling way. Since that is not possible, we get to have our stories told vicariously through one portal: Timmy.
It has been said that a trilogy is the perfect way to articulate the full arc of a character. But Chalamet’s career is just getting going, and so are we. I like to think of this as Book I, Chapter III. If all goes well, in just a few short years, it’ll be time to start writing Book II. Timothée, for his part, has already started living it.
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A CHAPTER: THE SHARP AND THE BLUNT (PART 1/2).
tw(s): panic attack. dubious consent (haruki is very weird and forward about initiating sex!). alcohol abuse & alcoholism. semi-smut? (there is making out). miscommunication (a warning because I personally think it's constant and frustrating). insinuation and direct discussions of sexual trauma, abuse by a past partner, abuse of workplace power and stalking. internalized homophobia (in part one, a hint). If I missed anything, please tell me!
starring: Lee Hanjae. Fukunaga Haruki.
featuring: Dylan Hwang / Hwang Chihoon. Their fellow LOOPiN members (old OT10, no Gyujin, a lot of Beomseok). Delilah Franco. Oh Sunyoung. Choi Sangwon. Blonde Bob Piss Girl (a serious character).
timeline: quick flashback to 2018 | early to the end of mid 2022.
word count: 13,405 words.
author's notes: welcome everyone to hanruki fuckery part 1 a.k.a the most frustrating and life draining four months in Hanjae's whole entire life a.k.a big sadness, the piece split into two. this one is over 23K long, and was originally intended to be read in one go but! It Got Too Big. The conclusion will be coming out later this week! prepare for a Haruki all in par with the one in the prologue, which falls in between this mess on the timeline. this is a work of a whole month, but it's also a work of two years: a whole central plot, planned and done. title's from this song! give it a listen once you get trought the bigger picture, maybe, for catharsis purposes. stay safe! remember you deserve to be safe, always!
November 12, 2018.
Hanjae had vowed not to cry anymore when he got this job – in the same vehement way he had promised at twelve that he would no longer make a sound if he wailed after school, face buried under piles and piles of unfinished homework, to medium success, just the right amount of it to call it success.
He could still tear up once in a while, if things got though, and that was it; a clause added after his first exhausting week as a trainee. The number escalated to once every two business days after he was shoved to debut on LOOPiN, out of all the upcoming boy groups there were.
There was a story taunting the New Wave Music corridors back then. Someone did something unspeakable to someone else, and it caused an expulsion, followed by the immediate need for a new rapper, a new dancer. And there was Hanjae; a BBC trainee for three months, far removed from the Boy Of The Week gossip, who couldn’t exactly sing but had great enunciation, and had been dancing before he was even walking…
He cried now, openly, defeated. It had been an awful day for LOOPiN 2on1.
Their short lived promotions had played out like a sunset: a big golden start – so much press, so much momentum, so many views on the ‘Baby Don’t Stop’ dance practice video, where he and Haruki were using plain shirts and even plainer jeans – quickly diluting into the darkest of times – the controversies, LOOPiN first ones, and exclusively about them.
A resurrected Facebook photo of Hanjae on his graduation with a bandage around his hand, matched with the lingering traces of his poorly removed tattoo there painted him as a school delinquent; Haruki’s drop out stories reintroduced him as the big drunken failure of KArts’s international program.
They were going to stop going to music shows, the company had decided that day, and Sangwon told them on the drive back that they had just done their last one. They had gone up on stage as a duo for the last last time.
With a strong sniff, Hanjae unburied his face from in between his knees and looked at his hand, at the faint shape of a badly drawn rose on his skin. His dad had been adamant about getting it out the moment he took a look at it, still involved in protective plastic. He used the little money off his college safe to arrange a laser session that Hanjae skipped. A year later, Hanjae managed to schedule another one with the partial sponsor of MBN, the company he was stuck on before BBC. He had to do it in a shady place, at a bigger cost: bad skin scarring.
His mom had been relieved to see it fade even more nonetheless, up until the black tattoo turned into something that almost looked like a peculiar and old scar, if you didn’t give it a second glance; and no one was ever giving Hanjae a second glance.
“Let that be a lesson,” she told him, nose turned up and away from him. “Don’t jump head on into things again, Lee Hanjae. That’s no way to live. Watch yourself, watch your company. You’re not a kid anymore. Do you have no goals? Do you want nothing for yourself? Are you that selfish? Can’t you think, for once, about something that isn’t–”
Haruki was the one who found him, sitting on the floor, small and tense against the laundry machine, waiting for everyone’s clothes to be cleaned – the member’s, Sangwon’s, the cleaning auntie's aprons she had forgotten on top of the dinner table last week. Cleaning was always his scapegoat way of attending to something, even if very small.
Maybe if the company decided to drop him, he thought, Hanjae could still be around as the dorm’s janitor.
“So you’re not from Seoul,” Haruki said, leaning against the door frame with an air of mischief around him, something light on his step despite it all.
It was a statement, not an ask, because he knew this. It was one of the few trivia points they had exchanged during pauses on music shows or water breaks in between choreography practice – ‘What’s your age? What’s your blood type? How many siblings? Oh, none? You’re so lucky, Hanjae, so lucky. All siblings are demons. You aren’t missing a thing.’
Hanjae didn’t even startle; Haruki often popped up at places like that, picking up conversations from days, weeks ago like they were merely put on pause.
Without uttering a word and barely looking up, he still nodded his head no.
Haruki nodded back, a pacifying smile showing up on his face, said, “Cool. Great. How about I show you a place?”
‘The place’, he informed Hanjae, was not all that nice, or clean, and he really shouldn’t wear nice shoes or nice clothes tonight, but at least it wasn’t far, at least they had permission.
“Who’s permission?” Hanjae asked, taking the pile of clothes to the dryer, smoothing wrinkles off them just for something to do.
Haruki waved manager Choi’s front keys in his hand, and Sangwon’s horrendous keychains clanked against each other: a green pine tree and a colorful ball. “The one that matters. What do you say, uh? You’re in? Can I count you in?”
He could count Hanjae in.
[...]
They stopped by a convenience store on the way, some couple of blocks down the dorm, and by then night had already conquered all of Seoul. Inside, the middle aged lady behind the counter rushed to give Haruki a hug, a paper bag and a discount.
“He’s a street cat I found,” she leaned in to explain when she caught Hanjae anxiously looking at him going straight to the back of the store, near the freezers, near the alcohol, with the ease of someone who could do so with his eyes shut. “He’s a good foreign friend.”
“I’m not!” Haruki shouted back, but he was grinning. “Are you not watching the news?”
The noona playfully rolled her eyes, joked back, “What news? You’re not on the news!”
She hushed Hanjae to go catch up with him with an enerved wave, told him to take a look around. “It’s on the house,” she winked. “You’re both so skinny, and you must be working hard, so just take something tasty and leave quickly.”
Trailing a couple feet behind Haruki on the aisle, Hanjae picked up a package of noodles and a modest four-set of Terra cans to accompany his endless Heineken bottles, light green on light green. While Hanjae bagged everything with caution, Haruki slipped a red won note on the balcony when the owner stopped paying attention to them, and off they went again.
Haruki made them walk ten more minutes to the left, and the left, the left again, coming to an abrupt stop in front of an abandoned lot, pure dirt and weeds, the sort that seemed to have turned into an open dump for the neighborhood. It looked no different or less disgusting than the million of others around less central Jungnang; it didn’t look like it could be a spot.
Yet Haruki kept braving straight through the grass without stopping, guiding Hanjae behind him to only step where he was stepping, to keep his eyes glued to the floor and watch out for broken glass. He settled when they were deep into the lot, mere feet away from a big hill. There was a clean view of an uneven street if you looked down, he said, filled with houses that were almost all pretty. Hanjae chose to just trust Haruki’s word on that; he couldn’t dare to come close enough to the drop to peek and see.
Haruki standed the bag of drinks for him to hold, and Hanjae had to do so with both hands. From a spot behind them, he pushed two retriable chairs out of a bulk set against a moldy tree, the metal in them corrupted by rust on the edges, and set them up, sat down, tapped at the other seat with his foot in invitation.
Hanjae took a long and anxious moment to comply. Under him, the chair dangled sideways even if he stayed very, very still.
With the convenience bag back in his domain, Haruki cracked three beers open, and handed Hanjae one, kept the other two: one in each hand, a Heineken and a Terra.
“Never had this one. I heard they’re the same thing,” he said, taking a sip from each and frowning, analyzing them. Hanjae stayed quiet.
He had only drank with his dad and uncles one time, at last year’s Chuseok, and hadn’t been much of a fan of anything. Still, he took a sip of beer.
Haruki at least had grace enough to let him swallow and contain a grimace before asking, with a strange edge to it, “So are you? A bully. A problem child. Part of a gang.”
“No,” Hanjae said, too quickly, too eager. He cleared his throat. “I’m really not, hyung, no.”
“How did it get there, then?” Haruki's look was razor sharp on Hanjae’s once tattooed hand, hard enough to make him freeze. “And why did you remove it? Just to be a trainee?”
Hanjae opened his mouth, but only to take a shaky breath in, swallow a bit more of bitter alcohol. In front of his fleeting eyes, Haruki eased just as quickly as he had hardened.
“Hanjae, we’re teammates now,” he told him. “I showed you my good spot. You can’t give me one word sentences anymore. You can’t lie.”
Hanjae considered this, and considered him from the corner of his eyes. Haruki was the LOOPiN member that Hanjae had come to know best, mostly because they didn’t have a choice, but still, he made an effort, he talked to him; he didn’t let Hanjae fall adrift. And he could have easily turned into an island: from the moment he had been transferred to New Wave, he had been an outsider, a last minute solution to a problem no one would explain to him – who left? Why? Was he worse than them? Was he better?
“You’re better,” Haruki had said, when Hanjae brought it up, late at night while they had dinner alone, in the practice room, sweating and panting – a week until their debut happened. He was the only one who had bothered to tell him so. He sounded like he meant it, too. Hanjae remembers catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror over his shoulder, hair bright brown and unfamiliar, thinking even for a fleeting moment: I’m doing enough.
It was fair for him to be the first to know – the first for Hanjae to disappoint.
“I got it removed before,” he heard himself say. It was a secret, so it came out like one: whispered, slow. “Before I wanted to train. I got it with friends– my dance crew friends. It was our logo, or at least, it was going to be, one day. But I… I did a bad thing, and it stopped making sense. It didn’t fit. I didn’t fit, so. It had to go.”
The vagueness did nothing but pique Haruki’s interest. He seated more properly, then less properly; ended up putting his feet on the seat of the chair, slouching with his head supported on his knee, the exact body language of, ‘Tell me, tell me, tell me.’
“My friend– my best friend, from childhood, our team captain. He used to have a girlfriend. A girl from our class, a dancer too, someone he had been in love with forever. Later she became part of the group, and we got close, we turned into friends, and then not. Not quite that. They broke up and one hour later we got together, on the same day. We got caught. It was a mess. Everyone thought it was a shitty thing to do, that it was cheating, cheating on everyone. But I just wanted her to be my girlfriend, back then– Back then, I wanted a girlfriend more than I wanted anything...”
Hanjae felt it coming, again: the desire to recoil a bit more on himself in shame. How pathetic he had been, then; how miserable, how sad, how lonely.
He took a timid peek to the side, ready to see an irk of dismay on Haruki’s face, some justified disgust, and was surprised to not see any of that. Haruki had grown passionate and invested in the whole story, something new in his eyes, a third bottle halfway drained in his hand.
He moved his chin up, as if saying, ‘Go on’, but Hanjae couldn’t. He drained the rest of the beer.
Haruki clicked his tongue like that wouldn’t do. He shoved his chair a few inches closer so he could grab at Hanjae's arm and said, all at once, “We can not– Hanjae, look, listen, we can not be blamed for all the things, the crazy things we do when love…!” He didn't finish the sentence, just amended it into another one: “You were a teenager, you both were, and very, very brave. Very brave to tell her and date her and keep dating her even if. They were just– bad friends. Just bad friends.”
They weren’t bad friends, Hanjae knew; they weren’t the ones in the wrong. But it hurted to say it out loud, to admit what he knew was still true: how easily he burned bridges for attention, for affection, so he never did. He just knew – looked at his reflection on surfaces and knew.
He rolled and rolled the tap of the Terra until it fell off, into the can. “Did you really quit college, hyung?” Was what he asked the wind.
Haruki shifted on his seat; Hanjae could only tell because of the way it creaked. “More like college quit me,” he said, with a sad huff of air that might have been a laugh, and dropped Hanjae’s arm, drank from his bottle too.
Sadness fell over them like a veil from then on. The Terras ended and Haruki didn’t mind sharing all the other stuff he had, and the longer it went on the less shy Hanjae felt about asking. At some point Haruki said, “I guess we really fucked up, uh – with 2on1,” and Hanjae, whipping a foam mustache off his face, “Minwoo’s not talking to me,” and Haruki, almost falling over with laugher, “Oh, my, I bet not! Ha. I bet not…”, and turned reticent, fell quiet.
His eyes, Hanjae had noticed, kept darting to a spot ahead in between conversation, beyond the drop of the hill, dazed. He violently shook his head sideways everytime he caught himself drifting too far away, and ran a hand over his face, rubbing at it in a way that made Hanjae look at him in worry.
Haruki found it hilarious each time. “What is it,” he eventually said, slower than normal, harder to understand, “With you, your face?”
He got up from his chair, a sudden move that sent it falling to the floor, a loud squeak, and walked even closer.
