#get myself into a softer flow yknow?

[skzafterdusk]

lee minho + "And July"

request from the Dean Title Track List

tags: vampire!reader, immortal!minho, daddy kink

The sun has already set; you can tell that much. If it hadn’t been for the darkening cracks in your closed blinds, you would have never noticed the way the room around you has grown dim. You could turn on the kitchen light, flicker on a lamp in the living room, but you were almost petrified in your spot on the kitchen counter; your right leg bent so your arm could rest on your knee, and your left leg dangling over the edge. Any bruises you probably had on your face hours ago have already healed, the pain long gone, as well.

Minho’s body is just in eyesight from where you’re sitting. Splayed out and unmoving, you pay close attention to this heart in his chest that remains still. You’d snapped his neck hours ago, but you count down the moments.

10 metaphorical heart beats…

9…

8…

7…

The silence should be deafening with not a single breath to inhale. But you quite enjoyed the feeling. Even after years of being undead yourself...to not need the oxygen in your lungs...but to prefer it. Odd.

5…

4…

You like to wonder if this time will be different. So many shows would like to have you believe that coming back to life is like crashing into your own body, the sudden way one wakes up after dreaming of falling to their demise. Minho never came back in that manner.

3...2...1…

It’s always the first beat of the heart. The first noise to fill the apartment in so many hours. Then it’s the rush of blood as they circulate through his veins. And he takes his first breath...his lungs fill with a mighty gulp of air...but he remains still. And it’s the softest sound, but you can almost make out the flutter of his lashes when he blinks his eyes open. And thus, Lee Minho has come back to life, yet again. And the fun shall continue.

“Good!” You exclaim, moving your stiff joints to hop down from the counter. On the impact of your bare feet hitting the floor, it’s met with the crunch of some snack-like food; chips, perhaps. But the crumbs under your feet are of no importance as you make your way through the doorway and into the living room. That is when the comparatively softer bed of broken chips turns into a gravely path of broken glass. Never the most comfortable, but you’ll live.

Minho is just beginning to stir, sitting up in his spot and going to nurse his head as if he suffered from a night of drinking heavily, to the point where his body screamed at him in agony from the inside out.

“You’re awake,” you say cheerfully, a too innocent grin on your lips.

The man huffs as he rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “You bitch.” Such a simple statement that holds the weight of his anger.

Anger, of course, that can only spell fun for you.

“You’ve called me much worse.” Your statement only holds objective truth.

He’s finally able to stand up, slow at first, but his energy seems to flow through him once his eyes land on you. Are you the predator or prey? It’s usually so hard to tell, really.

He stalks towards you in an instant, making sure to crowd your space and look down at you from under his nose. “Why the fuck did you kill me?”

You shrug with a scoff, electing to move past him and further into the living room. You’d left it in disarray after you guys had begun fighting. Drinking glasses hurled at walls, chairs and tables strewn about. You go to turn on that lamp, the only one still managing to stand after the hurricane that is you and Minho.

You’re not entirely sure what his excuse is, but immortality has left only two states of mind for you: insufferable boredom or rollercoasters of emotions. Clearly, one of them sounds more entertaining, yes?

The warm light of the lamp illuminates the chaos around you. Your voice, as you answer, doesn’t necessarily fit the current state.

“You were getting annoying. You probably would have tried to stab me if I hadn’t gotten to you first.”

Unfortunately for Minho, though, is that in some places, stabbing is quite...exhilarating. 

The immortal other seems to be at a loss for words, since he decides to go to the kitchen rather than come up with a response to your excuse.

“All the time I was out and you couldn’t bother to clean this place up?” grumbles Minho, searching through a cabinet before finding the prize, a bottle of whiskey. 

You turned your nose up at the sight of the bottle. You hated the taste of whiskey, and you hated even more the way Minho’s blood tastes after he had his fill. It was a sure way to make sure you didn’t feed on him, which must be the payback for...well...yknow.

“I didn’t make the mess by myself. We clean it together if you’re so worried about it.”

He doesn’t even bother getting a glass (possibly he wouldn’t be able to find one), just tears the cap away and starts taking swigs.

“Only thing I’m worried about is how I’m gonna get you back for snapping my neck.”

You roll your eyes as you lean against the wall adjacent to the kitchen doorway. He’d turned on the dim fluorescent light. The scar on his lip and cheek are still there because his bruises don’t heal quickly like yours. No matter for you. You’ve always preferred the look of him a little beaten up.

