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perexcri · 1 year

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you and i were fireworks that went off too soon - [byler week - day 4]

title from: fourth of july by fall out boy

dedicated to: the lake i lived next to in rural [STATE REDACTED] for 3/4 of my college years

It’s something that haunts him, of course.

It’s the colorful bursts of light he sees when he blinks too fast, the popping in his ears once the pressure builds up, a cool sluice of water against his ankles, and the slickness of forearms beneath his fingers. It comes to him in waves like the ones that lapped against the shore, cuts into the soles of his feet like the juts of limestone buried beneath the mud, invades his sinuses like the scent of dry, overgrown grass and burnt-orange pine needles blanketing the land.

Summer is usually the time of freedom, when the sun stays out far past when it should have gone to sleep and coaxes people out of their homes and into hazy, smoke-filled nights. The world is burning with color, the earth warm beneath his feet, and the hours trickle away in untamed drops of afternoon showers and the lingering blue wash of dusk. When he was younger, summer seemed the season of possibilities: for adventures, for discoveries, for reading new books and seeing new sights, for slipping from the cloak of shadows the rest of the year seemed draped in to finally embrace the warmth of life reignited in his chest.

Once, it had even felt like the possibility of something more.

Mike’s mouth drops into a scowl as he stares at the face of the lake. The book between his ribs and arm presses into his side just a little harder, his hands are shaking, and even after twelve years, he thought he’d be done with these pitiful twists of hope he feels every summer he returns here. He can make it down the main street of the town without worries, even if he does double-takes at every brunette he sees pass by in his car’s smudged windows, and he can make the winding trail down to the lakeside just fine. He can unlock his family’s summer home and breathe in its scent of musty sheets, stale coffee, and woodsmoke of vacations past. Hell, he can even toss his pile of books onto the kitchen table and listen to it groan under the strain of his literature Ph.D. program’s third year, a further reminder that time has passed and his life, for better or worse, has changed.

He’s always fine until he sees the ever-shifting face of the lake, how it mischievously gleams under both sun and moon. That’s when his heart convulses into these ugly, gut-mashing twists and his body gets forcibly wrenched back in time. 1999 dissolves around him like pixels on the screen of a video game being shut off, and suddenly, 1987 burns against his skin. His parents are in the lakehouse, there’s fireworks popping colors all across the sky, and the boy he’d seen around town the past few summers has his fingers tangled with Mike’s, and he’s tugging him towards the lake, his mouth flush with moonlight as he says, What’s the worst that can happen?

A lot, actually. Sometimes, you turn over a stone and discover something either wonderful or frightening, and it slips from your fingers before you have a chance to decide which one it is. Sometimes, the summer fades into the new school year, and there’s no way to contact the only person you’ve ever felt like this for, and when you come back the next year, he’s nowhere to be seen.

And now, he’s got nothing to show for it but the way his heart twists and turns inside the empty cavity of his chest, and the images that haunt the poetry he submits to the campus literary magazine: lakes frosted with moonlight, summer humidity pressing hot between chests and mouths, fingers curled into the damp fringes of hair, distant sparks of light that could be stars or fireflies, though the narrator is always too preoccupied to tell the difference.

He glowers at the lake and how it sucks all the light from the sun, steals its colors to shade water’s surface instead. The sky is growing dimly bruised with purples and magentas and oranges, the water burns scarlet from the light, and the navy cloth of night is quickly overtaking it all.

The book presses more forcefully into his side; it shakes. He’s twenty-eight, and he should be over this by now, but he can’t help that every time he sees the water, he thinks of how it tasted pressed between their mouths, or how slick it felt against the other boy’s skin, or the way they’d forcefully embraced after clambering back onto the shore, the other boy’s back crinkling into the reedy grasses of the shore, Mike sprawled on top of him, alternating between pressing his ear to the other boy’s warm chest to hear the racing pulse of his heart, or else tilting his head up to admire how the colors of light burst against the other boy’s skin and eyes. They rained on him in showers of colors Mike thinks couldn’t exist except for that summer, and how they shaded every single other moment they spent glued to each other’s sides after that. He’s twenty-eight, and he should be over this by now, but nothing beats the feeling of weightlessness that comes from falling, falling, falling down into love when you’re sixteen.