In front of Hanjae, right in front of him, he leaned forward until he got both his hands on his face, and said, pushing the corners of his mouth up, “The mood is so– Bad! So bad! Smile! Big smile! C’mon, give me a big smile!”
There had been dirt on Haruki’s hand, and Hanjae could vaguely taste it, with how close to his lips he was pressing. He still wore his inner braces back then; he kept cutting his tongue on the same spot, never healing, never telling, and he could feel the inside of his cheeks pressing onto that sharp place, about to be pierced through.
For a moment, they stayed quiet, looking at each other head on. Hanjae was not smiling. His heart had picked up a quick pace inside his chest, was drumming – Haruki was so close, and he was so beautiful, a true magazine type beauty, all symmetry, and Hanjae knew this, but not with this much conviction, not with so much emotion.
“Ah, you know what? I like you. I decided. I do like you, now…” Haruki said, and then he grinned, bringing his face even nearer. He took a breath and Hanjae felt it on his own nose, and didn’t know what to do about it; his mind, for a moment, went static. “Nothing will happen to you, friend. I promise it. ‘Will not let it.”
Hanjae’s held breath was a painful thing to let out of his chest. “Was something– Was something going to…?”
Haruki huffed a laugh and gave his cheeks two playful taps, said, with a new found determination, “Handsome guy. Do not get sad. I will fix this for you,” and let Hanjae’s face go.
He straightened his back up and swayed slightly to the side, running a hand over his hair, fixing his bangs back into place. Haruki told him, “Late. No booze. Night over”, and extended that same hand for Hanjae to take – Hanjae who still felt like his face had gone numb, blood rushing to it.
He took the hand, and they made their way back to the dorm that way, hanging close; Like magnets, Hanjae remembers thinking, idly, and then not idly at all. Haruki’s hands were leaving behind a pressure everywhere they touched, a heat that Hanjae couldn’t shake off – he just couldn’t shake it off.
Later, when Hanjae layed in bed, sheet drawn over his entire body, he could still feel it. When he woke up the morning after, nauseated but still in the group, still safe, he could still feel it.
If he closes his eyes now, right now, he can still feel it – the sad sort of burn of a premonition misread.
January 13, 2022.
Los Angeles is sunny in a way Haegon would love to see and pretend to hate – a saddening thought Hanjae had since they landed, and that comes back to haunt him while he looks at the city passing by on the van’s window, sidewalks all golden.
Haegon’s not a loud person in his eyes, but his absence is a loud thing, pouring the life out of everyone, mostly because of the way it had been forced on them.
It had been a horrifying way to open the year: having to come forward right on the first day of 2022 to the press, headlining Haegon’s mugging and the accident, his follow up hiatus and excuse out of their ‘We Do’ promotions in the USA. And then there was having to deal with Haegon in private, angry and disappointed, not wanting to take his pain medicine, shoving his room’s door in everyone's faces, dismissing every checkup attempt with an annoyed, “It’s just a minor concussion, what the Hell! I’m not fucking dying! Get the fuck off me, I’m fine, get off, just fuck off already to the States without me! Go on! Just– just leave me already!”
They’re driving out of some media company studio around the center of Los Angeles, where they filmed two twenty minute videos in a roll, more embarrassing games than actual interviews, and Hanjae has already spent all of his ability to mend English words together.
It could have been more fun, one of their staff said, but they had to pass on the puppy interview format because of Taesong’s allergies, and Jiahang’s been dead set on pretending to be sad about it during the entire ride back to the hotel; crocodile tears and all.
Hanjae has to deal with him from the last seat on the far opposite side of the van, resting his fried blonde head against his shoulder, sighing loudly, because Dylan is also not here to amuse him – he took a bus home to Santa Monica and will stay home until they leave in two days time.
Hanjae doesn’t like provoking Taesong, doesn’t like to spoil Jiahang, but that means very little in the grand escape of the group, that goes about poking fun of Taeng like it’s a sport, that’s stuck in a position where they really can’t say no to J.J, who owns company shares; he shoots the meek figure of Taesong an apologetic look as Jiahang’s act carries on, trying to tell him: ‘I’m not a part of this, I just don’t know how to stop it.’
Thankfully, the hotel isn’t that far away, and it’s a quick torture – up until things takes a turn for the worse.
As they park and start to step out, Beomseok’s long arm blocks the door before he and Jiahang can put a single leg outside of the car.
“Stop,” he tells J.J, harsh enough to make Hanjae stumble a step back. Beomseok points a finger right at Jiahang’s face, and inch from touching his nose, says, “Stop being a fucking problem. Stop.”
It makes Jiahang livid, turns his ears bright red. He takes long stomps to the elevator, and Hanjae has to jog to keep up with him – Jiahang really has the longest legs Hanjae has ever seen on a person.
“He’s got such a stick up his ass!” He keeps on saying, barging into the room they’re both sharing with Dylan and Zhiming – angrily tossing his bag into his ‘cheap dollar store bed with the cheap dollar store sheets’ that made him go into a very similar rant last night. “He thinks he’s the only one who cares about Gon, the only one who can bother. He’s so wrong. I’m fucking worried too! I’m calling him too! I miss him! I’m more of a friend to him than that weirdo is. He’s so weird. He thinks he owns Haegon and everyone and everything, just because he’s older, just because he trained for like, one billion years! Like it’s my fault Starship thought he was too ugly to join NO.MERCY!”
“You were being annoying, Jiahang,” O.z deadpans from the corner he’s tucked in, without looking up from his manhwa.
Jiahang grunts louder. “Yeah, that was the point. Taesong knows I’m just joking around! Everyone knows!”
Zhiming lowers the comic from his face, flipping a page. His eyes have deep dark circles behind his thick glasses, marks that never go away. “Unnecessary.”
Jiahang rolls his eyes, putting his hair up on an ugly bun. He turns his back to Zhiming’s bed and mouths at Hanjae, mocking, ‘Unnecessary’.
Hanjae shrugs at him, and that annoys J.J too. He angrily puts on a movie on the tiny TV, gets a hold of his bed’s pillow and wraps himself around it, mumbling something under his breath still. The tags on the streaming app read comedy, musical. He chews on a poor nail while humming along the first song, and Hanjae tries to humor him with a tiny, “Is that Ariana Grande sunbaenim?”
It doesn’t work. Jiahang shoves his face into his pillow and says, miserable and muffled, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t hang around with you, you’re so lame. I miss Dylan so much.”
“He invited you to go with him,” Hanjae says, helplessly. “You said you didn’t want to.”
“Of course I didn’t want to! I would have to sleep on the floor. In a bag, on the floor. And I don’t think his grandma would like me – I don’t think anyone in his family would like me,” he turns his face around, off the pillow. Hanjae can hear clearly when he says, “He needs time alone with them. For the anxieties.”
“The anxieties?” Hanjae asks him, very slowly.
Jiahang presses his mouth shut tight, straights himself up again. He undoes his ponytail, tosses his long, long hair from one side to the other, behind his ears.
He takes a quick look at Zhiming, and Hanjae does too, and they go by uncaught; O.z’s got his big headphones in now, eyes glued to his comic book.
Jiahang is still careful to whisper, “The rest of you don’t get what it's like, when you’re away from your home every day, when you know all the people you’re going to see aren’t all the ones you know – when you got family that’s like, old, and you know that time’s passing. You’re losing days with them. It gets scary, after a while. Dylan’s grandad will be 82 this year, hyung – that’s a terrifying number, that’s a maybe. That’s the anxiety. Mine, his– Zhiming’s, too. Foreign member anxiety.”
Hanjae nods, sharp. Jiahang makes a face at him, brighter – smiles, says like a tease, “Not Haruki’s, though. Haruki doesn’t miss Japan at all, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s not anxious about that.”
Hanjae blinks. Opens his mouth, closes it, blinks again. “I wasn’t going to ask–”
“Sure thing. Suuuuure,” J.J says slyly, and goes back to watching TV, and Hanjae does too. Gulps, keeps looking at the movie, tries to pay attention.
Jiahang put on korean subtitles for him, yet he keeps talking – explaining everything. It’s a nice enough movie, he says. Good songs, nice enough movie.
They’re reaching the end of it, seeing every main character gather in a protest around town, when Haruki barges into their room.
“Are any of you not gonna rot inside this hotel?” He asks, loudly, quickly. “Is anyone going to do anything? Catch some sun?”
“Hanjae’s supposed to be going out,” Zhiming tells him. He’s also watching the movie now, has Jiahang by his side, explaining to him what he missed.
“Oh?” Haruki says, and looks around the room, eyes a little clouded, until they land on Hanjae. He smiles, and it stretches across his face quick and big, like he’s actually glad to see him, like the effect is instantaneous. Hanjae can’t for the life of him look at it head on. “Perfect. That’s just perfect, I’m going with you, Hanhan, just wait for me to get changed!”
“Okay,” Hanjae says, and hops off the bed too quickly, sits back down. “I– Waiting.”
Immediately after Haruki leaves Jiahang gives him a long look over Zhiming’s shoulder, and Hanjae pretends not to see it.
“You’re too easy,” he says, with a disapproving nod of his head, and Hanjae pretends he doesn’t hear it, pretends it doesn’t sting.
It’s humiliating, being reminded that people know – that they look at him and know, and he’s reminded of it constantly.
“Hanjae’s sad, sad bisexual awakening,” was how Jiahang put it, sing-a-song in the studio, while making this very single they’re promoting now. “Worse, worse than Minwoo’s– Is that a verse? Can we put that on a song, on the album?”
Minwoo said, for the two of them, “Fuck you.”
And there that one time, the one he remembers clearly, when Seo CEO said he wanted to sit down to watch them practicing ‘Love Me Right’ before the big release, and Taesong pushed Hanjae aside, told him, “Hanjae, you– if you need to check the choreo, please look at the instruction video. Don’t look at Haruki like that, there’s no need to look like you–”
There had to be a separation, he realized; he had to get it under control.
So Hanjae made friends with the people Haruki seemed to not stand, which sometimes meant everyone, but mostly meant J.J and Beomseok – two extremes of very opposite lines. He’s built a line of separation, wrapped himself up in Haruki repellent, and he tries to live by it.
It’s a frail line, a shitty line, and it comes crashing down all the time, with the little moments; single minutes where things feel kind between them, different. A bottle of water and a perfectly folded towel passed to him backstage, a group conversation where Haruki eventually says, like clockwork, “And you, Hanjae? What do you think?”; no one else says that. There’s this lingering nearness coming from him, like there's always something Haruki wants to say or do but can’t, something he wants to check.
It makes Hanjae wonder – makes him come back to that one friendly night, hang on to it. The way Haruki had been so near, his exact tone of voice when he said that he liked him, considered him a friend, thought he was handsome, was going to fix whatever was wrong.
[...]
“So what are we doing?” Haruki asks when they step onto the sidewalk.
“Just filming my Loop Log,” Hanjae responds. “Deadline’s tonight.”
“Shit, that,” Haruki groans, taking his cap off to push hair out of his eyes, putting it on again. “I forgot all about that. ‘Haven’t filmed mine either. ‘Think I lost my camera.”
“I can help you look,” Hanjae offers. “When we get home.”
“Well, thank you,” Haruki says, and steps closer, slides an arm over Hanjae’s shoulder, tells him, “For now, I guess we’ll just have to stick tight. LOOPiN 2on1, reunited in L.A…!”
At Hanjae’s timid request, Chihoon made him a list of what he should get to ‘live his best tourist life’, what the fans might want to see him try: pancakes, bacon and eggs, ice cream, anything in the menu that looks like it could have come off a cartoon, any ‘house specials’.
They go into the nearest place listed with the camera on hand, and have to explain with their Frankenstein English that they want to make a vlog, can they make a vlog? They can, a waiter says, but only in a specific area; they get taken there.
Hanjae orders the house special, and it's a crazy looking Banana Split. Haruki settles for waffles, and they decide to start filming when the food arrives.
Any chance of small talk between them goes fully stall when Hanjae asks, right at their waiter steps away, as the opening topic: “Have you talked to Haegon?”
Haruki’s dangling hand on the table stills. He smiles weird, notices it looks weird, drops it: “Ah, no. No…” and goes silent, makes Hanjae go silent too.
The food comes, they start filming. Hanjae’s meticulously trying to extract a tiny piece of strawberry from a block of ice cream, all while only looking through the camera’s lens, when Haruki’s phone jumps to life, ringing.
He takes it out of his pocket, places it screen flat on the table without looking at the receiver once, mutes it with one hand, adds a mountain of maple syrup to his food with the other.
“Not important,” Haruki reassures Hanjae when he catches him looking at the buzzing phone, an inch away from falling off the edge. He forks the food and stands his hand across the table, says, with his Idol voice, “Wanna try?”
It’s good sweet food, all of it. The camera goes back and forth between them, hand to hand. Haruki makes him pretend they’re shooting a commercial, at some point, makes him do a different pose with every bite, and Hanjae tries to not lose control of his face with all the wooing, all the praise.
It’s fanservice, and Haruki’s good at it. It makes for good content. Everything: good.
Outside, bill paid, they take shelter from the sun and check the recording; thirty raw minutes of footage.
“Hanjae,” Haruki says, looking up after skimming the video, solemn. Hanjae leans a bit forward, eyes a little wide.“The Log will turn out very boring if this is all we do.”