“Think this through, babe,” you start. “If you try anything, you’ll be stuck with this messy place until I can wake up.”

He makes sure to take a longer drink before slamming the bottle on the counter. Again, as he stalks towards you, he almost looks like the predator, like he’s capable of doing any real harm to you. He’d get pleasure out of it, regardless. 

His grip is firm when he grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks until they plump up and pucker your lips. 

He spends a long while just examining your face, eyes flitting to your lips, searchin your eyes, observing and appreciating the slope of your nose. What he sees makes him smile; it’s a sadistic premonition for the near future, the dark behind his white teeth. 

“How about I whip out the cuffs? Know how much you hate being tied down.” His breath already smells like the cursed wood barrel that stored his whiskey, but you make sure to keep your face cool, so as not to show him how he’s already getting under your skin.

“Please, you love it when I scratch you up. No need to torture yourself, as well, daddy.”

His smile drops immediately at the pet name, eyes of fire suddenly bursting with fury. “Told you never to call me that.”

You shrug. “Not my fault you can’t handle your own kinks.” He snaps your head back until it meets the wall. The angle is awkward enough for it to not cause much impact, unfortunately. “Aw,” you coo. “Did I make daddy angry?”

His hand goes down to close around your neck, just under your jaw. The air you’d been breathing cuts off immediately. He already knows it doesn’t make much difference to you, but the pleasure still starts to travel south, waking your core to the possibility of what Minho might do to you in his fit of rage.

“You’re so lucky you’re already dead. How would you and your filfthy mouth survive otherwise?”

Your time as a human started fading by the end of your second decade as a vampire. It wasn’t much of a life, and Minho had known exactly why. A survivalist like yourself knew when to speak and when to keep her mouth shut. But being at the top of the food chain...well…

“And you’re lucky you found me.” You bring a hand to rest against the hand fisted around your neck. You can feel the pulse of the veins in that hand. Maybe he didn’t drink enough to make his blood taste so strongly of the alcohol. Maybe you’ll be able to bypass it. “You know how boring your immortal life would be if I hadn’t come along?”

He laughs loudly, but no humour resides in its hearty sound. His jaw is clenched, grasp growing stronger around your neck. Cutting off circulation to veins that need not produce new or fresh blood. You’d say his efforts were all for naught, but then that wouldn’t take into consideration the way liquid fire seemed to drip from your pores in anticipation. 

“Do you think I enjoy being killed?”

“Don’t make it sound like I do it that often, daddy, be reasonable.”

If you were a human in this moment, everything would have happened like a blur in front of your eyes; the way Minho dragged you from the wall, throwing your body to the floor -you probably wouldn’t have noticed the shards of glass that broke through your clothes and cut through your back-, how he suddenly was on top of you, taking one of the bigger shards and pressing the jagged edge to your throat. One wrong move as a human, and you would have been dead.

But you’re not, and the thrill that comes is not of terror, but of excitement. See? Had you been wrong?

You can feel his semi-hard length against your stomach. It makes a smarmy grin grace your lips, challenging eyes looking at his. “Fucking knew it. Daddy gets so hard-”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

With a nod, you answer matter-of-factly. “Yeah, when you’re dead. Then I don’t have anyone to play with.”

The glass must have cut Minho’s hand, for soon the sweet smell of iron fills your nostrils, and the crimson drips to the point of the glass that meets your skin. Automatically, your fangs elongate from your gums, and your mouth begins to salivate.

“Let’s stop fucking around,” you suggest, voice a mere hiss. “And let’s play some games.”

Minho doesn’t see the world as you do, doesn’t get the advantage of the same reaction time. That’s why he isn’t able to stop you before you can rip the glass from his hand and sink your teeth into the heel of his palm. It’s not the best place to bite from, but the skin there is always easiest to puncture, and the blood likes to flow freely there.

The first mouthful of blood is always bliss, so satisfying like jigsaw pieces slotting into place. It’s so euphoric, you remember you’d have tears in your eyes your first few feeds. Immortals like Minho are rare, but they’re the best source to feed from. His blood doesn’t taste any better, but he’ll be around way longer than any human can.

He grinds his hips down, looking for friction, pleasure. You pull away, reveling in the blood that slides down your throat, before sitting up, your faces breadths apart.

