![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poppyseedhearthiii! remember how sometimes i write fic? a very sweet person on retrospring asked about whether i have anything in the works for a next installment of my seventeen series but it's the way it is, and as it so happens i do.
i'm sharing below the cut the first ~1.3k of my open doc, which currently sits as a wip just under 12k total and growing. this fic is a prequel of sorts and pulls us back in time to focus on seungcheol and his time in university, referenced most specifically in fic 2 of the series on ao3: when somebody loves you this much and knows you this well.
the usual warnings for this series apply. the most prominent of them is suicidal ideation, which features heavily. another you'll find in this excerpt is heavy drinking. if you're not in a place to read this right now, please click away and do something nice for yourself tonight instead! it'll always be here if you change your mind later and want to come back.
March
Seungcheol’s second year of university may have started with rocky, mediocre grades and the occasional tiff with a classmate over reading discussions, but he’s determined to turn it around. His friends like him well enough and his parents haven’t had a pointed conversation about his performance with him in weeks, but the weight of something bigger presses over him like the underside of a blanket, and it’s taking everything in him to keep his head up.
He has a test next week, so he’s cramming in the library.
He’s running late to soccer practice, so he’ll hurry there and deliver a rueful apology to the team.
He wants to die, so he throws out his razor blades and only lets himself think about it at night.
April
Jeonghan is a vision in Seungcheol’s doorway, though if Seungcheol told him that Jeonghan would spare no time making fun of him for it. Jeonghan’s hair is in a low ponytail now, ashy blonde like he’s an idol, and his sharp eyes never miss anything, so Seungcheol grins twice as lazy as he usually does and waits for Jeonghan to finish saying his piece before getting up.
“...and I just think if someone promises to gift you a Lego set they should actually go through with it, you know? Sojung doesn’t even build them. She just resells. Ugh, I’m getting mad again talking about it, tell me something nice instead.”
Seungcheol’s smile gets a little more real as he flicks through the clothes in his closet. He doesn’t have much to offer him, but Jeonghan is an easy audience. “Mingyu is doing something for his birthday on Thursday, and I asked if I could have a plus one.”
Jeonghan’s eyes widen in delight. “And you didn’t tell him that plus one is me.”
“You’re assuming, Jeonghan-ah.”
It’s all teasing, and Jeonghan knows it too, rolling his eyes before he answers, “This is perfect. I’m going to bring Jjongddolie. He’ll hate that.”
“Probably,” Seungcheol agrees.
“I’m not even mad anymore. You’re my favorite person in the world.”
It’s a promise Jeonghan makes to multiple people several times a week, maybe more, but it warms Seungcheol all the same, even as something pricks in the back of his mind. He’ll go to the party, Jeonghan on his arm, and they’ll probably even have fun. Jeonghan is incredible with running commentary, making funny little quips that hardly ever actually land cruelly, and Seungcheol loves spending time with him, sharing space with him, pretending the two of them see things the same way. He’d give anything to move through the world the way Jeonghan seems to.
.
Mingyu’s party is more of a bar crawl than anything, but his reaction to Jeonghan and his stupid pet rock is well worth the way lead fills Seungcheol’s legs by the second barstool.
“I didn’t say you could bring him, hyung,” Mingyu whines, red-eared with alcohol and the pleased flush from all the attention he’s getting tonight.
Seungcheol musters a laugh, clapping Mingyu on the shoulder. “It’s never too late to make a new friend!”
Mingyu splutters. Jeonghan cackles.
Seungcheol tips back another glass of beer and ignores the hectic, anxious fluttering in his chest.
.
By the time he gets home that night, he’s so drunk he feels sick.
“You’re okay,” Jeonghan is mumbling next to him, “shhh, you’re fine, do you need to puke? Please don’t puke on me. Choi Seungcheol, are you listening to me?”
“Don’t call me that,” Seungcheol grouses.
Jeonghan laughs, mirthless and harried and exasperated. “I’ve never seen you this drunk before. Bathroom or bed?”
Dimly, Seungcheol realizes his arm is slung over Jeonghan’s shoulder. “Are you carrying my weight?”