It is, indeed, not the best vlog Hanjae’s ever made. Not that he’s ever been any good at them, or at anything on the media side of the job outside of music covers or choreography making. He’s seen the views on his solo variety content, Sangwon walked him through them all last month, said: nothing special.
They barely talked in 30 minutes – Hanjae didn't initiate a single conversation with him.
Quickly, Haruki’s eyes narrow as he scans the area around them, and Hanjae tries to keep up. He looks for a long moment at the barracks of food, at a man selling balloons, and finally lands far ahead, on a group of kids running on the sand. The leading one trips on air and falls face first on the ground, immediately wails, and they let out matching startled, horrified laughs.
Haruki jogs until he’s in front of him, and turns to walk backwards, closer to where the sidewalk gives into the beach.
“You wanna do that?” He arches a perfect eyebrow. “Run around on the beach with me. Like we’re in a movie.”
Hanjae steps on a stone, lands his other feet on the ground wrong. “I– No.”
“No? Well, I’m doing it! It’s what the vlog’s missing! Trust me, if we do this, it’ll fix everything,” he says, and before Hanjae can even think of what to reply, turns around and starts running on the sand, straight ahead.
Haruki’s already bent over near the ocean when Hanjae catches up with him, folding his jeans until they stop at his knees, barefoot. He insists: “Let’s go, let’s do it, you’re already here, it’s going to be fun, the fans will like it, let’s do it, let’s do it!”
With a resigned sigh, Hanjae unties his sneakers.
Haruki approaches a family nearby and asks for a beach chair, gets a yes. They place the camera cautiously on it, set it with a big zoom ahead. Haruki leaves his phone there, too, with a careless toss, and Hanjae can hear it announcing another call as he steps away, trailing exactly behind him – footprint over footprint, back near the ocean and then on the ocean.
“I thought– Hyung, I thought we were going to just walk,” Hanjae says, stopping. The salt water is a chill foam around his foot.
“Yeah,” Haruki flashes him a smile over his shoulder. He’s about to be knees deep, is taking his Hawaiian shirt off, Hanjae realizes now, with a flush. “We’re walking. Into the water.”
Hanjae catches the shirt when he throws it over his shoulder, looks at it, up at him. He takes a step closer. “Manager Choi’s– Haruki, he’s going to complain!”
“Fuck him!” Haruki tells him with a laugh. He says, with meaning: “Fuck him, fuck New Wave, let them complain, I’m going for a dive and no one can stop me!”
And then he dives, swims, disappears under the water for a long moment. Hanjae stays planted where he is, at a loss of words. When Haruki reemerges, pushing a curtain off black hair off his eyes, and walks back splashing water at him. By the time they’re side by side again, it looks like Hanjae took a dive, too.
“Are you…” He starts to say, eyeing Haruki worryingly, but then the family from before calls back to them, says they’re leaving, they need the chair back, and Haruki claps him on the shoulder, smiles widely, races him to reach them.
“Look,” Haruki says when they’re checking the footage, back on the sidewalk, showing Hanjae a clip: the two of them, a little blurry, walking. “We even got your good smile.”
“My good smile?” Hanjae echoes.
“Not to imply you have a bad one, because you don’t have a bad one,” Haruki says, and bumps their shoulders together. He has just put his shirt back on, is wearing it unbuttoned. “You just have one that’s relaxed, easy. A rare one.”
“Hm,” Hanjae responds, looking away, rolling a rock under his feet.
The walk back to the hotel is calm, windy. The sky’s cotton candy pink and it all looks like a movie, Hanjae thinks. He looks down, and their hands are loose, hanging close, like it would be in a movie.
The end credits roll when they get in the hotel’s lobby, and find Sangwon there – just right there. He catches sight of them immediately, like an alert dog; a quick jump off his seat, a stall near.
He seems to consider them like an equation, frowning: he takes in their wet hair, the wet clothes, the leftover traces of sand, solves it, fumes.
“Do you have any idea,” he says, and he’s struggling to look at the two of them, to not just gawk at Haruki – to not bare his teeth to Haruki only. “Any idea, you two, of how irresponsible this whole stunt was? You’re out on a foreign land. You know no one – no one. When I– The company, if the company calls, you pick your phone. It’s how it works. Pick your phone, immediately.”
Hanjae checks his own phone, a quick glance: no calls.
“Choi-nim,” he says, not looking directly at him, because he lost the ability over the years. Sangwon’s gaze now makes him incredibly anxious. He takes the camera out of where its hanging around his neck, stands it. “I notified– On the calendar, I added– We were just filming–”
“No need to explain, Hanjae,” Haruki interrupts, and puts a hand on Hanjae’s shoulder, steps in front of him, puts himself between him and Sangwon. “Go up. You did nothing wrong. It’s okay. Hyung’s going to solve this with the manager.” He turns straight to Choi-nim and bows, so pristine, so polite: “I take full responsibility for today. It was all me. I’m really sorry if I caused you stress.”
Sangwon considers him for a long moment, taking in the bend of his elbows, like he’s trying to measure his sincerity – there’s almost none of it, Hanjae can tell. He sighs, and then he adjusts his shirt, picks at the cufflinks of his uniform, breaths – his nostrils taking over his entire face.
“You’re dismissed,” Sangwon tells Hanjae, icely, with a corner of the eye glance.
“Sir, I–”
“Dismissed.”
“Go on,” Haruki encourages him, giving Hanjae’s shoulder a firm tap. And then he runs a hand over Hanjae’s hair, messes it up until his wet bangs are glued to his forehead, which he’s never done before; not with him, not with anyone, as far as Hanjae’s aware.
Hesitantly, Hanjae steps away, goes to take the elevator. He keeps looking at them over his shoulder, watching them trail away with growing uneasiness. Haruki keeps looking back at him until he can’t: Sangwon gets the door of the hotel open, shoves him by the shoulder out.
Up in his hotel room, Hanjae showers for a long time. There’s sand on a spot on his elbow where Haruki gave him a tap, and it takes him a while to notice.
He comes off the shower and goes straight to laying down. Zhiming, who had been awake when he came in, is also in his bed now, fully still.
He turns over once, and then again, goes back on his side. “Zhiming hyung?” Hanjae whispers. “You’re awake?”
When Zhiming finally responds, it’s with a minimal grunt, a tiny quick of his socked foot. “What.”
“Do you,” Hanjae chews on the words, “Do you think I have a good smile?”
A pause, a loud sigh. “You’re an Idol. You should hope so.”
“Okay. Okay, so what about– What about me do you think, what looks bad?”
Slowly, very slowly, Zhiming raises his upper body on his elbows. His air is a mess, recently dyed from gray to black too quickly. Without his glasses, he’s forced to squint at Hanjae, even this close, with their beds separated by a very narrow space.
“What the fuck are you even talking about?”
Hanjae takes in a sharp breath, and nods – puts a hand over his eyes, nods again. Stupid, so stupid.
“Nothing,” He says. “Nothing, just– Forget it. I’m sorry, just– Sorry.”
Zhiming goes back to laying down with a loud ‘oof’. He says, a crude whisper, “Don’t go out alone with him if it’ll make you come back like that.”
And with that Hanjae decides he must sleep, immediately, and end this day already.
It was just a day, he tells himself, rubbing at the scarred spot on his hand; a flower in eternal bloom, once. Just one good day. Drop it, forget it, erase it.
February 15, 2022.
“C’mon, you guys, c’moooon! On a scale of one to ten–”
“Na Seungsoo,” Minwoo’s voice rings out like a warning; an elastic pulled far above its limit, about to snap back into place, hard. “Shut your goddamn mouth.”
“She’s right there,” Haegon adds, equally as ultraged. “Are you dumb? Do you want to die?”
“Light up, you two. We’re just talking hypotheticals. I’m not actually gonna fuck our mananger,” Seungsoo says, crossing his arms, raising his chin high – his posture the embodiment of a practical joke about to take action. “That would be desperate and unprofessional, and I am none of these things.”
“You’re extremely unprofessional,” Jiahang laughs at him, a little mean – all his laughs have something a little mean about them, Hanjae can’t help but notice, when Seungsoo’s involved. “And extremely desperate. You just fucked our sound assistant. We no longer have a sound assistant, because you fucked her.”
“So did Jimin!”
“A fluke,” Zhiming defends himself. “Not happening again.”
“It’s never a fluke with you, Seungsoo. You’re such a man whore. A man whore for staff. Even Sangwon could have pulled you when he was around if he had a pair of tits,” Haegon notes, and Seungsoo gasps, mutters, scandalized, ‘You bastard!’, raises a fist up as if he’s going to hit him, and everyone’s laughing. Hanjae contributes with a grimace. “You’re that gross, you’re really that disgusting, all it would take–”
Behind them, Dylan begins to violently choke on a bite out of his granola bar, hard enough for the whole photo studio to freeze.
Taesong stands up immediately to check on him, and so does Jungwha, their three day old manager, Choi Sangwon’s definitive substitute and the topic of Seungsoo’s most recent infatuation: she rushes forward to aid alongside an assistant, a cup of water materialized out of thin air on her hand, like a trained lifeguard.
It’s too early for any of them to get a good read on her, but Hanjae has working eyes, so he will admit Junghwa is good looking in a mature sort of way, a bit above the ‘K-Pop staff adequate’. She’s not far from Seungsoo’s type, given the fact that he pretty much doesn’t have one. Hanjae has seen him flirt with Seo CEO’s third ex-wife, the second ex-wife, all of Minwoo’s half sisters and, in a disastrous attempt, Dylan’s mom. ("She's just so young, Chihoon! I thought she was your cousin!"
"I don't have a single cousin and you know that! You went for my mom, you animal, the least you can do is own it!")
“Holy shit, Chihoon,” Seungsoo says, tapping him on the back with one hand, fanning him with the other. “You’re alright?”
“My bad– False alarm, guys, my bad–!”, Dylan mutters, still coughing, watery eyes quick in their attempt to scan the room for something, someone.
Hanjae follows their frantic trail until they land on the quiet figure of Haruki by the coffee machine, his back to them, shoulders rigid and on display – wearing the same suit outfit Hanjae has been put on, his in a shade more close to purple than blue.
It fits Haruki splendidly, as must things do.
“Alright, boys, hey, boys!” Jungwha calls out when Dylan’s lungs go back to normal, clapping her hands one loud time. “Break’s over! It’s the real deal, now! So let’s try to have a good day at work today! Fighting!”
They’re set to scatter in trios and duos, the old unit formations, except for Haegon, who’s still on hiatus, still has stitches all over the crown of his head. He only made it because Haruki insisted, and he’s always insisting, lately: “How can we do well without our cheerleader,” he told Haegon in the morning, “Our cute, adorable cheerleader, my very favorite little brother–!”
“Hi,” Hanjae mutters, tapping Haruki gently in the shoulder. Haruki jumps, catching his breath, and Hanjae drops his hand, shoves it behind his own back. “Ah, sorry, if I– I was just going to say we should–”
But Haruki is turning and splinting in front of him before all the words are out, growing out of earshot, out of hold, entering a hallway on the left.
Hanjae, embarrassed, follows.
They’re supposed to go to room 4, but Haruki walks right past it. Hanjae calls back to him from the door, says, “Hyung, that’s not the–”, and then his voice falters, dies out.
Haruki’s already quick pace has grown even quicker, and he’s now running towards the door at the end of the corridor, the one with a red sign written ‘TERRACE’ over it – really running, to the point his body almost slams against the metal when he stops. The door handle makes a loud noise as he tries to push it open, can’t make it, tries again, harder – manages to step out with a strong shove. Hanjae goes after him, frowning, worried.
Outside, the terrace is a gray space, almost the same tone as the sky – rain’s a strong promise on the horizon, a reasonable fear.
Haruki’s standing right at the center. He tries to take in a big and loud gulp of air, can’t, makes a choking sound, lets out a hiss. Hanjae can feel the acute panic coming off him like electricity, gluing itself to his very own skin. He reminds himself to breathe.
Haruki stands an arm out and that’s the distance between them, that’s the nearest he’ll let Hanjae get.
“What’s– What’s happening, what’s wrong, what–?”
“Just,” he’s trembling bad. “Leave, I need– Leave.”
“Now?” Hanjae asks, and he’s making himself bite down on the trail of: ‘But the shoot’, ‘But the gig’, ‘But the job’ so hard, he’s actually got his teeth sinking on his lip.
Haruki nods, sharp and final, and Hanjae feels himself nodding back, frenetic. “Okay, stay– stay here, okay, you’ll leave– we’re leaving, just stay here.”
Hanjae walks back into the building with his head very low, tries to not walk too quickly to bring attention to himself, feels like he’s falling; feels like the whole world is looking at him. He holds his breath while sneaking back into the room they’re using as a closet, picks his and Haruki’s things like a thief: pushing everything into their bags without folding, eyes anxiously looking behind his back, flinching at every outside noise coming through the door.
Haruki’s phone is the last thing he grabs. He only becomes aware of it because it starts ringing. He looks at the screen, a quick run of his eyes. The contact name reads: ‘Don’t Answer Don’t Answer Don’t Answer.’
On the roof, Haruki’s sitting on the floor, resting his forehead against the wall. The back half of an air conditioner hangs close to him, and the leftover water pools near his feet, turning the hem of his pants dark.
They put on the yellow raincoats, plastic hood all the way up, and make a clumsy escape out the studio; Hanjae babbles something at the receptionist about there being equipment in the van, and the woman gives them a distracted ‘go ahead’ nod, an empty courtesy smile.