“This is stupid,” he mutters, which is something he tells himself a lot, but it’s mostly to remind himself that twelve years of a pitiful crush on a boy he knew for one summer are, in fact, a little ridiculous, and he’d been ridiculous to decide to do his summer research at his family’s old lakeside home. He’d been studying the Romantics the past three years, and for some reason, he thought this was his last chance at letting their wayward paths cross once more. At this point, it isn’t even about his own wish fulfillment–he simply needs peace, to press his fingers into the other person’s wrist and know he’s alive so they can say their goodbyes and part in peace.

The water laps against the shore, just a little closer to his battered sneakers.

“Stupid,” he repeats before forcefully tucking a chunk of his hair behind his ears, turning on his heels, and storming back to the comforting recesses of the lake house.

Summer is the liquidity of time: he passes through the barriers of day and night, today and tomorrow with ease, sleeping at odd hours, poring over dusty volumes of poetry and diaries he’d checked out in haste from his university’s library. There’s more coffee than blood running through his veins, and when he goes outside, it’s only ever to drive into town to buy groceries or refill his car’s tank. He doesn’t look out the back windows at the lake, and he sure as hell doesn’t try to breathe in more of the musk of pine trees than he has to.

He’s safe, cocooned in his family’s old home, huddled under blankets against the frigid wash of AC he keeps steadily pumping through the vents. He hunches at the table, sprawls on the couch, curls up on the bed in languid fits of sleep, and the taste of undercooked pasta or frozen dinners becomes the all-too familiar fuel to his days of research, note-taking, and thesis writing.

When he does pull out his old weathered notebook of poetry, it’s only ever to scratch down a few lines in tired replication of the old greats: John Keats, Lord Byron, Pushkin. He used to go outside for hours and try to capture the endless summer delights in shoddy, amateur lyrics, but he knows better than to let his pens fall into those familiar strokes now, and he’s fine in the dusty corners and wilting walls inside, anyway.

All dependent variables are removed from the equation, and his summer becomes one of controlled focus: he will get this research done, and he will focus on the next stage of his life, and he will not, for any reason whatsoever, follow the pitiful tugs of his heart towards some vain hope that the other boy will remember, that he’ll show up again, that he’ll even want to come back to this lonely corner of the country on some vague inclination that Mike might be here, too.

Except for one day in early July, when there’s a faint knock at the door that makes his head jerk up from the volume of Coleridge’s poetry he’s been mindlessly thumbing through. It’s as soft as a breeze off the face of the lake, and for a moment, he can almost convince himself he’d only misheard the breath of life around him.

Until there’s another, slightly louder, unmistakable staccato: knock knock knock.

He wrenches open the door and is met with hazel eyes he’d only ever had the courage to admire under the colors of fireworks, moonlight, and the last dying rays of summer sunsets. His hair’s been trimmed from the shaggy bangs he’d once worn, and it’s strange for it to be mid-summer and him to be clad in jeans and not shorts, a collared shirt and not a polo.

The volume of poetry slips out of Mike’s hand and falls, painfully, on the arch of his left foot.

“Is it really you?” he asks through a wince of pain.

Will grins, his face alight. “Yeah, it’s me.” There’s a beat, then, with a quirked eyebrow, he asks, “You remember?”

How could I not? Mike thinks, drinking in the matured features of the boy he only knew for a summer, now grown-up and full and alive.

Once more, summer becomes a time of possibility, and the love kept captive in Mike’s chest feels a little less small and derisive. He feels whole and electric, like he could dissolve into the brief flares of light and color of those fireworks from long ago.

For the first time in twelve years, the world seems blossoming, full of possibility, and when Mike reaches out, he’s greeted by that feeling of life beneath his fingers, a chance to know that this is real.

With a grin, he realizes that the possibilities are endless.

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the lake in question:

#byler #byler fic #bylerweek2023 #ficlet #summer love #anyway i highly recommend living next to a lake in rural [REDACTED] and staring at the water while the sun sets #also there was an lgbtq+ campground across the lake that used to play party music :D #anyway i would have had no ideas for this prompt if it weren't for remembering the lake so!!#also i feel like i could explore this idea a lot more #like it kinda ended where it was just beginning #hrrmmmm #thinking thoughts thoughting thinks #also sorry for weird spacing between a couple of sections #there's gonna be line breaks on ao3 but idk what im doing on this hellsite so!! have fun with that!!