“Not for much longer,” Jeonghan replies. “Come on, choose. Bathroom? Let’s try the bathroom.”
Seungcheol lets himself be maneuvered. The tiles in the bathroom are cool against his bare legs. Why had he worn shorts? Someone spilled liquor down his calf at the third bar (or maybe the fourth?), and it’s uncomfortably sticky when he pokes at it.
“I don’t think I’m gonna puke,” he mumbles after a few minutes.
Jeonghan looks up from his phone. His hair is a tangle atop his head, and his blouse sits askew at the collar. It exposes one of his collarbones, which is sharper than Seungcheol had been expecting it to be. Stupid. Jeonghan’s wrists are bird-boned. Of course he’s tiny everywhere.
“Okay,” Jeonghan says. “Bed?”
“Mm.”
Jeonghan grunts as he helps Seungcheol up, but the few minutes on the ground had helped, and Seungcheol waves him off. He walks to the bed fine.
Jeonghan makes an impressed noise. “You handle your alcohol better than anyone I know.”
It sounds like a compliment. “Wish I didn’t,” Seungcheol mumbles, mutinous.
“Why’s that?”
“It would be nice to be gone a little longer,” Seungcheol says, not fully sure what he means by it. It rings true in his head.
Jeonghan is quiet after that.
Seungcheol will wonder, in the months to come, how much more he’d have said that night if Jeonghan pushed, but Jeonghan doesn’t. He only fusses a little, complaining about Seungcheol’s clothes being too big for him, before helping himself to something soft and climbing into bed next to Seungcheol.
He really is small. Runs cold.
Seungcheol lets him cling.
.
It’s a slow morning after that. Jeonghan demands caffeine, so Seungcheol walks his semi-hungover ass to the convenience store on the corner to get them both shitty coffee. The chill is brighter in the air today. A few degrees sharper. Seungcheol pulls his sleeves down further over his hands.
Jeonghan drinks the coffee slowly, almost like he doesn’t want to leave.
“Are you doing anything today?” Seungcheol asks. “We could get lunch or something.” He knows neither of them has classes on Friday.
Jeonghan smiles. “Sorry, Coups. Duty calls. See you at practice tonight?”
What duty? Seungcheol wants to ask, but he won’t get a straight answer, and it doesn’t matter anyway. “Yeah,” he answers, and then swallows his pride. “Thanks, for last night.”
Predictably, Jeonghan scrunches his face up. “For what?” he responds. It’s clearly rhetorical.
Seungcheol laughs and waves him off.
When Jeonghan leaves, the room goes cold again. Seungcheol should study, or call home. Instead, he climbs back into bed, caffeinated and jittery, and stares at the wall until the shaking stops.
.
He’s late to “optional” practice again that night.
“You’re the captain,” Mingyu complains. “We can’t start without you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Rough night?” Jeonghan asks knowingly.
Seungkwan groans. The thin skin under his eyes is dark, bruise-blue in places. “This team is the worst. Respectfully, we have to stop partying before practice. No more birthdays. I’m banning birthdays for the rest of the season.”
The team laughs, and Seungcheol wills down the shameful color flushing his chest. “Let’s warm up,” he tells them, and they all split off to jog and stretch, dribbling the perimeter of the field and passing back and forth.
Jeonghan’s ponytail whips in the wind. Seungcheol wants to run next to him, but can’t bring himself to be any greedier than he already has been this week.
He sidles up to Seokmin instead, taking a lap with him, because Seokmin is easy.
But, “Hyung,” Seokmin asks as they’re coming to the end, “is everything okay? You seem a little off lately,” so he ends up wishing he’d run with Jeonghan after all.
.
On the last day of April, Seungcheol fails a test so spectacularly he has to sit with his back to the business building, head in his hands, and suck in deep breaths for ten full minutes before the world stops spinning enough for him to walk home.
In his room, he spends the better part of an hour rehearsing what he’ll tell his parents when they call. It doesn’t help.
You can’t play sports forever, his mother says. Worse that it’s kind. Work hard for us, all right?
