The lyrics will come.
It's been a month and a half. There are no lyrics, and the notebooks spread out on every countertop in Choi Seunghyun's grungy apartment stay blank, gather dust, and fade from white to yellow.
He wastes away for another day in his beer and his eyeliner crumbling away from the corners of his eyes, sleeps till two in the afternoon, and feels like he's dying before he sees the red light blinking on his voicemail between trips to the fridge for more booze.
Beep. Seunghyun, I was reading this self-help book for you today (well that's not embarrassing at all, Seunghyun thinks with a roll of his eyes) and it says you should try this thing called love. It's supposed to be the source of all inspiration or something. That's a direct quote, by the way. Do you wanna borrow it? I won't tell anyone or anything.
Beep. Hey, you know I was talking to Junsu and he says he writes better when he's getting laid. Oh, and he's married, so I'm guessing it's not meaningless sex either, so you'll maybe have to figure a situation out.
Beep. My psychic says to find somebody you can emotionally and physically connect with. DO IT NOW, WE'RE RECORDING IN THREE MONTHS, and I know you've gotten jack-shit done so far and are probably getting wasted on your couch as I speak. IT'S TOO EARLY TO BE DRINKING. GO FIND YOUR PERSON.
No more messages.
He scowls and takes another swig of the Jack Daniels in his hand, because oh yes, he has resorted to chugging straight from the bottle now. It's what he hears happens during mental breakdowns.
Four hours later, the blank pages burned into the backs of his irises, and he's wondering what the fuck somebody wears to make a person fall in love with them.
It's the cheesiest thing he's heard in his life, but he's out of ideas and Google wasn't helpful at all unless he wants to show up at the club in a leopard-print banana hammock greased up like a pig.
Fuck it, Seunghyun thinks in the middle of wondering if maybe he should at least take out his gauges, and doesn't even bother to change out of his black on black. He's heard bedhead is still sexy.
Two minutes of walking through the haze of smoke and writhing bodies and furiously strobing lights and Seunghyun practically body slams a boy with blond hair on his way to get himself a beer with how hard he accidentally crashes into him.
"Sorry," he says, and the shorter boy shakes his head and grins around the pacifier in his mouth in an offhand kind of way, even though the drink he was holding is now spilled all over his flimsy shirt.
"Whatever." He has a slight accent Seunghyun can't situate but which makes him sound all sorts of proper and out of place amongst the sweaty, pulsating limbs and low-ceilinged room. On the other hand, he has electric-shock blond hair and is dressed to the raver-nines, bleeding kohl from the edges of his eyes, neon neckband and glitter on his cheeks and loose white tank cut so low he might as well be naked from the waist up.
There is also the shameless way he checks him out, eyes quickly scanning Seunghyun once from head to toe rather appreciatively before he smiles and bites slightly on his bottom lip. "Feel free to buy me another drink later, though," he whispers directly in Seunghyun's ear, and disappears back into the crowd before Seunghyun even has time to react.
Another hour and six beers alone later with no success except a few trashy girls who proposition him for sex (which is not the way to go, as much as his instant reflex tells him different), Seunghyun has to pee and stumbles his way into the bathroom. He squints against the bright light tubes, the annoying kind that feel the need to make constant buzzing noises, and is about to flick the switch off and just pee in the dark when he sees the blonde boy clutching at the sides of the sink, head slumped between his shoulders and breathing hard, all perfume-stained sweat and sharp angles.
Noob. "Rollin' too hard?" Seunghyun drawls. He reaches over the hot mess to turn the tap on. The blond glares at Seunghyun from underneath his matted hair.
"I'm fine," he says in a pitch too breathless to be. "I just - need to clean my shirt." He unlatches one bony hand (fingernails painted rainbow shades), makes a swipe at the paper towel dispenser, and misses by several inches.
Seunghyun rolls his eyes. "Yea, don't let me get in your way, champ."
"Shut up," the other boy snaps, anger and acridity on legs. Another grab for the towels, and another miss, this time accompanied by a stumble s
sideways straight into the wall. Seunghyun feels like laughing. Instead, he leans against the wall opposite to watch.
And somewhere between the blonde cussing at the towel machine and gagging into the sink basin, Seunghyun finds himself exasperatedly dabbing at the pink stains on the other boy's shirt after he finally gives up. The pacifier has worked its way back into the boy's mouth and his head has dropped forward to rest on Seunghyun's shoulder, eyelashes fluttering against Seunghyun's neck while he moans headaches and stomach pains, scratches at his decorated arms.
"Didn't your mother ever tell you to stay away from drugs?" Seunghyun mutters, irritably lobbing another used up wad of napkins into the trash.
"My mother OD'd on heroin before she got around to it." His voice is still borderline shaky but the bite in the blonde's voice sounds like he's on the verge of coming down from his high. "Feel like an asshole yet?"
Seunghyun snorts. "Sorry, I don't play that game."
"Aren't you special," is the sarcastic answer he gets. A second later there is a muffled crunch as the dumb fuck propped up against Seunghyun bites clean through his pacifier.