“Looks like daddy wants to play.”

“(Y/N)...” he only calls your name like a warning, seemingly somewhere between anger and pleasure. He still wants to have an upperhand.

Maybe tonight you’ll let him. As an apology, of course, for killing him.

[cbspams]

The Boyz - No Air (A Song of Ice and Fire)

These are gonna be super fucking long, just fair warning.

Hello again and welcome to another round of Delphine nitpicking a performance into the oblivion!

Honorable mention to my roommate who desperately despises kpop with all their heart but watched this performance (and the other TBZ performance) with me to help me get some insight on how attuned to GOT the performance was since I've never watched the show or read the books. For reference, they have read the books, watched the tv show and in their free time they listen to extensive opinion pieces and analytical essays on GOT. So I'd personally put their knowledge pretty high, but once again this is like a second hand account so sorry if I get things wrong.

ALRIGHT LETS GET IT!!

First, I wanna talk a bit about the pre-performance clips. I really liked the underwater photography studio idea as a way to feel and show desperation. I personally would need to do something else as I'm not afraid of water but I think that the literal concept of not having air is interesting and a good direction. I'm also really proud of Sunwoo for working so hard despite his fear, and I'm really touched by Younghoon specifically going back into the tank to help. Side note but pufferfish New hehehehe.

I genuinely wish they had used more of the film and photography from the session for the actual performance. I feel like a short pre-performance film would've really elevated the storyline, especially since they're trying to reference GOT which is (as according to the books and the show UP TO where the books ended, yknow, pre-season 8) really, really plot and lore based. Not to dive too deep into the theme yet but I feel as though a lot of TBZ's performances in Kingdom (which are really just this one and then O Sole Mio (Red Wedding) in round 2) aren't really expressing the full extent of their themes.

What I mean by this is that anyone who has read A Song of Ice and Fire (ASIF, pls dont @ me if this is the wrong acronym bc idk??) probably knows that TBZ performance wasn't really based in any events of the book or any themes of it. No Air is a desperate love song and there's plenty of desperation in ASIF but it really feels like TBZ did a mix of inspired by ice and fire (the literal elements) and set in ASIF (physical location markers). According to my roommate, the set pieces are recognizably places in ASIF but the performance didn't really track the themes present in the novel. I'll get to the Red Wedding later as well, but in both performances although TBZ were clearly trying to track some level of GOT's, it feels underdeveloped and therefore to me feels clunky, which is a bit disappointing because TBZ are masters of concepts and executing new ideas. Not sure if this makes sense but I guess if I had to summarize, it would be that they're taking inspiration from the name and title of things rather than the actual source material so it doesn't feel as effect in some ways. STILL, if I consider it operating on the level of just ice and fire rather than by GOT, they did a beautiful job!

Consider this: No Air is originally a bit more of an upbeat rhythm and melody but the way they toned it to be almost kind of in minor key to fit the desperation theme? Whoever's doing arrangement is putting out stuff that's really amazing. On top of that, the drum beats in the baseline add to that same feeling and then to have the turn around where the melody gets softer before the chorus, is a beautiful touch of contrast that really draws together the tender side of a desperate love. And the first chorus feels almost defeated, longing and yearning. I feel like the flow of the music really fit a tragic romance storyline, which I just love about TBZ.

Even with their less than stellar (imo) execution of theme, they're still putting out completely new and incredible ideas. Starting even with the 100 sec performances in which they did the hands thing and now with the POV camera direction, TBZ are taking full advantage of the stage and it's set up, which I cheer at every time I see it. Even the other groups are were picking up their ideas! See Stealer (The Scene) by SF9 in which Zuho "fights" the camera.

ALSO a quick note on the beginning camera work!! They show the frozen zombies (an allusion to the white walkers I assume) and they're completely stiff but then the camera moves towards Juyeon and the woman's arms take off one of his wrist cuffs before turning and you see that the zombies have moved!! And then there's a quick shot that as she's turned around to take off the other cuff, the zombies start to move again. That's a really smart way of setting up the kind of stakes in the moment, that if she doesn't get Juyeon free quickly then she'll be attacked and overtaken and Juyeon will stay trapped. The blocking in this moment is immaculate as far as story telling goes!! I love when the camera contributes to the theme and storyline, very much a show don't tell kind of thing. Love that for them.