They walk without a plan, enter on the first bus that stops close: Haruki on the lead, completely reticent, Hanjae only following. There’s still a trail of glitter going down his neck, shiny with sweat, red from stress, Hanjae notices when they sit down. He’s still crying, still whipping at his runny nose with the expensive fabric of his shirt.
Hanjae looks down at his own clothes, the suit vest with no shirt under, a design piece New Wave doesn’t own – he’s wearing eyeliner, a strong smokey eye. They look expensive, and to an outsider, probably peculiar, weird. They don’t even have masks on…
Maybe, Hanjae hopes, trying to hold on to any trail of optimism possible, they could pass as very dedicated cover dancers, maybe–
The sound of Hanjae’s phone ringing makes them both jump in their seats. Haruki comes out of his state of anxious inertia to put a hand on his knee, pressing on it to get his attention. He says, through his teeth, “Do not– Hanjae, do not.”
Hanjae lets the phone ring out. He looks at the receiver: Uhm Junghwa (Manager).
Haruki’s peeking at it too. “Off,” he says, and it’s off.
It’s raining when they step out of the bus. They get maybe five feet down the sidewalk when a phone rings again – this time, Haruki’s. He comes to a sudden halt, and Hanjae bumps into his back and gets a close view of how, in an act of blind rage, he throws it hard on the floor.
“Fuck!” Haruki says, and steps on it once, twice, cracks the screen then the whole device in half. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Hanjae looks at him, wide eyed, mouth hanging open, and watches him pace around, a tense moment, until he loses all steam, goes sit by the closest wall.
Haruki stays for a long time there, one hand gripping the fence, the other pressing over his face, being rained on. Cautiously, Hanjae slides his raincoat off, squats down, close to him, and stands it over both their heads. Rain drips directly into his shoulder, makes a cold path down his neck.
“I hope your–,” a hiccup, a sniff, a faint and unconvincing attempt from Haruki of laughing them both off, “your fantasy’s still– still up.”
“My…?”
“Can you not,” Haruki says, a hiss, “Not look.”
Hanjae complies, doesn’t look. Behind them, a car runs close to the sidewalk, splashes a wave of rainwater on their backs.
“Sasaeng?” Hanjae tries, “Is it a sasaeng, or…”
Haruki lets out a bitter snort. “Imja,” he says, and it makes more sense that he means ‘owner’ rather than ‘marriage partner’; Hanjae can’t hear anything else, can’t connect anything else to something he knows and decode it.
His throat has gone dry, sandy. He clears it, and still, his voice comes off clipped. “Your…? Ah. Ah, I didn’t know– Didn’t know you have someone you were–”
“You know him,” Haruki says. “For years. You– you’ve known him. He gave you your job– Made your job happen.”
It takes a long moment for it to click, for the shape of manager Choi to come to Hanjae’s mind. Haruki’s looking at him like he’s expecting Hanjae to do something horrible: mouth set for a fight, eyes so red they look like they’ve been painted over.
“Hyung,” Hanjae breathes. His voice is an even quieter thing, afraid. “Do you mean– Are you being serious?”
“Am I! Am I serious?!”
He’s up again, quick – Hanjae loses his equilibrium and falls back on the street. Haruki doesn’t wait for him to get up to resume stomping.
It takes two street turns for Hanjae to understand they’re detouring from the dorms.
They sit on another bus stop bench, hop on another bus. A quiet and tense drive, this one. Haruki’s no longer crying, just grinding his teeth.
They go to the front gates of a tiny building, their final destination, and Haruki tells the security guard an apartment number, wais to be buzzed in. He does soon, and Hanjae, yet to be told to leave, goes up with him on the stairs.
Delilah gets the door he bangs on, and Hanjae’s stuck blinking at the sight of her, who shouldn’t still be in Korea. Haruki barges into her place like a hurricane: shoes still on, pushing her a little back, closer to the wall.
They both stare at the spot he occupied on the corridor a second ago, a held breath.
She recovers much quicker than he does. Deh tucks a long lock of her caramel hair behind her ear, greets him with an awkward, “Hanjae, hi. Hi...”, and Hanjae gets overwhelmed by too many things at once; how glad he is to see her, the shame of how they had parted. Her sad face when she told everyone she couldn’t stand to work with them anymore.
“You’re back.”
“I am! I am back!” Deh says. “How could I not! Europe’s too gray for me. The food’s too bad, and...” She sucks air through her teeth, takes an anxious look behind her, back inside. “... And all that.”
Hanjae shakes his head, agrees – agrees to all that even though he has no idea what all that is. There’s a pool of spit on his mouth, and he has to concentrate on gulping it down, has to try more than once.
“Hanjae, baby, look– I’ll send him on his way later. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Just…” She trials off. “Please don’t tell the others we met, okay? I don’t want Seungsoo looking for me or asking around. I don’t want to see him again, ever.”
Fair, Hanjae thinks. After everything, fair.
Deh flashes him a final grim before closing the door, still awkward, and it doesn’t last. She drops it for a split second, fully drops it, looks instead concerned, anxious.
Hanjae waits a moment, then moves before he knows it. He presses his ear against the shut door, closes his eyes and hopes to catch anything. A creek of wood. A vacuum cleaner being turned off. The sound of someone channel surfing. Deh saying what might be, “Haruki, what do you want me to do? I can’t know, love. I can’t know if you don’t tell me.”
Another sound drowns everything, nearer. Someone from the apartment on the left starts to unlock their door, it’s about to walk out, and it leaves Hanjae panicking, it makes him jog all the way out of the building, nonstop.
He makes the inverse way back home, alone. His own phone is a hot thing in his back pocket. When he gets to the dorm, Chihoon is the first person he bumps into, planted right beside the shoe rack. Hanjae’s seen him in this set of clothes, short shorts and a knockoff Pokemon shirt, more than he’s seen his own dad’s face these last few years.
Dylan grabs at Hanjae when he notices it’s him, pushes him back out quickly. He puts a finger in front of his mouth – quiet.
“I’ve given you some cover,” he whispers. They’re circling the house, Hanjae realizes, going to the backyard. “Said you were not feeling well. It won’t fly with Minwoo or Taesong, so think of something. And you're not gonna get paid this month, because of the clothes. Neither of you will.” He looks around, eyes sharp in a way Hanjae didn’t think they could be. “Where is he?”
“Deh’s,” Hanjae blurts out, and remembers he promised not to speak of her, grows meek.
He’s tired, deep in the bones tired, from all the walking, all the running. The socks inside his sneakers are still wet, his fingers have gone cold.
“Good,” Dylan says, remarkably unsurprised. “That’s good enough.”
There’s a moment of silence between them. In Hanjae’s head, a pinned image every time he blinks: Haruki’s eyes, red like a bruise.
“Chihoon hyung, I think– I think there’s something wrong with–”
Dylan’s grip on his arm is steady, but no longer comforting when he says, “Hanjae, listen, yes. Yes. Something’s wrong. Too many things–” He shakes his head, clicks his tongue once, and again. “No need for you to worry about it, because there’s nothing you can really do, okay? It’s been too long, now. The time for anyone to really do anything, over.”
He looks like he doesn’t want to be saying it, like all those words taste bitter, bad.
“So just keep being nice,” Dylan concludes, and his voice breaks at the end. “Be nice with him right now, alright? And patient, and normal, just like always, and…”
Dylan doesn’t say what else. He looks down, and Hanjae follows. Near their feet, a trail of black nicotine ash and tiny bits of paper; someone’s worry, someone’s wait.Kind, maybe, Hanjae concludes on his own. Maybe kind was what he was going to say.
March 12th & a Bit Of 13th, 2022.
Sunyoung immediately strikes Hanjae as someone who’s never held a small house party before, and it’s a bit painful to see her try.
She greets them at the door, a little overdressed: Chanel earrings, Chanel bag. “Is that everyone?”, she asks, craning her neck to peek behind them, and when they mumble ‘yes’ she visibly withers.
Taesong steps in front of them to give her a gift – a flower vase so yellow Zhiming had to look away from it, rubbing at his eyes.
She stares at it for a minute, frowns hard, then composes herself, says, “Ah! Thank you so much, oppa! This is so– Yeah, thanks! But you didn’t have to! Gon, baby! I said they didn’t have to!”
“I told you they don’t listen to me,” Haegon mutters. There’s a dark cloud over his face and Sunyoung seems to not mind it. She squeezes his arm when he passes her by, smiles at him prettily.
She checks the corridor one more time, and for a moment Hanjae thinks she looks sad; that she looks angry.
The party is a housewarming party for the brand new double storey apartment in Nine One Hannam she’s sharing with her BombShell leader Yoorim, who strongly opposed herself to throwing anything. Hanjae catches a glimpse of her looking displeased and bothered behind the kitchen aisle, and bows his head a little – she rolls her eyes, turns her back on him, disappears behind a small group of people.
Beomseok refused to come, decided to take the afternoon to go grocery shopping, the night to visit family he can’t take Haegon to see; the side that calls him a parasite. It had been a clear jab, right at Haegon’s face. Even Minwoo thought it was insensitive, and his response to the invite had been nothing but a disgusted face that spelled out ‘no’.
Hanjae watches him move through the living room, greeting some people. Haegon’s been here yesterday, and the day before that, and if Hanjae’s not cautious, he’ll stay over despite their early shooting tomorrow.
“That old man put you on babysitting duty, eh, Hanhan?” Seungsoo leans in to whisper to him, a drink in hand already – white wine. The smell of his cologne is probably stuck to Hanjae’s bottom up by osmosis.
“He’s just concerned. It makes sense to be concerned.”
On their first day back from L.A, Haegon had announced over dinner that he now had a girlfriend: they met last week, and had been dating for three days. The situation had driven Beomseok crazy. Haegon asked if him if wanted to meet her every day for two weeks straight, and he said: no. He eventually got around to meet her and said with even more conviction: no, break up, now.
It’s an age gap, even if very small, but she’s about five years his industry senior, he told Hanjae. And Sunyoung’s from YG Entertainment, the face of too many brands. She’s going to eat him alive, spit him out, leave him heartbroken and Beomseok is going to have to deal with it, and he doesn’t want to have to deal with it.
“She can just like him. People can just like him,” Taesong tried to intervene, high pitched, and Beomseok cutted him off right away, said, “No. No, there’s something– Be serious, Taesong. No.”
The front door dings again, and it takes a long minute for Haegon to untangle his arms from Sunyoung’s waist and let her go get it. Hanjae watches her walk across the house, a firm walk of a supermodel, of someone important, and gets embarrassed with how bad he is at this, how obvious.
Another glimpse her way, and the person with their two feet planted on the ‘welcome home’ carpet is Haruki. He also said he wouldn’t come but gave no excuse, yet: here, dressed nicely. He’s got the same convenience store from years ago under one arm, the one from a memory.
They talk, talk, talk, and he still won’t leave the entrance. Haruki makes her laugh, the most genuine thing Hanjae’s seen Sunyoung do all night. He sees her look at him, look around, then lean closer again: point upstairs and give Haruki a thumbs up as he finally makes his way in, into the stairs and out of sight.
Sunyoung’s back on the couch, to Haegon, and Hanjae makes himself look. They’re fine, they appear very fine, holding hands, he doesn’t have to watch them all night, there’s no need to watch them at all, and–
Hanjae goes up the stairs, which he knows it’s technically off limits. He tries to not let his eyes wander to the photos on the walls, the books on the shelves tucked next to an award behind protective glass, a big shiny plaque framed above it.
There’s only one door with light peeking through, right at the end of the corridor. He taps at it three times, and waits. Another three taps, slightly stronger.
“Occupied,” a voice says from the inside – a tone he knows. “All night.”
Hanjae can’t think of what to say: can’t think of anything at all, for a second. He gives the door another hopeful tap, waits more, and he lets out a sigh of relief when it creeks open. He goes in, closes it quietly behind him, and looks down.
The room’s a bathroom, straight out of a home decoration magazine, all black and white. Haruki seems to be setting up an improv bar on the floor, in the big space between the bathtub and the sink. There’s a bottle of something Hanjae can’t read, blue and half empty, tucked in between his legs like a treasure.
“Ah, you,” he waves at Hanjae’s vague direction, not looking up. “Hello, you. I’m just– Don’t mind the mess. Someone made me something once. ‘Trying to put it together.”
Hanjae hums. He can’t make his hand ease its grip on the doorknob.
It’s been weeks since they abandoned the shoot, and since then Haruki’s been avoiding him constantly. Looks at him from across rooms and seems pained, constantly, and Hanjae hasn’t had the heart to come near.
“What is happening?” Haruki asks, suddenly, and tries to land a smile. He blinks a lot and then not enough looking up at Hanjae. “Down. Down there.”
“Nothing much.”
“How is he?”
“Haegon?” Hanjae asks, and Haruki nods at him loosely, mouths the name without making a sound: ‘Haegon’. “He– Uh, he seems alright.”
“Great couple, yes or no? For our maknae, is she great?”
“I– I don’t know.”
Disappointment flashes vividly through Haruki’s face, and it lands on a sad shagrin. “You don’t know,” he says, to himself, and goes back to emptying his bag with a slouch to his shoulders.
‘Be normal’, Dylan had said that day, his only instructions: ‘Be nice.’
Hanjae lets go of the door and goes to sit in front of him, legs crossed like his are. “What’s it supposed to taste like? The drink.”
There’s no humor in Haruki when he says, “Acid.”
He offers a thermo bottle to Hanjae filled with the failed replica. Hanjae takes a tiny sip and can’t swallow it, feels like his tongue is on fire, and it makes Haruki huff a laugh. “More disgusting than that.”