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thesunnyshow · 3 years

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Name: kelsie Writing Blog URL(s): @lovingyong

Age: 22

Nationality: american

Languages: english, some sign language and spanish

Star Sign: libra

MBTI: INFJ

Favorite color: pink

Favorite food: taco bell (lol)

Favorite movie: pride and prejudice, kill bill, gone with the wind, or the handmaiden

Favorite ice cream flavor: green tea

Favorite animal: otter

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? tea or hot chocolate. never coffee because i’m allergic

Dream job (whether you have a job or not): human rights attorney or writer

Go-to karaoke song: never gonna give you up - rick astley

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? teleportation

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? mmm hard to say bc i enjoy my rights as a woman so i guess probably the 90s

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? Only starting at the summer before high school

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? horse sized chicken but i could not explain why. It’s just my gut instinct

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? I was the floater/nobody for sureeeee

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? yes aliens allll the way lets go

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I only type with two fingers on each hand but can still type 60 wpm

What fandom(s) do you write for? nct but i want to also start writing for haikyuu soon

When did you post your first piece? july of 2018

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I like a good combo. Life is never completely fluffy or totally angsty. It’s good to have a balance to make it all seem more realistic and immersive

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? x reader right now but when i write for haikyuu, it’ll be ships

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? I think it was just… there and available. Ao3 is fun but there’s not a lot of chances or opportunities for interaction so i decided to go back to the hellsite

What inspires you to write? Oh goodness, anything and everything. Oftentimes it’s music. I hear a song and i’m immediately like i need a story for this asap

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? Mafia and crime. It’s such a guilty pleasure of mine

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? I just want it to be a temporary escape and provide at least some form of enjoyment

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? Read more or watch anime just because both of those are enjoyable things for me but can also give me the inspiration to create again

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? you may regret this is literally my baby. It’s not my favorite, but i think taeyong’s spin off story, a way out, is because it's everything i wanted for ymrt, i just didn’t have the same skills at the time. Another favorite of mine is hanakotoba because it’s literally my heart and soul in a story and i’ll always have that deep personal connection to it. My most successful is white knuckle tight which is truly still fascinating for me because it was an idea i got on a random tuesday during christmas break and i just ran with it. I think it’s an alright story but it’s far from my favorite. I lack the emotional attachment that i have to other pieces.

Who is your favorite person to write about? taeyong. Writing him is almost like second nature to me. His character is always the easiest for me to construct and i think people will find he’s the most consistent character throughout stories. There’s not as much variation.

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? Yes and no. i think writing kpop fanfiction is much more similar to original prose because you don’t have a world to build around. You only have a person. In fact, you don’t even have that. You only have an idea of a person to construct into a character. I think the only difference is that you can get away with a lot more unreasonable plot lines.

What do you think makes a good story? Good characters and enough emotion to create an attachment to the plot. I want to care about what’s happening and the best way to do that is by leading me to some sort of connection to the characters

What is your writing process like? Very chaotic and sporadic. I’ll come up with ideas at 3 am, make a random note about it, and then do my best to bring it to life when i’m actually awake. I don’t plan. I just have snippets of scenes i would like to include. So much of it is just writing whatever comes to mind while im writing it

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? I’m doing so with one right now, though 8-% of it is getting scrapped and changed. There’s nothing wrong with that though. Having good bones is what matters and i think this story has exactly that

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? I love enemies to loves if it’s done right. Exes to lovers is another classic. Mafia is a given. Hanahaki and soulmates always does something to my heart. I can’t stand hybrid and a/b/o fics idk why i just have never been able to get into them. Yandere like tropes are also really hard to do right so i usually avoid those as well

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? It means a lot. I’m sure any writer can tell you that but it’s truly the reason i still write fanfic and haven’t just given up and written only original prose.

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? Timing. It’s always about which member is really getting to people at the moment and which trope is gaining traction. 85% of writing on tumblr is kind of just dumb luck

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Yes. i think it just comes from lack of understanding

Do you think art can be a medium for change? Without a doubt. Art pieces as well as writings have made significant impacts in my life in a variety of ways. It’s a medium of awareness and recognition

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? Not really because i kind of just do whatever the fuck i want (sorry for my language lol) but i usually come up with totally self indulgent ideas and then just do it.

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? No… not yet. I expected someone to with shattered memories but it seemed to do and say what i wanted to

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? My roommates. My friends know i write they just don’t know what

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? I’m doing my best and i wish i could put stories out more often

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? Just go for it. You have to try if you want to see any sort of results. Plus these people don’t know you so what’s the risk

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? nah

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? Kai, jewel, and abbey for sure. They were some of my closest mutuals when my blog really started to take off

Pick a quote to end your interview with:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go… - dr. seuss

#@lovingyong #feature author #thesunnyshow #nct #episode 49 #haikyuu

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