Seungcheol doesn’t know how to tell her that he doesn’t know if he can do anything forever, but he knows how to promise to do better, so he does.
i'm sharing below the cut the first ~1.3k of my open doc, which currently sits as a wip just under 12k total and growing. this fic is a prequel of sorts and pulls us back in time to focus on seungcheol and his time in university, referenced most specifically in fic 2 of the series on ao3: when somebody loves you this much and knows you this well.
the usual warnings for this series apply. the most prominent of them is suicidal ideation, which features heavily. another you'll find in this excerpt is heavy drinking. if you're not in a place to read this right now, please click away and do something nice for yourself tonight instead! it'll always be here if you change your mind later and want to come back.
March
Seungcheol’s second year of university may have started with rocky, mediocre grades and the occasional tiff with a classmate over reading discussions, but he’s determined to turn it around. His friends like him well enough and his parents haven’t had a pointed conversation about his performance with him in weeks, but the weight of something bigger presses over him like the underside of a blanket, and it’s taking everything in him to keep his head up.
He has a test next week, so he’s cramming in the library.
He’s running late to soccer practice, so he’ll hurry there and deliver a rueful apology to the team.
He wants to die, so he throws out his razor blades and only lets himself think about it at night.
April
Jeonghan is a vision in Seungcheol’s doorway, though if Seungcheol told him that Jeonghan would spare no time making fun of him for it. Jeonghan’s hair is in a low ponytail now, ashy blonde like he’s an idol, and his sharp eyes never miss anything, so Seungcheol grins twice as lazy as he usually does and waits for Jeonghan to finish saying his piece before getting up.
“...and I just think if someone promises to gift you a Lego set they should actually go through with it, you know? Sojung doesn’t even build them. She just resells. Ugh, I’m getting mad again talking about it, tell me something nice instead.”
Seungcheol’s smile gets a little more real as he flicks through the clothes in his closet. He doesn’t have much to offer him, but Jeonghan is an easy audience. “Mingyu is doing something for his birthday on Thursday, and I asked if I could have a plus one.”
Jeonghan’s eyes widen in delight. “And you didn’t tell him that plus one is me.”
“You’re assuming, Jeonghan-ah.”
It’s all teasing, and Jeonghan knows it too, rolling his eyes before he answers, “This is perfect. I’m going to bring Jjongddolie. He’ll hate that.”
“Probably,” Seungcheol agrees.
“I’m not even mad anymore. You’re my favorite person in the world.”
It’s a promise Jeonghan makes to multiple people several times a week, maybe more, but it warms Seungcheol all the same, even as something pricks in the back of his mind. He’ll go to the party, Jeonghan on his arm, and they’ll probably even have fun. Jeonghan is incredible with running commentary, making funny little quips that hardly ever actually land cruelly, and Seungcheol loves spending time with him, sharing space with him, pretending the two of them see things the same way. He’d give anything to move through the world the way Jeonghan seems to.
.
Mingyu’s party is more of a bar crawl than anything, but his reaction to Jeonghan and his stupid pet rock is well worth the way lead fills Seungcheol’s legs by the second barstool.
“I didn’t say you could bring him, hyung,” Mingyu whines, red-eared with alcohol and the pleased flush from all the attention he’s getting tonight.
Seungcheol musters a laugh, clapping Mingyu on the shoulder. “It’s never too late to make a new friend!”
Mingyu splutters. Jeonghan cackles.
Seungcheol tips back another glass of beer and ignores the hectic, anxious fluttering in his chest.
.
By the time he gets home that night, he’s so drunk he feels sick.
“You’re okay,” Jeonghan is mumbling next to him, “shhh, you’re fine, do you need to puke? Please don’t puke on me. Choi Seungcheol, are you listening to me?”
“Don’t call me that,” Seungcheol grouses.
Jeonghan laughs, mirthless and harried and exasperated. “I’ve never seen you this drunk before. Bathroom or bed?”
Dimly, Seungcheol realizes his arm is slung over Jeonghan’s shoulder. “Are you carrying my weight?”
“Not for much longer,” Jeonghan replies. “Come on, choose. Bathroom? Let’s try the bathroom.”