He makes more combinations that demand more tasting, and Hanjae at times struggles, at times doesn’t – Haruki empties a Soju bottle and refills it with Somaek, calls it ‘Hanjae’s palette cleanser’. He also makes Hanjae go downstairs to grab things they don’t have: more cups, ice and fruit juice, if Sunyoung has any, which she does – too many options.
Hanjae comes back from the trip and sets all his findings at Haruki’s feet, then feels weird about it, exposed about it, and pushes some of it closer to himself.
The bottle opener, they notice a minute later, has disappeared. Hanjae thinks he took it with him to the kitchen and abandoned it on the counter. Worry not, Haruki says; worry not!, because he knows how to open them with his front teeth. It’s a hidden skill, a secret talent.
Haruki asks him to hold a bottle close to his face so he can prove it, and Hanjae does so, but it’s a frail grip, not good. Haruki puts a hand over his to make it steadier, makes it worse. Another hand, a shove closer until their knees are touching. Hanjae adds his free hand into the pile, the lonely hand, and Haruki looks straight at him – looks like he’s saying, ‘Bet?’
It takes a second, really. A pop and the lid comes off in the company of an enormous foam eruption. Haruki gets both his hands away, does a smiley flourish: ‘ta-da!’
“But you shook it! Too much, you–!’ He laughs, and can’t stop laughing. Hanjae’s still holding the bottle and tries to hand it to him, but Haruki shakes his head ‘no’. “For you. It is for you.”
It’s bland beer, he takes notice when he drinks it, but somehow it tastes sweeter.
From the corner of his eyes he catches a glimpse of metal in a corner, and it’s Haruki’s new phone, exiled.
Hanjae is surprised to hear himself ask him, “Are the calls– the calls still coming? The ones from–”
“Always,” Haruki responds, eerily nonchalant. “Always will.”
“It’s not over, then? You still–”
“It is. It is over. It is over the way it can be over.”
“What wouldhe,” Hanjae closes his eyes, reiterates, “If it’s over, what would he still want with you?”
“What do you think,” Haruki asks, staring fixedly at the alcohol going from one bottle to the other. A bit of it it’s running straight to the floor. “What do you think people want with me?”
It’s said– weird. Something in his uncaring tone makes a lump of sadness form in Hanjae’s throat.
“Hyung, you know that, if you everneed to talk to anyone about anything. Me and the guys, we all– We all listen. We would listen.”
“Anything?” Haruki pretends to be impressed. “Big. That is big.”
“Seriously. I’m being serious.”
Haruki looks up at him. Even more alcohol spills to the floor.
“Okay. Okay, anything. Anything…” he hums, dropping the bottles, mimicking being in thought with an obnoxious pout. His mouth is now a purple dot, and his eyes a shiny brown daze...
Hanjae often catches himself wondering if he just knows. If he looks into a mirror and just knows that he’s beautiful in a way that looks hand drawn, that looks meticulously planned: a subject of equal envy and admiration. If Sangwon ever told him that, and if so, how many times, had it come close to enough, had he used the right words to say it, did Haruki believe him when he said it, or if he didn’t – what did it make him feel? What exactly did he make him feel?
Hanjae always thought he was so mean, so bitter. He can’t remember ever hearing him say anything nice to anyone about anything.
Hanjae’s staring, he’s realized, and his eyes hurt. He makes them look down to where Haruki’s got a firm hold around the slim of a bottleneck, tapping a weird rhythm into it, impossible to decipher. He has long fingers with hard skin on them, which isn’t something you would expect. He used to paint, used to do calligraphy; used to go to a prestigious arts academy during high school, all boys.
Hanjae’s still starring, and he’s too close to drunk to properly command himself to stop. He hears Haruki huffs an unheard laugh, suddenly, short and maybe frustrated, maybe not that, and Hanjae’s head snaps up to his face to meet it.
He’s being stared at, too – is being analyzed, too.
“I thought of something. Something I want to say, a thing,” Haruki announces. The grin on his face suddenly looks very, very sharp, like there’s something tugging the corners of his mouth up. “I will whisper to you. On your ear. ‘Gimme your ear and I will tell.”
And with that he comes forward, a sudden and ungracious movement, and doesn’t stop when they’re front to front, an inch apart. He climbs Hanjae up – actually climbs him up, his legs around the middle of his body, cageing him in.
Haruki grims again and it’s lazily, in slow motion. He puts a hand on Hanjae’s chin, tips it high, says, “Not your ear.”
He turns his head to the side. His nose rovers near Hanjae’s head, and Hanjae tries to escape it in reflex, but they’re all too slow, drowned in alcohol.
Into his ear, lips touching skin, Haruki says, “I know you like me. For a very long time. Since that one time. Ever since we went out, we got drunk, that one time.”
“Sorry,” Hanjae mutters, hushed.
“‘Sorry’,” Haruki laughs again, like that’s the funniest word there is, like it’s the meanest. It rings so loud, it has an echo. “Now you sorry?”
Hanjae sinks more into the floor, almost laying down, and Haruki follows, saying, “Are you going away? This close? I am this close, and you going away?”
They’re kissing before Hanjae fully processes how, and it’s a weird kiss at a weird angle; Haruki won’t bend his body all the way down, and Hanjae has to keep craning his neck to meet him midway, his elbows pressing against the tiles, hurting.
He feels a hand slide up his shirt almost immediately, and Hanjae understands, with drunken horror, that he’s being undressed – quickly.
“Ah, wait–” He says, and then can’t get out anything else: Haruki shoved a thumb inside his mouth, in between his teeth, as he goes for the spot where Hanjae’s shoulder and neck meet.
“You smell like home here,” he says, a goosebump. He buries his face there, opens his mouth above it, bites and sucks hard enough to make Hanjae jump – for him to know it’ll leave a pinkish mark, evidence–
It’s exactly then and there that someone bursts in through the door, says a curse loudly, startles the two of them slightly apart, knocks the air out of their lungs.
“Close your eyes! I need to pee right now, right now, close your eyes!”
It’s a tall woman, this one – Hanjae sees her quick rush to the toilet and closes his eyes tight shut.
“If any of you try to act funny and take a single peek, I’ll fucking castrate you both– Hey! Hey, you, back on the floor, don’t come near, I’m fucking serious, I’ll kill you, you fucking–!”
The door clicks shut, and it takes Hanjae a moment to take in the lack of heat above and around him, to correlate the two: Haruki’s gone, walked out, left him.
From the side, he hears an instrident, “Can you at least cover your fucking boner, dude?!”
Hanjae rolls to his side, facing the opposite wall to where the toilet is; he pushes his knuckles into his shut eyes, for good measure. He waits for the girl to finish peeing, and tries not to have an anxiety attack or a heart attack or a nerve attack about everything that happened in the last ten minutes: Haruki on top of him, Haruki no longer on top of him, having to hear a stranger peeing.
“I’m done,” she announces, and he turns back to the same position as before.
There’s little dots of light in his vision, dancing. The girl’s using the sink now, and she has a blonde bob, so blonde and so short. It follows the shape of her mouth and up, even shorter at the back.
“Not a word from you, ever,” she warns, drying her hands on her skirt, pushing it down more, back in place. She gives him a pointed glare that makes Hanjae look down at the state he’s in, at his busted open shirt, a single button in the middle holding it all together. “Not a word from me. Now get the fuck out, please. People need to use the bathroom.”
And she gets going too, without closing the door all the way. The hum of the party downstairs carries over.
Hanjae inhales, looking at the bright ceiling light. His fingers have gone pruney where they were holding him.
[…]
Eventually Hanjae has to get out of the suite, and do a walk of shame back to the housewarming party. He takes down with him all the glass and cups he can manage, not a lot of them, goes straight to the kitchen sink, and begins to wash them, it’s done with them, goes for all of Sunyoung and Yoorim’s dishes.
Around him, the kitchen has emptied out – on the front the living room, mostly emptied out, too, except for little clicks. He spots J.J right in the center of the one installed in the couch, gesticulating enthusiastically, telling someone some story until they make eye contact. He stops, excuses himself, rushes near.
Up close, Jiahang looks at him, up and down, bug eyed, and Hanjae understands he didn’t do a good job of piecing himself back together.
He got a glimpse of his face in the mirror before walking out: lips glossy, bangs far apart and sticking up, somehow, not all the buttons of his shirt tucked in the right cases.
“Hanjae, oh my God. Dylan, Dylan, look!” He calls out, and Hanjae sees Chihoon appear on his left, face slightly dazed. “Oh my God, Dylan! Hanjae!”
“You fucking animal!” Seungsoo, coming out of nowhere, slaps him on the chest hard. “Who? Who who who who?”
They’re all too close, too soon, and Hanjae can’t look anyone in the eyes for too long– he just can’t.
He catches a glimpse of Blonde Bob Piss Girl in a corner, looking bored, on her phone, and stares at her for a moment too long. Everyone follows, looks at her too, and his bandmates erupt into enthusiastic ‘Eeeeeeh!’s. Someone, proprably Seungsoo still, raises his soupy arm up so he can be given high fives, and Hanjae doesn’t know what to do – to let the lie linger or to kill it. What can he even say? What can he say if not that–
Hanjae finds himself grabbing Dylan’s sleeve and tugging at it, leaving behind a damp. He feels like a little kid that broke something, suddenly – overwhelmingly so. “Where ‘d Haruki go?”
“Dude, I didn’t see him. You sure?” Chihoon asks, and Hanjae’s not; he’s not sure.
“Whaaaaat? Haruki came? Haruki’s here?”
“Great. Another one to hunt down. We’re never gonna leave this fucking place in time,” Jiahang whines. “Yoorim noona’s going to delete my number.”
Hanjae asks all of them at once, “We’re leaving?”
“Yeah, you didn’t hear? Sunyoung and Haegon ditched,” Seungsoo says, and Hanjae’s stomach drops. “It’s her house and they ditched, disappeared, poof! Yoorim’s pissed, told everyone to leave. And Taeng’s freaking out! Someone broke his little vase, someone spilled something on him. I think he’s gonna snap. We need to get that freak home.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, Hanjae,” Seungsoo laughs. “Old man was right, after all… Shit.”
[...]
They do a small search around the apartment, the balcony, and conclude: no Haruki anywhere, so they group everyone they have to leave, go wait to be picked up on the sidewalk in front of the Nine One Hannam gates.
“You just dreamed him up, Hanhan! Wouldn’t be the first time,” Seungsoo jokes. It’s a bad joke. O.z shoves him in the chest hard about it, tells him, “Quiet.”
Hanjae looks straight ahead, not at them. In front of him J.J keeps bouncing on the wheel of his feet, saying, ‘I’m going in the front, I’m passenger seat, forget it, it’s me me me me,’ even though no one’s putting up a fight about it.
Minwoo pulls up soon enough on the curve in one of the two black company vans, and downs the window just to give them all an open scowl, then a frown. “I’m only seeing seven of you.”
J.J circles the car to get to the front door, struggles a little to get it open. “Hyung, you’re not gonna believe.”
“I don’t wanna hear it, Jiahang.”
“Shut up, you do. You really really really really do. You were–,” and then he becomes aware of the slouched figure of Hanjae trailing behind him, turns and frowns. “What did I just say!”
“No, I’m…” Hanjae looks at Minwoo looking at him, one eyebrow raised, says, “Sorry.”
Minwoo pinches at his nose, hard. “Just get in the goddamn car, Hanjae, Jesus Christ.”
Hanjae thinks, out of everyone who has a driver’s license, Minwoo drives the shittiest. He needs glasses, he never wears them, he grumbles curses at every slow driver and every rush driver and every driver, in general.
On the way home, he stops the van only once, by popular demand. Taesong steps out to vomit, and spends the rest of the ride jittery about it, cracking his knuckles even when they make no sound.
“We’re so fucked,” Chihoon says when they park inside the dorm’s garage, rubbing his eyes. “It’s 3AM. We’re so fucked.”
While everyone rushes to their rooms to piece pajamas together and form a long row to shower, Hanjae’s elbow to elbow with Dylan, going up the stairs to the second floor as quietly as they can.
He and Haruki have, by far, the best room in the whole house: spacious, with a nice window. It used to be Haruki and Sangwon’s up until he got fired – some excuse about rooming with the manager to learn Korean quicker, about making sure Haruki wouldn’t sneak beer into his room. It makes Hanjae sick now, seeing it, standing so close to it.
Dylan tries the handle once, and the door doesn’t budge, only makes a stubborn click – locked.
Hanjae dries his hand on his jeans, still wet, somehow, asks him, “Is he– He’s in there? Or…?”
Chihoon rests his head against the mahogany and sort of sighs, sort of laughs. “Yeah, definitely home. He’s the only one with the key to lock me out. Classic. Just classic.”
“Get my bed,” Hanjae says – implores. “Use mine, you can– mine, I’ll couch.”
“You’ll couch?” Chihoon looks at him with the trembling smile of someone who’s about to laugh. It falls off his face quickly when he takes in the guilt Hanjae knows he’s wearing openly on his face.
“Hyung, I–” It’s out of his mouth before Hanjae even knows it. “Tonight, something – Something has happened, and I think, think I should– say.”
Dylan’s giving him an analytical once over, and he stops at his moving hands, on his marked neck, looks at the door again – locked.
“Hanjae,” he says his name like it’s an insult, and for a moment Hanjae feels like it really is – his name, an insult.