The stretch screen is also a really interesting idea! I'm not sure how it correlates to ASIF or their theme necessarily, I think it's more of a performance aspect but literally Juyeon What The Fuck. He's genuinely so talented and it stems from his dedication and hard work. They kind of mention in the pre-performance clips that he's really harsh on himself and cries after performances when they don't do well, but legit I thought he did so, so well here. His expressions were really forlorn at first and once again, those dance moves!! Bro!!

On the topic of expressions, because one of their main themes is desperation, I watched really closely to how they were expressing that with their faces and bodies. I'm judging body language differently, since kpop dances tend to really favor the more hip hop, sharp isolation style and I can't view it like, oh they should've done contemporary dance.

Kevin's opening line gave me goosebumps. The kind of build up in the strings to his cool but forceful voice, mmph. I think Haknyeon's anger is also a really nice touch because desperation may be based in sadness but it's real expression usually comes out in anger. In that last do or die moment, are you cowering and hiding in an attempt to survive or do you fight back? The human body has a natural instinct to thrash around and reach for anything you can when you drown, and it feels like a fight because it is one. So although TBZ is aiming for a sad and tragic love story, because their main theme is what it is, I like that they included different sides from fury to despair. Sunwoo's little head toss back was really good too, both technically and thematically.

Honestly I don't know who choreo'd this but I really liked it. They definitely choreo'd it with the camera in mind, which I mean, everyone did but their was really smooth and easy to flow with. People were walking off camera nonchalantly, as opposed to sprinting off. It's something that ATEEZ had trouble with in the 100 sec performance (in the pre-performance clip) so you can see TBZ experience in performing the live take on the Kingdom stage (which I've mentioned before is a really unconventional type of stage). Plus because the arrangement slows in different places, they have little moments of tragic love as well (like pre-chorus when the camera unblindfolds Hyunjae or post-chorus when Haknyeon, Kevin, Sangyeon, and Jacob hold the lover's hands tenderly), which just emphasizes their desperation! I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot but tbh that just goes to show how in tuned TBZ are with their emotional theme. Another thing is the zombies, which continues the theme from before that they're fighting somehow to stay with their lover or that their time is in danger. Sunwoo dangling over the hoard, like okay. Okay! I see you! Oof, props to you choreographer, props to you.

YOUNGHOON!!! What an actor man, he's got such a diverse range of facial expressions. He really pulls off the kind of empty, forlorn look, ugh. Please get this man a role in a drama, 11/10 would watch. Honestly Juyeon too, please guys I'm too wear for those intense, piercing looks.

That last moment is interesting. It's almost like they're flinging their lover away from the fire, rejecting them so they'll be safe? The explosion in the back honestly doesn't make a lot of sense except as some kind of climactic moment but I don't think they needed it. It doesn't really fit the story they were telling, nor does it set up for their next performance so like. Why lol.

I'm new TBZ and I've been kind of eating up content from them, but especially because I got to know them through RTK, I had really high expectations for them now. I think they're still doing wonderfully, especially between the new creative freedoms Kingdom offers. But I also think they're suffering what I've previously described as the kind of burden to come up with something that fits in the set.

A quick recap: Because RTK had less budget and was smaller, the props and sets were a lot more simple and specific. Each group had to create stories using limited props which forced them to be more technically advanced with their formations, dance moves, arrangements etc. Because Kingdom has more budget and can now create elaborate sets and costumes etc, I think the groups are somehow less diverse and creative here than in RTK. Their technical skill still shines through but it feels like a lot of it gets covered with the sets and stuff.

So like in RTK, TBZ made ample usage of their own bodies to tell stories whereas now it feels like they're not doing that and it makes me sad in some ways because I think that's the appeal of a competition show. That you're allowed to make more story telling with your own body, instead of following pure performance choreography like in normal performances. Something that comes to mind for example is like The Eve from EXO. The song is supposedly about standing up to corruption but the dance is uh. Sexy and honestly not very aligned with the song. So like that's kind of a choreography and performance for the sake of performance. But on RTK, groups were able to have more themed storytelling and TBZ were a master of it, from thieves in Danger to revolutionaries in Reveal. So I'm just a little sad to see that kind of vanish with the budgeting that comes with Kingdom.

Despite all that, I still think TBZ have put on a great performance and it's still really interesting and fun to watch. I hope that their future performances allow them a little more creativity and storytelling with their bodies and techniques, with the set pieces helping enhance that rather than hinder it.