Seunghyun ends up fucking him against the door of his apartment because they don't make it all the way to the bed. The boy likes kissing more than anybody else Seunghyun's ever been with and is as loud as people like him promise to be. He tastes like peppermint and lets Seunghyun run his tongue over his jutting collarbones and pin his hands above him, the bracelets stacked on his wrists digging into the skin of Seunghyun's palms. He moans Seunghyun's name, over and over, his slight accent getting Seunghyun off quicker than normal. Or maybe it's the way noises seem to catch in his throat, or how he bites, hard, on his lip before transferring his teeth to Seunghyun instead.
Still pissed off, Seunghyun admittedly doesn't handle him that carefully, but residual guilt has him carrying the boy to his bed afterwards and tucking him in - only to have him slide down on the mattress and close his swollen lips around Seunghyun's cock to suck him off.
It feels good. No lyrics, or tunes, or even half a usable phrase drifts into his head but at least the night isn't a total loss, and he figures he can worry about his work and (plus) love life again tomorrow.
He doesn't mind that the blond tells him his name (Kwon Jiyong) or that he presses himself against Seunghyun's side when they finally drift off to sleep.
In the morning, Seunghyun wakes up to an empty bed underneath a rather fluorescent sunlight and a brilliantly stabbing pain in his head that feels like he's about to puke all of his internal organs onto the floor. He can't get his legs untangled from his sheets fast enough.
Instead of collapsing in front of the toilet, he opens his eyes from a blind run in time to realize he's about to collide headlong into his desk - and for some reason, he fumbles for a pen, collapses into the leather chair, and it seems to fit.
An hour and a half later, he's penned almost an entire song and has the tune to a possible chorus for another before he runs out of things to say.
Seunghyun stares at the untidy scrawl on the page for a second, blinks, and then cusses so loud he hears his neighbor yelp through the walls.
He's definitely not in 'love' or whatever the hell they told him to go do, but what's on the page is on the page, and he can't deny the source behind it. He considers for a moment that it's just the fact that he got laid, but throws that theory out the window a moment later, because he got plenty of action before Jiyong, with no tangible results like this.
So it's not love - hell, it makes a rather shoddy case for lust - and Seunghyun is sure of that. But some fuse in his brain has finally started up again, and he can't wrap his mind around the fact that a dumb little shit with an ecstasy problem (who handles it like a complete noob, to top it off) is the catalyst.
Red light for one new message.
Chaerin sounds halfway between pissed off and worried about him as she asks (snaps) in rather clipped tones where the fuck their new songs are and where he is. She tells him that Junhyung says he's supposed to have three songs by now, so that better be where he is or she's going to rip him a new one.
The message ends with "or, like, we don't have to have a musical career. That's cool too," before she hangs up, and Seunghyun remembers the vocalist-bassist telling him she'd rather resort to singing children's songs dressed up as a friendly purple dinosaur on national television than go back to bagging groceries at the local market. Which is saying something, because Chaerin hates kids.
He cards a hand through his hair because he's two songs short, and the newly bloomed genius inside his chest deflates.
Motherfucker.
Rue. Filthy, boarded-up windows, mold eating up at the foundations and weeds dead on the lawn. It doesn't even have a real sign, just the word spray painted in haphazard pink above the metal pull-up door to the…
Warehouse, Seunghyun decides once he makes it inside and realizes that the dark blocks scattered around in a seemingly random order are rusting shells of what were once cars. He wonders when the last time he got a tetanus booster was, but it's the only rave happening anywhere inside city boundaries tonight - that he knows about, anyway - and if he's going to find the blonde junkie anywhere, it'll be here.
In the meantime, it's in his best interest to get as drunk as possible. He heads for the bar, pushing past pale-thin bodies and makeup-darkened eyes, and sets a hand on the flipped-over hood of an antique fire truck to order a gin and tonic. It tastes like actual medicine and burns its way down his throat.
Still, a man on a mission is a man on a mission, and an hour later, he's successfully shitfaced. He searches for the music to hit him again, for something, anything because he has to still be able to pull inspiration from somewhere else - but so far nothing's working in his head save a phrase telling him over and over that he's boarding the train to has-been-ville before he's even hit 25.
He scans the room a few times for anybody with unnatural hair color sucking on baby toys, but then feels rather pathetic and gives up after a couple of minutes, going back to his drinks. Besides, he's not even sure what he'd say to a one-night stand on the day after. Maybe he should just give up and go home, write some half-assery about rusting cars, and tell his whole band to go fuck themselves.
And then somebody sits down next to him, and all of the sudden Seunghyun is turning his head to look at familiar blonde hair tonight spiked into a hawk and smudged, unfocused eyes, a different pacifier dangling from around Jiyong's neck as he grins. "What, you couldn't stay away?"
Seunghyun snorts and downs another shot. Now that he's found him, he's not exactly thrilled, nor is he sure where to go from here besides an awkward hi, I need to do this thing called love with you or something. "Shouldn't you be in bed recovering?"
"From the x or from you?" The shit-eating grin on Jiyong's face expands when it gets him a mildly surprised eyebrow raise, and he shrugs and steals one of the small glasses in Seunghyun's row. "I've been through worse. Jesus, this tastes like acid."