He crumbles. “I’m sorry, so, so sorry, we just– I didn’t mean to– It was just, just a kiss, I think, and I– I–”
“You kissed him?! ‘You think’? What does that mean? What do you mean ‘you think’?!”
Hanjae looks around and then down, behind him. “Dylan…” he manages, airy, and doesn’t know what he wants the rest of the phrase to be, where he’s trying to take it.
Chihoon’s mouth hangs open, a painful disbelief, and then slowly shuts.
“You know what,” he says harshly, but not angrily – he sounds more disappointed than anything, more tired than anything. “I don’t want to know. Not now. I’ll know, just– Not now. But fucking Hell, Hanjae, you. You just had to, didn’t you? You saw an opportunity and you just had to.”
Hanjae’s breath catches. Dylan is a figure in his eyes, growing blurry.
“I’m taking your bed,” he announces. ”Eveytime he kicks me out from this day on, I’m sleeping on your bed.”
He storms off, his bare feet on the floor a sound until it isn’t anymore.
Hanjae knocks on the door, a small tap. Nothing.
He thinks of saying it again: sorry. But no one’s around to hear it, no one’s around to accept it. There’s no point.
#fictional idol community#fake kpop group#kpop au#kpop fanfic#kpop oc#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ writing .#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ haruki .#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ hanjae .#&& ⠀ [ . . . ] hound on a hunt ⠀⸻ dylan .
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I don’t need to be up this early but this idea won’t leave me.
So, Steddie Battle of the Bands AU featuring punk!Steve.
Corroded Coffin join a battle of the bands competition run out of a little bar just outside Indianapolis, expecting fully to make it all the way. There’s not a lot of musicians in their area and out of all of them, CC have the most milage and the most unique sound. Sure, it’s metal, but in the bigger city that’s not the death sentence it would be back in Hawkins.
For the most part, they’re right. There’s a little pop trio that do okay, a Bob Dylan type with an acoustic and the flattest, most nasal tone Eddie has ever heard, a rock outfit with a drummer who’s clearly on speed and fixing to pull a Spinal Tap, and one very old dude who’s there more for the fun than to actually compete. They’re a shoe-in.
Except there’s a punk band that were running a little late, and manage to take stage literally just as they’re being called. The Demogorgons, they’re called.
Eddie is pissed the instant he sees them, firstly because he’s been on sight with punks since ‘84 when a flock of the little shits dissed Dio to his fucking face. Second because out of all the things they could have been called, they picked a DND creature??! In Eddie’s house??? Who the fuck did they think they were?!
The longer Eddie watches them play (he can’t leave until they announce who’s moving on from this round, he’s literally a captive audience), the more pissed off he gets because they’re good.
The lead guitarist is a girl with dark, short hair mostly hiding her face, but she’s absolutely slaying their cover of White Wedding, adding more than was originally in the song seemingly on the fly. It’s beautiful, as a guitarist himself he can at least begrudgingly respect her talent.
The bassist is also a girl with short hair who seems like she’s in her own world, totally lost in the music and jamming so hard Eddie can’t really look at her for too long without getting sucked in with her.
The drummer looks like an absolute madman, big buff blonde guy who looks like he’d bite if anyone got too close to him. He’s bare chested, showing off a few tattoos and a couple piercings that make him far more interesting than Eddie cares to admit.
But the singer/ rhythm guitarist, is what is really tripping Eddie up.
He’s prettier than he has any goddamn need to be, and he’s weirdly smiley for a punk. Like being on stage is his happy place, which Eddie can relate to, even if he hates admitting any commonalities between them at all. His voice too, is lovely. It’s not the typical scratchy punk sound, it’s high and airy and from a technical standpoint (only that, Eddie swears) it’s really good. And he seems like he’s not having any trouble playing and singing at the same time, which is shitty as hell because Eddie still does sometimes.
Before their set ends, Eddie has decided he hates them. He hates them, so much.
So much in fact, he goes over to heckle them once they finish.
It goes south almost immediately.
He was right, the drummer is definitely a maniac. It’s like he was waiting for an excuse to fight someone. And given how fast the singer snatches him up after he decks Eddie, this is a frequent thing. The singer and the drummer posture at each other and for a second Eddie thinks they’re about to fight.
But evidently the drummer thinks better of it and stalks off to start helping put their gear up.
The singer apologizes for his bandmate, even though Eddie started the fight, and introduces himself as Steve, the drummer being named Billy. He’s a good kid, Steve tells him, just angry and still learning where to put that anger. He offers to buy Eddie a drink for his trouble, and he’s so floored he ends up accepting.
To Eddie’s surprise, they end up talking, and they end up talking a lot. Steve is easy to talk to, and he listens like what Eddie has to say is important. When he talks, it’s with this sardonic edge to it that reminds Eddie of sour candy. Before he knows it, it’s been like three hours, and it’s time to announce who’s advancing to the next round.
To Eddie’s complete lack of surprise, Corroded Coffin make it through, but so do The Demogorgons. Steve congratulates him, sincerely, and Eddie stutters out the same.
They part ways for the night, but the pretty punk with the prettier smile won’t leave Eddie’s thoughts.
Cue CC telling Eddie to get his head in the game, trying to head off the crush they can spot forming. They know him well enough to know the signs, and they don’t need him pulling a Romeo and Juliet with some punk he met for one night.
Little do they know, The Demogorgons are having a similar chat with their own lead. They’ve worked too hard to have Steve get distracted, or worse, go soft, over some greasy metalhead he’s only talked to like, once. Steve of course promises that he won’t. After all, it’s not like he’s really going to see him much, and Steve isn’t easy, he has to get to know someone to fall for them.
Cut to a week later when one Steve Harrington is dropping Dustin off at his DND thingy, only to see none other than Eddie Munson perched at the head of the table. He’s explaining what their quest is for the night, or something, and he’s so animated, so into it, he doesn’t notice Steve frozen in the doorway.
Steve makes it out before Eddie sees him, but from that moment on it’s like he’s every where Steve goes. They bump into each other constantly, Hawkins is a small town, it’s easy to do. It gets to be such a regular thing that Eddie makes a joke about following Steve, and Steve sings that Rockwell song about being followed and they find themselves laughing together again.
It’s easy, really. Too easy. And before they know it, whenever they bump into each other, they end up talking for a while. It’s just a few minutes, they both reason to themselves, a few minutes is fine.
But a few minutes turns into an hour, turns into a couple hours, turns into a smoke sesh at Eddie’s, turns into a jam sesh at Steve’s, and before they know it, they’re missing each other when the other isn’t around.
Of course it isn’t long before Gareth notices his best friend’s preoccupation, and Robin could clock Steve’s daydreamy look three miles away. They each come clean to their respective long-suffering bestie.
Neither are happy, but they both care more about their friend than some stupid band competition. They know the rest of their bands won’t be happy, and that could be a pain, so rather than being even slightly reasonable, they hatch a plan.
Eddie and Steve are determined to be the punk-metal version of Romeo and Juliet, but that doesn’t mean their story has to be a tragedy. This is a musical, afterall. What better to do than bridge the gap with the power of music.
So the next time Eddie and Steve hang out, they both spend probably fifteen minutes uncomfortably dancing around trying to ask the other to write a song with them.
Steve cracks first, because seeing Eddie uncomfortable is so fucking bizarre it trumps his own nerves and he has to ask what’s going on. Eddie decides to be brave and takes the leap, asks Steve what he’s got to ask, and to his surprise Steve tells him he was going to ask the same thing.
They haven’t really talked about it, the tension between them, but it boils over when Steve tries to explain why he wants to write a song with Eddie. Eddie can’t watch him flounder for a second more, when he knows he could just be kissing him instead.
He takes Steve by the jaw and kisses the soul out of him. If they weren’t sold they were doing the right thing before, the kiss seals the deal.
They spend the night trading kisses and lyrics in equal measure, alternating between strumming strings and heartstrings until they’re both so caught up in creation, in each other, they’re harmonic.
After that, they hit crunch time. The battle of the bands is next week, and learning a whole new song is a pain in the ass for both bands. It’ll be worth it, but Jeff doesn’t know that and Billy doesn’t care.
The boys make time to see each other, but of course, they get caught.
Band practice gets postponed on both sides of the fence. They know they shouldn’t, it’s stupid, but Eddie spent the day getting harassed by a flock of “Concerned Christian Mothers” who were not shy about telling him exactly what they thought about him, and would not get the hell out of his face about it. Steve is a caretaker down to his bones, and doesn’t think twice about going to care for his metalhead.
Nancy however isn’t stupid, and Grant knows damn well Eddie would only postpone practice if something was genuinely wrong. So Nancy follows Steve to see what the hell could be so important to him that he’d call off practice, and Grant goes to bring Eddie a care package.
Nancy isn’t happy about finding the two spooning on Eddie’s couch, but she doesn’t make as much of a fuss about it as Grant does. Grant goes off about sleeping with the enemy and treachery and the metalhead code of honor (which he made up right there on the spot), but the real bucket of cold water is Nancy telling Steve how disappointed she is that he pulled them all into this, made them care about it, only to waste his time chasing after someone instead of putting his heart into the music the way they all had been. She asks him to get serious, then leaves.
Steve excuses himself, ignoring Eddie’s pleas to wait a second, come back, please, let’s talk about this.
They don’t see each other again until the night of the show.
The competition threw them a curveball, however. None of them know until they get there, see the layout of the big warehouse like space, but instead of playing one after the other, the competition is amp versus amp. CC are freaking out a little bit because they’ve never played that way before, and Eddie is picking up an acoustic, why the hell did he even bring an acoustic, what’s going on?? The Demogorgons are equally nervous, this being a first for them too, and Steve is quiet, so quiet, he’s never like this before shows, what’s going on??
Despite everyone’s nerves and fears, the two bands take their places on the two stages, on opposite ends of the room from one another.
Eddie introduces Corroded Coffin with the same flare he usually does, but tells the audience that tonight’s performance is going to be a little different than their usual. He finishes with “This one’s for you, Juliet.”
He starts strumming the acoustic, the song he and Steve had written together filling the space, warm and full and a wild departure from their usual sound. He’d gone over it with the guys, added some polish to it, made it more metal, but he’d asked them to hold off on that until he cued them.
“And hey darling, I hope you’re good tonight. And I know you don’t feel right when I’m leaving-”
The rest of Corroded Coffin have never heard Eddie sing like this, didn’t even know he could. Usually he was all growls and grit and demon noises he’d figured out how to imitate. They had no idea he was even capable of making a song sound so beautiful.
Eddie continues singing his heart out, strumming his guitar, praying that Steve picks up on what he’s doing, joins him at the drop, doesn’t leave him again. He’s nearly convinced himself he’s going to end up singing the whole thing alone, and God how stupid would that be, that when he reaches the switching point, he nearly drops his guitar when Steve’s voice rises up to meet him. A spotlight flicks on, illuminating him as he sings into the microphone, playing his own part of the accompanyment.
“And hey, sweetie, well I need you here to night. And I know you don’t wanna be leaving me here tonight-”
Steve’s voice is the perfect counterbalance to Eddie’s. It’s light where his is heavy, soft where his is gritty. It showcases their duality, while highlighting how good they are together and Eddie would cry if he weren’t on stage.
He takes the next verse as planned, but Steve’s voice stays with him, harmonizing along side him so perfectly it’s as if they’ve been singing together for years rather than about a week.
“You know you can’t give me what I need, and even though you mean so much to me, I can’t wait through everything.”
That’s different, not the line they wrote together. It lands like a gut punch when Eddie looks up and sees Steve’s expression. He’s not smiling. He always smiles on stage.
“Is this really happening?” Eddie sings back without missing a beat, knowing the next verse is his, meaning it might be his only chance. He prays to every muse he’s ever had to lend him the improv skills to land this.
To his suprise, he hears Jeff’s heavy guitar start to build, Grant’s bass swooping in beside it to flank him. When he turns his head to check, they both give him the nod, the one that’s always meant they’re beside him, for better or worse. It gives him to courage to put his soul into the words he’s about to spit.
“I swear I’ll never be happy again, and don’t you dare say we can just be friends, I’m not some boy that you can sway.”
There’s a half a second pause in the music, just long enough to wreck Eddie’s heartrate. He can see Steve’s face from here, not clearly enough to make out every emotion that flashes across it, but enough to see when it lands on determination.
“We knew it’d happen eventually.” He and Steve sing, or in his case shout, in tandem.
Corroded Coffin fall back in with them, and to Eddie’s utter surprise, The Demogorgons join them. The sound of two bands playing the climax of the song he and Steve had written together hits Eddie so hard he can barely sing past the balloon of emotion swelling in his chest.
The crowd reminds him they’re there, joining in on the chorus of ‘La la las’ going around the room, their voices loud enough to shake the walls. It’s everything Eddie has ever wanted from a crowd, and it’s way too much along with everything else going on right now. Eddie can’t focus on it, not when Steve is staring him down from across the room.
“If you can wait ‘till I get home, then I swear we can make this last.” Eddie belts, Steve’s higher register wrapping around the notes the same way his hands wrap around his mic.
Both bands let the song taper out, leaving just the crowd echoing back the words to them, just Steve and Eddie singing to each other.
Eddie reaches out his hand, as if he could take Steve’s in his despite the distance. Steve once again meets him halfway, extending his own hand as if to bridge the distance.
The lights go down and the crowd is still chanting. It takes longer to settle them down than it does to make the decision to shrug off his guitar and run to his boy. Eddie hesitates only to look over at his bandmates.