Seungcheol lets himself be maneuvered. The tiles in the bathroom are cool against his bare legs. Why had he worn shorts? Someone spilled liquor down his calf at the third bar (or maybe the fourth?), and it’s uncomfortably sticky when he pokes at it.
“I don’t think I’m gonna puke,” he mumbles after a few minutes.
Jeonghan looks up from his phone. His hair is a tangle atop his head, and his blouse sits askew at the collar. It exposes one of his collarbones, which is sharper than Seungcheol had been expecting it to be. Stupid. Jeonghan’s wrists are bird-boned. Of course he’s tiny everywhere.
“Okay,” Jeonghan says. “Bed?”
“Mm.”
Jeonghan grunts as he helps Seungcheol up, but the few minutes on the ground had helped, and Seungcheol waves him off. He walks to the bed fine.
Jeonghan makes an impressed noise. “You handle your alcohol better than anyone I know.”
It sounds like a compliment. “Wish I didn’t,” Seungcheol mumbles, mutinous.
“Why’s that?”
“It would be nice to be gone a little longer,” Seungcheol says, not fully sure what he means by it. It rings true in his head.
Jeonghan is quiet after that.
Seungcheol will wonder, in the months to come, how much more he’d have said that night if Jeonghan pushed, but Jeonghan doesn’t. He only fusses a little, complaining about Seungcheol’s clothes being too big for him, before helping himself to something soft and climbing into bed next to Seungcheol.
He really is small. Runs cold.
Seungcheol lets him cling.
.
It’s a slow morning after that. Jeonghan demands caffeine, so Seungcheol walks his semi-hungover ass to the convenience store on the corner to get them both shitty coffee. The chill is brighter in the air today. A few degrees sharper. Seungcheol pulls his sleeves down further over his hands.
Jeonghan drinks the coffee slowly, almost like he doesn’t want to leave.
“Are you doing anything today?” Seungcheol asks. “We could get lunch or something.” He knows neither of them has classes on Friday.
Jeonghan smiles. “Sorry, Coups. Duty calls. See you at practice tonight?”
What duty? Seungcheol wants to ask, but he won’t get a straight answer, and it doesn’t matter anyway. “Yeah,” he answers, and then swallows his pride. “Thanks, for last night.”
Predictably, Jeonghan scrunches his face up. “For what?” he responds. It’s clearly rhetorical.
Seungcheol laughs and waves him off.
When Jeonghan leaves, the room goes cold again. Seungcheol should study, or call home. Instead, he climbs back into bed, caffeinated and jittery, and stares at the wall until the shaking stops.
.
He’s late to “optional” practice again that night.
“You’re the captain,” Mingyu complains. “We can’t start without you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“Rough night?” Jeonghan asks knowingly.
Seungkwan groans. The thin skin under his eyes is dark, bruise-blue in places. “This team is the worst. Respectfully, we have to stop partying before practice. No more birthdays. I’m banning birthdays for the rest of the season.”
The team laughs, and Seungcheol wills down the shameful color flushing his chest. “Let’s warm up,” he tells them, and they all split off to jog and stretch, dribbling the perimeter of the field and passing back and forth.
Jeonghan’s ponytail whips in the wind. Seungcheol wants to run next to him, but can’t bring himself to be any greedier than he already has been this week.
He sidles up to Seokmin instead, taking a lap with him, because Seokmin is easy.
But, “Hyung,” Seokmin asks as they’re coming to the end, “is everything okay? You seem a little off lately,” so he ends up wishing he’d run with Jeonghan after all.
.
On the last day of April, Seungcheol fails a test so spectacularly he has to sit with his back to the business building, head in his hands, and suck in deep breaths for ten full minutes before the world stops spinning enough for him to walk home.
In his room, he spends the better part of an hour rehearsing what he’ll tell his parents when they call. It doesn’t help.
You can’t play sports forever, his mother says. Worse that it’s kind. Work hard for us, all right?
Seungcheol doesn’t know how to tell her that he doesn’t know if he can do anything forever, but he knows how to promise to do better, so he does.
(no subject)
27/2/24 05:02 (UTC)