"You would know," Seunghyun agrees, and Jiyong backhands him on the arm before stealing another glass. He finishes the entire row of vodka without a hitch and drags a self-satisfied hand across the back of his mouth, slumping onto the barstool next to Seunghyun and swiveling around to watch the crowd.
"What're you doing here, anyways?" He asks, accented speech slurred and slow. "You don't rave, the concept of this thing is shitty, and you can get better alcohol at, like, a gas station."
"Wow," Seunghyun comments sarcastically, "you're fun when you drink."
"Thanks. Just trying to match your energy level." Jiyong doesn't let him off the hook easily. "But I'm actually curious. Unless glow sticks and candy kids are secretly your thing."
Seunghyun shakes his head. "Looking for someone." Lets that hang in the air, looks the blonde suggestively in the eye.
And like this was just always supposed to happen, like they're in the Twilight Zone and he's walking some weird-ass voodoo card, Jiyong takes the bait. "Who?" His interest is thinly veiled when he's this high, this drunk, both the alcohol and the drugs in his system making him undoubtedly horny; Seunghyun knows he's right when he sees the blatant want already skimming the surface of the other boy's soot-smudged eyes.
He doesn't know what to say because he's not exactly interested in Jiyong for the reasons he thinks and Seunghyun's never been one to pursue something like this, but his band is at his fingertips and he needs to pull himself and them back onto the fucking ledge.
So he doesn't say anything, continues to stare at Jiyong with the look he's used thousands of times and knows for a fact works, and he lets Jiyong come to him.
Which he does, and it's like persuading a three year old how Jiyong immediately slides off his stool, nudges Seunghyun's knees apart to stand between them, so close Seunghyun can feel his breath fanning his face when he whispers. "Now what?"
Seunghyun shrugs, acting nonchalant, looking away.
And then Jiyong leans forward to close the last few millimeters between them and press their mouths together, fisting the front of Seunghyun's shirt. Seunghyun responds, pressing a hand to the back of the other boy's neck to pull him closer and slide his tongue in his mouth, tasting lime and looking for music, and it's almost pleasant, just, this, and this is going to be easier than I thought.
This time, they get as far as the coffee table in the living room, Seunghyun sweeping the mahogany clear of the papers and empty cans and old records he'll regret breaking later to push Jiyong down on it and crawl over him instead. It's sloppy but Seunghyun doesn't give a damn, especially not when Jiyong's naked underneath him with one leg hooked around his waist and even more eager and willing than the night before, grinding, arching his back, shivering when Seunghyun sticks his lubed fingers inside him to prep and opening his mouth to drink him in whenever Seunghyun kisses him hard.
They somehow tumble to the floor, slick with sweat and sticking to the crumpled beginnings of papers and things, and Seunghyun closes his eyes and dreams in lights, crashes, white noise and underground rhythms and dimensions made of sound -
He blinks awake with his head about to explode and for a second, he can't process it all. Instead, he squints at something almost illegible scrawled on the back of his hand in a rather offending shade of green that hurts his eyes.
After a few seconds he realizes it's a phone number, with a name underneath that he hasn't yet used aloud and another written line that reads 'just in case'.
Five hours later, the unfinished second song, along with the beginning melodies to a third, is written on his desktop and bleeding through the pages of his notebook. Seunghyun's eyes are spinning and he feels like Ludwig van fucking Beethoven after finishing his very first symphony.
He sits and stares at the sheaf of papers in front of him for a while, vocalizing it in his head and feeling the last of the music leak out of his ears. It's possibly the best thing he's ever written, songs that helped land them their original fan base and then a record deal included.
It isn't until a bird chirps and he looks up to squint at the sun that he realizes it's dawn; his clock reads somewhere past seven, and the last coherent thought Seunghyun has before he passes out atop his mattress is that he's a pawn fighting a motherfucking war that makes absolutely no sense. It belongs in a nursery rhyme, inside Disney, behind the covers of a bad romance novel.
And if he can help things, he's done.
Two days, five espressos, nine packs of ramyun, seventeen thousand beers, and more dents in his wall than he can count, and he's thinking maybe shutting himself in the apartment until he figures this shit out all by himself isn't looking so bright and shiny anymore.
A hurricane has hit his desk in the form of words he's tried to come up with himself. After staring at the mess of scribbles and tangents and different colored pens and a corner of what ended up being nothing more than obscene doodles at one point, his brain becomes the collateral damage. The headache hits square between the eyes and sends him digging through his medicine cabinet after the lyrics in front of him start to blur.
Two Vicoden go down easily enough, and he turns the tap on to splash some water on his tired face and slump against the basin, wondering why his brain by itself is filled with nothing but crash collisions and dead ends.
You have one new message. Seunghyun listens to Jaebum's recorded voice tell him how practice is going ("terrible as shit, 'cause we have nothing to play so it's more like us fuckin' around in Junhyung's garage bangin' things for a couple hours. But no pressure, man,") as he trashes everything on his desk.
He pours himself a glass of scotch, takes it with four extra pills and his dignity, and then dials Jiyong's number on the back of his hand.
author : lovelyable
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