They look exhasperated, but fond. Grant rolls his eyes and tells him to go kiss his stupid punk or whatever.
Eddie is off in an instant.
He finds Steve tearing his way over to him, runs straight into him almost the same way he’d run into him the first time they met outside of a venue.
There aren’t words, they don’t need them, already sung them. There’s just Steve and Eddie and how badly they’ve missed each other. The apologies and affirmations can come later, when their mouths aren’t so busy kissing the life from one another.
In the back of his mind, Eddie registers some of the crowd around them wolf whistling, but for once he doesn’t give much of a shit what the crowd thinks of him.
#steddie#I might long form this later#but i needed it out of my head#they both won by the way#they had to share a trophy#the trophy is now treated as their child#CC and The Demogorgons have a custody arrangement with it#steve harrington#eddie munson#nancy wheeler#robin buckley#gareth stranger things#jeff stranger things#billy hargrove#i know the song is anachronistic but have you considered the story made it worth it??#that's my justification#that and this here badge that says Fanon: I Do What I Want#also Dustin named Steve's band#punk!steve#corroded coffin
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hey icon! revolver era george harrison (non famous au) record store meet cute? legit make up the rest, i wanna see what you do with it!!! needing some georgie content aaaaa
YES especially today is literally ab George :(( but yes we need light hearted content ab bby
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Era: 1966
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You decided to stop by the record store because you wanted to buy a new album that was realized by the band, “The Who” they were your absolute favorite band and you had to see if your local record store had any vinyls, once you walked in, you saw the cashier standing in front, of course, you usually would just not bat an eye and mind your own, but this was different, this man, whoever he was, was very, very handsome to say the least. He himself was looking at a vinyl, it looked to be Bob Dylan’s, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” which was another album you loved, you saw that no one else was in the store at the moment, so you just decided to walk up to him, which obviously made him look up at you.
“Oh, sorry miss, can I help you?” He asked, you blushed crimson red as he looked into your eyes, you were so mesmerized by his slightly messy dark brown hair and his dark brown eyes to match.
“Oh uh, actually, no. I liked the album you were looking at.” You said, pointing at the album he had still clutched in his hand.
“Really? Yeah, I love Bob Dylan, he’s such a creative genius, I think. Very good inspiration for aspiring musicians.” He boasted, his eyes slightly lighting up that you had something in common with him.
“Me too! That’s actually my favorite of his, and some of his other work.” You said, this then turned into a long conversation about the types of music you two liked, and some talk of wanting to be musicians yourselves.
“Hey, uh, if ya don’t mind me saying, you’re actually quite attractive.” He confessed, red slightly painting his cheeks. Your heart felt as if it had skipped a beat as you processed what he said.
“R-really? Well, I mean, I do too, well, you’re attractive too, I mean. Would you wanna go like, get some coffee?” Your throat went dry as you waited for his response, you just hoped it wasn’t too soon.
“Of course, love, here.” He said as he picked up a sticky note and wrote down his number and handed it to you.
“Call me anytime, I’m free on Saturday.”
_
STOP THIS WAS SHORT BUT THIS WAS SO CUTE TO ME HSHHDHDH IM SORRY BUT I HOPE IT WAS CUTE
#classic rock#classic rock imagines#george harrison#john lennon#paul mccartney#ringo starr#the beatles#john lennon x reader#the beatles x reader#60s
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Betty
Betty was written with William Bowery. In the credits, Joe is a producer. In the Long Pond Session, Taylor said James and Betty wind up together, but he really put her through it. In the Eras Tour Taylor introduces Betty, (Transcribed Betty Speeches) likening it to HYGTG. She says it is about a teenage boy trying to apologise to the love of his life:
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There are songs with a high school metaphor (Betty, August, INTHAF, MA&HBP & Suburban Legends) that have Haylor references. The metaphor of 17 year old James for 18 year old HS and Betty for Taylor is clearer. To me, I think Augustine is loosely based on Kendall Jenner, but Taylor has also shown she identifies with this role also.
To Vulture Aaron said:
This one Taylor and William wrote, and then both Jack and I worked on it. We all kind of passed it around. This is the one where Taylor wanted a reference. She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
It's unusual for Taylor to have a direct throw back musical reference like that play such a role in the song. This may be William Bowery's influence, Taylor said that William Bowery played her a lot of diverse music. Harry Styles has a similar approach.
Lyrics
Betty, I won't make assumptions
About why you switched your homeroom but
I think it's 'cause of me
Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard
When I passed your house
It's like I couldn't breathe
The opening reminds me of Wish you Would & Style with him passing her house, now on a skateboard rather than Range Rover. (cute video of Taylor recording the skateboard)
Harry has Asthma and uses oxygen on stage. This last line also reminds me of his anxiety, which Taylor has referred to in New Years Day (squeeze my hand in the backseat of the taxi) and Now that we don't talk ( Did you get anxious though On the way home?)
You heard the rumors from Inez
You can't believe a word she says
Most times, but this time it was true
The worst thing that I ever did
Was what I did to you
It's well known that James, Inez and Betty are Blake and Ryan's kids. I always wonder how Inez will feel about this line when she's older.
Here I think her name is standing in for the media, specifically I think of Perez Hilton which was a bigger thing in 2012. This is a call back to when Harry kissed a girl in Australia in April 2012.
The worst thing line is a reference to Where do broken hearts go's line "Counted all my mistakes and there's only one / Standing out from the list of the things I've done / All the rest of my crimes don't come close / To the look on your face when I let you go"
[Chorus]
But if I just showed up at your party
Would you have me?
Would you want me?
Would you tell me to go fuck myself?
Or lead me to the garden?
In the garden would you trust me
If I told you it was just a summer thing?
I'm only 17, I don't know anything
But I know I miss you
In the Long Pond Sessions, Taylor said 'William Bowery' wrote this whole chorus. It includes references to a number of songs about Harry and Taylor's relationship:
HYGTG "Stand there like a ghost / Shaking come the rain, rain / She'll open up the door / And say, are you insane, -ane?"
Cruel Summer "And I snuck in through the garden gate every night that summer just to seal my fate"
Style: " I heard / That you've been out and about with some other girl, some other girl" / He says, "What you heard is true, but I
Can't stop thinkin' 'bout you and I" / I said, "I've been there too a few times"
To be so Lonely: "Don't blame me for falling / I was just a little boy
Don’t blame the drunk caller / Wasn't ready for it all" and "You said you cared / And you missed me, too"
Betty, I know where it all went wrong
Your favorite song was playing
From the far side of the gym
I was nowhere to be found
I hate the crowds, you know that
Plus, I saw you dance with him
Suburban Legends "“I am standin’ in a 1950s gymnasium” in Suburban Legends and here Taylor is using a metaphor for a prom or school dance for an event. In Suburban Legends she is proud to be with him, here they are using it as a reason to escape together.
Wildest Dreams "He said, "Let's get out of this town / Drive out of the city, away from the crowds"" and who could blame either of them. I Know Places is also all about the avoiding crowds
The seeing Betty dance with someone else reminds us of Exile (I can see you standing, honey / With his arms around your body), Woman ("While he’s touching your skin He’s right where I should, where I should be") and To be So Lonely "Do you think it's easy being of the jealous kind?"
I was walking home on broken cobblestones
Just thinking of you when she pulled up like
A figment of my worst intentions
She said "James, get in, let's drive"
Those days turned into nights
Slept next to her, but
I dreamt of you all summer long
Cobblestones links it to Cardigan, and indicates it is set in London or New York.
I love 'figment of my worst intentions' for temptation, in Style she sings of him being with someone else and thinking of TS.
Betty, I'm here on your doorstep
And I planned it out for weeks now
But it's finally sinkin' in
Betty, right now is the last time
I can dream about what happens when
You see my face again
The only thing I wanna do
Is make it up to you
So I showed up at your party
This verse is similar to HYGTG, Wish You Would and The Last Time.
Also this is similar to the leaked Half the World Away "I messed up, you'll be fine / I'm gonna sleep alone tonight / Never gonna be the same"
Yeah, I showed up at your party
Yeah, I showed up at your party
Will you have me?
Will you love me?
Will you kiss me on the porch
In front of all your stupid friends?
If you kiss me, will it be just like I dreamed it?
Will it patch your broken wings?
I'm only 17, I don't know anything
But I know I miss you
The stupid friends like reminds me of Suburban Legends "I had the fantasy that maybe our mismatched star signs / Would surprise the whole school / When I ended up back at our class reunion/ Walkin' in with you" They are both expressing wanting HS and TS to be showing off their relationship, which they kept private.
Standing in your cardigan
Kissin' in my car again
Stopped at a streetlight
You know I miss you
Kissing in cars matches Cardigan "To kiss in cars and downtown bars was all we needed" and also matches the many references to driving.
If I could fly "I'm missing half of me when we're apart"
TBSL "You said you cared / And you missed me, too"
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Every time Matty Healy opens his mouth, somebody gets annoyed. Long before his rumoured relationship with international sweetheart Taylor Swift, Healy, the lead singer of the massively irritating pop band The 1975, had mastered the art of winding people up. He has a supple singing voice and is a decent songwriter: but his true vocation, across his decade-plus career, has been treading on strangers’ toes. He’s the Bob Dylan of raising your blood pressure.
Until recently, this was an accepted fact, and nobody cared that he was a bit of an idiot. It was his calling card. You went to see The 1975 because you were partial to their slick, saxophone-fuelled pop – imagine if Radiohead woke one morning and decided they wanted to be a Level 42 covers band – but also because there was a fair chance Healy might do something ludicrous. As he did when he brought his tour to Dublin earlier this year and, in response to an annoying audience chant of “Olé, Olé, Olé,” told 14,000 Irish fans that they were “a simple people”.
Nobody booed; if anything, the crowd lapped it up. Later in the show, Healy, 34, had a slight meltdown and started swinging the mic stand around. In a world where many male rockers want to be a variation of Chris Martin – the colour beige in human form – how refreshing to see a vast, preening ego imploding for our entertainment.
You were reminded that Healy grew up in an acting family: his father, Tim Healy, starred in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and Benidorm, and his mother, Denise Welch, is best known as Natalie Barnes from Coronation Street. She’s also done panto – and clearly, some of that knockabout energy has filtered down to her son.
What a rollercoaster ride it was watching him in concert. In between these two extremes of sneery git and man-falling-to-pieces, Healy had briefly addressed the audience. “There’s a story [in the papers] calling me a Nazi tomorrow,” he said. “This is true.”
It was indeed true. Healy had been waving his arms earlier in the tour, and a few tabloids had decided he was giving a Hitler salute. The controversy was ludicrous and flamed out. But another online storm has followed Healy around - and has been intensified by his supposed romance with Taylor Swift. It concerns the New York rapper Ice Spice, whom Healy is accused of mocking in a podcast.
He addressed these claims in a new interview with The New Yorker, which seems to have been commissioned not because of The 1975’s streak of decent albums but because he’s been in the audience of Taylor Swift’s US tour (with Swift having joined The 1975 in London in January).
The singer hadn’t insulted Ice Spice but had laughed when the podcast hosts described her as an “Inuit Spice girl” and a “chubby Chinese lady”. The 23-year-old rapper is, in fact, of African-American and Dominican heritage. The details are obviously irrelevant: it’s self-evidently unacceptable to turn someone’s ethnicity or appearance into a punchline.
Healy had, as was only proper, later apologised publicly – saying he didn’t want Ice Spice, real name Isis Naija Gaston, to think he was a “d---”. But that horse had bolted.
He’s shallow, then – but he has depths. Healy is blisteringly honest about his mental health on The 1975’s 2022 LP, Being Funny In A Foreign Language album as well as reflecting on his years of heroin addiction and his romantic split from singer FKA Twigs.
“Oh, I don’t care if you’re insincere / Just tell me what I want to hear,” he sang on All I Need To Hear, a ballad about his need for human support and connection following a reported breakdown. Later, the Cheshire-raised singer said that it was easier “as an English northern person, to be sardonic in the face of something sincere”. The argument he makes on the new LP is that it’s okay to be corny and fake, if your motives are pure.
He has also gleefully played with ideas of masculinity. On the group’s latest tour, Healy sings against briefly projected images of Prince Andrew and of controversial kick boxer-turned-influencer Andrew Tate, whose toxic machismo Healy appeared to skewer.
But in the New Yorker interview, Healy made the broader point that most of the online controversy he has whipped up over the years has been illusory. In an uncharacteristic display of humility, he explained that people don’t think about him that often.
“It doesn’t actually matter,” he told The New Yorker. “Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen.”
What about those people who were genuinely offended, wondered The New Yorker? “You’re either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You’re either lying that you are hurt, or you’re a bit mental for being hurt. It’s just people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.’ And I kind of want them to do that, because they’re demonstrating something so base level.”
Swift and Healy have yet to go on the record with their romance – though Swift has gone public with her admiration for Ice Spice, with whom she recorded a new version of her single Karma. But even without confirmation, the very idea of Swift being with an unreconstructed wind-up merchant of Healy’s calibre has vexed a segment of her fanbase, who have urged her to “actively engage in this process of personal and social transformation”.
This touches on the wider issue of how much say fans should have in the personal lives of pop stars (answer: none at all). It also confirms that Healy is a throwback to an older kind of pop star. There was a time when being outrageous wasn’t a career killer – it was part of the job description. Whether it was Ozzy Osbourne biting off the head of a bat or the Gallaghers launching jibes at Blur (before they turned their artillery on each other), part of the fun of being a pop fan was waiting for your favourite artist’s next outrageous outburst.
Healy understands this is part of his job and hasn’t been found wanting. He’s good at it too. In an age where pop is increasingly a story of the bland leading the bland, it is a talent for which he should be praised rather than pilloried.
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Bob Dylan ~ Like a Rolling Stone..... (Official Audio)
Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you're gonna have to get used to it
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
~ ♫♪♫ ~
Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
~ ♫♪♫ ~
Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty people
They're all drinking, thinking that they've got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
~ ♫♪♫ ~
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This is kind of random but i saw a post about the “Oscar curse” which happens after successful actors (mainly actresses) win an Oscar and the job calls stop coming. (iirc Halle Berry talked about how after her Oscar win she struggled to get jobs even auditions) Do you think if Timmy wins an Oscar he will fall victim to this? My initial thought was that it wouldn’t be so out of this world that he wins an Oscar not so far into his career so he will naturally win one and he will just keep getting more and more respected in general but now that he is becoming the youngest to be nominated for major awards such as an Oscar and GG maybe him winning one will lead to a decline. Maybe the industry will think that now he has an Oscar we should give others some chance. I don’t know. Not that I’m spectacle about Tim, his talent or his choices as he has proved himself to choose good projects and nail them despite many not wanting to see his true star power. I would love to know what you and your followers think.
I don't know if I truly believe I'm the curse, tbh. To me, it seems more the fault of bad choices the actors made after winning and that's not something I worry about with Tim. I know everyone and their mother claims he's dying to win one and that the only reason he's playing Bob Dylan is for the Oscar bait but I don't think that's the case. He's always said his choices are based on the experience and who he is working with and so far, he's made amazing choices. So no, I don't think he'll have a problem after he finally wins one
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I think one of the most frustrating things about Taylor Swift discourse to me is trying to have meaningful conversations with some of the more rabid Swifties. They hype her up as some groundbreaking artist, and it’s often hard to offer any constructive criticism without being smeared as a “hater” or “misogynist”.
On the popheads subreddit, Swifties will often post ridiculous takes or ask ridiculous questions. There was a post just recently asking if Taylor has received more criticism in her career than Madonna. This was very quickly pointed out as ridiculous, as the Catholic Church tried to cancel Madonna for being blasphemous, and Madonna also broke boundaries by loudly advocating for AIDS patients in the 80s. Taylor’s attempts at advocacy have been very tame (“You Need to Calm Down” was quite pathetic IMO), and there was also a vocal alt-right section of her fandom that worshiped her for years. She took ages to condemn them. Not to mention that she loves portraying herself as a victim. Whilst I don’t deny she’s had hardships as a woman in the music industry, she has also benefited from much privilege (She’s a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed attractive woman who came from a well-off family and her dad was able to purchase a significant stake in a record company to help get her career off the ground).
Then, I’ve seen such preposterous statements from Swifties such as Prince being overrated because he only made 4-5 good albums and Taylor Swift popularizing the concept of cohesive albums. This to me just shows their lack of popular music knowledge. Prince may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and he did need someone to hold him back from dumping as much product out as he did in the late 90s-early 00s, but albums like “Dirty Mind” and “Sign ‘o’ the Times” were ambitious pieces of work that showed Prince was not afraid of taking huge risks. Taylor has made some excellent albums and songs, but she plays it very safe, and IMO seeks too much validation from places like the Grammys. If she threw caution to the wind occasionally, we’d probably get a more exciting song or album from her. I can’t ever see her making a song like Prince’s “Head” or “If I Was Your Girlfriend”.
And the statement about Taylor popularizing cohesive albums is just stupid as hell. Frank Sinatra had one of the earliest concept albums in 1955 with “In the Wee Small Hours”, and there was an entire era of popular music called “the album era” from mid-1960s to the mid-2000s where the album was the main way of consuming and discussing music. This era began in earnest in 1965 with such albums as Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, The Beach Boys’ Today! album, and especially The Beatles’ Rubber Soul. I was very happy to see that user on r/popheads being mocked for suggesting Taylor Swift’s Red popularized cohesive albums (especially since that album isn’t even particularly cohesive).
Agree that she's given far too much credit for innovation and is actually quite mediocre.
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What do you know about the parents of rammguys?
Not much. I never did very extensive research on the boys' parents. I only know what I could read right and left.
Till's parents are Werner (07.10.1926 - 09.02.1993) and Gitta (11.04.1939). Werner was born in Wolfen about 50km north of Leipzig (where Till was born). Werner's mother was called Siegfried, alias Ziggy, and adored her grandson who returned it well. She made pasta for the boys from Rammstein when they came to Leipzig. Gitta was a journalist, her job sent her all over GDR, so the family moved quite often, until she stopped in Rostock. Werner was a children's writer. He and Gitta lived separately, she in Rostock and he in Wendisch Rambow. Werner died in 1993 in Zickhusen. Till has a sister six years younger than him, Saskia.
Schneider's parents were accomplished music lovers. His dad, Martin Schneider (17.03.1938 - 22.01.2021) was an opera director and university professor. Little Christoph learned to play the piano very early. He also learned to play trumpet in a music school and to play in an orchestra. Then his parents moved away and Schneider, against their will, wanted to start the drums. He had made a drumset himself before he could buy a real set. Faced with the "fait accompli", his parents allowed him to continue and take lessons. I don't know anything about his mom. Christoph has a sister two years younger than him.
Paul's parents are Anton and Erika Hiersche. Anton (born in 1934) was born in present-day Czech Republic and Erika was born in East Prussia, present-day Poland. Both had to flee their countries during the Second World War and settled in the GDR. Both are Slavists and described as fervent socialists. When Paul was eight years old and his sister eleven years old, they left with their mother to settle in Moscow because she was giving conferences at the University. They stayed there for a year before returning to Berlin.
Flake was born, raised and still lives in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. His father was an engineer at the VEB Elektro-Apparate-Werke Berlin-Treptow "Friedrich Ebert" (EAW) and his mother was an academic and a journalist. He is an excellent pianist and chose to play this instrument because one of his childhood friends played it from the age of three. His parents therefore sent him to a music school. Flake has a brother three years older than him, Auge, who is a writer and cartoonist (his Instagram if you want to see his work).
Ollie was born to very young parents and describes them more as friends than parents. He always had a good relationship with them. They were music lovers, his mother listened a lot to Bob Dylan. Oliver was very bad at school, and his mother thought it was because the teachers were bad, so she let him do sports instead of his homework. Ollie describes his childhood as normal and says he was extremely shy. He has no brother or sister. And according to Flake, he started the bass because in his first band there were already guitarists so they put a bass in his hands and said to play : "Supposedly it’s a trademark of bass players that they’re easygoing and play their stuff without saying much, but I don’t think it applies to him because I have heard that he actually wanted to be a guitarist, and only began to play bass because there was already a guitarist in his former band. A bass was pressed into his hand. Play that. I know that some bass players like to spend hours stoically playing a theme, but Olli is far too impatient for that, but I think that it's good because as a result he has ideas that wouldn’t come from the others. Whether these ideas are put into action is another story."
Richard was born in Wittenberg, he is the last of a sibling. He has two older sisters and a brother. He describes his early years as beautiful and carefree. But his parents' divorce shattered everything. Subsequently, his mother rebuilt her life and decided to take her children to live with her and her new companion. It is from there that life becomes difficult for Richard. He has a conflicted relationship with his stepfather. He speaks of a "difficult relationship" which led him to run away many times. During his runaways he sleeps in the street, on benches or takes refuge with friends, until the police bring him home. I don't know anything else about his parents.
If you have any other information, do not hesitate to complete these portraits or correct them.
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probably ted lasso spoilers
I went through the TL season 3 playlist so you don't have to and made some notes! (I considered this playlist done but we'll see how this goes) hope you enjoy!
The song Superstar is from the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s sung by Judas’ spirit who had committed suicide earlier. I don’t want to put a parallel between Ted and Jesus and Nate and Judas but it kinda lies on the surface? And lines Every time I look at you I don't understand Why you let the things you did get so out of hand. You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned. Why'd you choose such a backward time in such a strange land? OH MY GOD
Three songs by Nigerian artists go in a row, so ep3 or 4 is probably about Sam and his restaurant or include this plotline in any way. Or we're getting another Nigerian player!
Everybody knows is an interesting choice because this song raises a lot of social and relationship problems. I think the most important is hypocrisy or, rather, knowing about issues and not doing anything to fix them, letting them be. Maybe it refers to everyone who is close to Ted and notices what’s happening with him but not paying proper attention.
Joker and The Thief is used in “The Hangover” which is referred in s2e11 when Beard calls Ted out for being too closed off.
I bet Fist Fight! is either about Jamie’s dad or Rupert being beaten up. Please.
Sinister Kid may be about Nate and him thinking that he was naturally-born evil and he can’t change it? But he’ll soon find out that it’s untrue. (And that's me, that's me The boy with the broken halo That's me, that's me The devil won't let me be)
Something tells me that Don’t think twice, it’s all right is about Tedbecca. Also second Bob Dylan song per season, first one plays when Ted cleans up his flat. So it’s also can be about Michelle. (I ain't saying you treated me unkind You could have done better, but I don't mind And you just sorta wasted my precious time But don't think twice it's all right) Upd: it occurred to me that it might be about Jamie or Keeley referring to each other.
Oh What A Performance! (I won an Oscar for playing a fool) and Quiet (Goodbye Don't cry You know why And it'll be just as quiet when I leave As it was when I first got here) give me an ache for some reason. Ep 6’s (apparently) gonna hurt.
But Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go straight after Nirvana’s song is suspicious. Hopefully it’s about Roykeeley who are back together.
CONGRATS GUYS HET WERD ZOMER, VENUS AND ZIJ GELOOFT IN MIJ ARE DUTCH SONGS AND IN THE PLAYLIST THEY’RE SOMEWHERE NEAR EP8 THEREFORE “WE’LL NEVER HAVE PARIS” IS MOST LIKELY THE NETHERLANDS EP!
Let’s talk about Boy by Book of Love!!! The song is said to be about woman who has feelings for a gay man. To me this song is also kind of trans-coded. AND Book of Love’s songwriter stated that this song “written about Boy Bar, which was a very exclusive gay club in the East Village.”. (I want to be where the boys are But I'm not allowed I wait outside of the boy's bar I wait for them to all come out)
I’m 99% sure that ep8 is THE episode.
It’s interesting that after Three Little Birds (Ajax anthem) comes The Angel (North London Forever) (song dedicated to Arsenal). Maybe we’ll see UEFA Champions League in some way or it’s just a coincidence and it’s just Richmond playing with Arsenal.
Dreams was used in the trailer of “Boys on The Side” where one of the main plotlines is unrequited love of a woman to a woman who has something with a man. But then both girls admit their love for each other (not necessarily romantic but still). Interesting, right? Might be another coincidence though.
Centerfield confuses me, song about baseball in a show about football? Is it irony or what.
Doomed speaks about the experience of aromantic people, the song is in the album “Aromanticism” and its writer explores corners of life without possibility of feeling romantic attraction. Are we getting an aromantic character??
Criminal feels like a Nate song, him feeling bad for mistakes and wanting to pay for his wrongdoings. (Heaven help me for the way I am Save me from these evil deeds before I get them done I know tomorrow brings the consequence at hand But I keep living this day like the next will never come)
And finally songs from “La Cage aux Folles”, a 1983 musical about gay couple, Georges, who’s an owner of a drag nightclub named “La Cage aux Folles”, and Albin, who’s a drag queen. Let’s add a little bit of a context. Georges and Albin’s son Jean-Michel is engaged to Anne whose parents are conservative and they don’t know yet that their daughter’s future-in-laws are a gay couple. Jean-Michel asks Georges to tell Albin to absent himself from his extravagant behavior and even invite Jean-Michel’s biological mother for a dinner instead of Albin so they can seem ‘normal’. Georges hadn’t had a chance to explain the situation to his spouse as Albin went performing to the club.
It’s the moment when La Cage aux Folles plays, the song describes the nightclub, its vulgarity and eccentricity, how it’s tolerant and welcoming to everyone (https://www.songlyrics.com/la-cage-aux-folles/la-cage-aux-folles-lyrics/ - here’s the lyrics if someone needs). I have no idea when this song might play in s3, especially when it comes to the end of it, honestly.
So, Georges and Jean-Michel started redecorating their house to make it look less gay without Albin knowing. Albin accidentally notices the two, Georges has to explain and Albin performs I Am What I Am practically letting them know that he’s proud of being himself and won’t change for anyone.
As someone had mentioned before this song basically became a “gay anthem” and was widely recorded. It’s the finale number of the first act as it apparently will be the last song of the third season. Considering all of the above I doubt that they chose both of these songs by accident and put them in an exact same order as they are in the musical. Something’s coming.
We know that we’re getting Ted at the airport as the last scene of the season. He might be waiting for his mother or Michelle with Henry to arrive (or leave) but either way he’s not going to change for them and they’ll have to accept him the way he is. And yes, I believe it’ll be a message about queerness. There are too much signs (and songs) pointing at that.
Perhaps when Jason said “Maybe by May 31, once all 12 episodes of the season [have been released], they’re like, ‘Man, you know what, we get it, we’re fine. We don’t need anymore, we got it.’” he addressed conservative fans of the show (they form a great percentage of the audience, don’t forget) who wouldn’t want more of TL since it became ‘woke’.
That’s it, let me know your thoughts :)
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