#secondhand alcoholism is finally real and its the feeling you get watching this

[golden-van-fleet]

Belated Valentines

A/N: I know Valentine’s Day was over a week ago, but this popped into my head at midnight last night and I had to write it! Let me know what you think!

Summary: It’s Valentine’s Day, and this year is surprisingly different from the others.

Word Count: 1513

Warnings: Allusion to smut? Sex is mentioned here, cursing.

You’d been single on Valentine’s Day for as long as you could remember. In fact, Joe had been, too. To make up for it, you’d been each other’s valentines year after year, with pizza, wine, and awful Hallmark movies to accompany you.

But this year was different. Joe was out of town on Valentine’s Day, but promised you he’d make it up to you as soon as he could. Almost a week later, he did.

You’d taken the day to yourself, treating yourself to a face mask and a bubble bath. You went for the whole nine, exfoliating, shaving, and using your favorite luxury body wash. It wasn’t like you were expecting anyone, you were just tired of the blues you felt all during February, the dreariness of winter rearing its ugly head.

Wrapped in nothing more than a dressing gown, you detangled the knots in your wet hair and had just finished when the doorbell rang. Cursing whoever decided to intrude on your night, you opened the door to find Joe, holding a bouquet of roses and a bottle of wine.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, my equally eternally single best friend!” He cheered, the same way he did every year. You laughed as you gestured for him to come in, taking the flowers from his outstretched hand with a kiss on his cheek.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Joe. Couldn’t have called me before you came over?” You were teasing, and he knew it. Everything felt right with him, and you cherished the time you had together. You set the roses in a vase full of water. There were pink, yellow and red roses in the arrangement. You tried to ignore the meanings, knowing red symbolizes love, yellow symbolizes friendship, and pink symbolizes joy. You hoped he didn’t know what the different colors meant.

But, knowing Joe, you knew he did.

“I figured the surprise would be worth it, I’m hoping it was,” he teased back, searching for his favorite wine glasses. They were plastic, stemless glasses with cheesy Valentine’s Day related script on them, reserved especially for your yearly tradition.

“Upper right hand corner, cabinet to your left. Same place as always. I’m gonna go put some real clothes on, I’ll be right back,” you instructed, retreating to your bedroom.

Something about this year felt different. You chalked it up to it being belated, and searched for your favorite bra before coming across a ridiculous lingerie set you’d been gifted by Lucy. You paused over the red silk, and against your better judgment, slipped on the teddy before finding a pair of pajama shorts and a t-shirt, barely thick enough to hide the lingerie.

It felt silly, sitting next to your best friend wearing something another one of your best friends had given to you to wear to bed with someone else. And yet, the more you drank, the less you cared. Joe had just finished ordering the pizza by the time you finished your first glass, instinctively reaching over to refill it for you.

“Thank you, kind sir,” you drawled, feigning shock. He rolled his eyes before refilling his own.

“To our own special Valentine’s Day,” he said, raising his glass to yours for a toast. You clinked your glass, or rather, the plastic, against his before continuing to sip on the rosé.

“So, what are we watching this year, Joseph?” You asked, tossing him the remote to scroll through Netflix. “Don’t make me cry, I'd hate to have to kick you out of my house.”

“It’s more of a Christmas movie, but I was thinking Love Actually,” he said, searching for it. Your heart swelled, knowing that Joe knew it was your favorite movie that he didn’t care too much for. Clicking play, he gestured for you to get comfortable, tucked into the left side of his body. You laid like that until the doorbell rang, as Joe excused himself to go answer it. He returned with multiple pizza boxes in his hands.

“Why did you order 4 pizzas? And why are some of them so small?” You questioned.

“Dessert, duh,” he rolled his eyes like it was the most obvious thing.

“Who needs dessert when you have me?” You said, before you could stop yourself. Your cheeks burned, your entire face flushing a bright red as you sipped from your cup again. Well, shit.

Something changed in Joe. He couldn’t tell if you were joking, if it was the alcohol, or if you were at all serious. To spare you, he laughed it off like he would any other joke, and sat back down in his spot.

And of course, at that moment you found yourself watching the staged sex scene between Martin Freeman’s John and Joanna Page’s Judy. It was the least sexy scene, what with its level of production and all, but given your prior comment it was the strangest few minutes of your life.

“Their chemistry is impeccable for a couple of strangers acting as sex scene body doubles,” Joe noted, earning a huff from you.

“...what?”

“I’m just saying, sex scenes are awkward, even with people you know. I just think it’s funny how it’s played out in the movie.”

“Oh my God, you are so weird,” you groaned, burying your face into his chest out of secondhand embarrassment. Having sat on his left side, you could hear his heartbeat as you turned and you swore it picked up, even if just a little.

“I know, but you love me for it,” he shot back, leaning a little more into the couch to allow you more room. You leaned into him, the soft cotton of his t-shirt warm on your cheek. His hand instinctively went to move your hair over your shoulders, the contact making you shiver ever so slightly. You pulled back, your face level with his.

You don’t know what did it. Neither did Joe. Maybe it was the wine, or the fact that you felt so safe and dangerously comfortable with each other. Before you could process it, you were sat on Joe’s lap with his hands in your hair and yours on either side of his face, lips locked in a kiss that felt like your lives depended on it. In a way, they did.

When both of you had seceded and pulled away, you rested your forehead against Joe’s with your heart in your throat. His eyes were staring into yours intently, searching for something, anything that would tell him it was okay to do it again.

“I… well, uh, wasn’t expecting that,” you said finally, a smirk tugging at the corners of your lips. “But I’d really like to do it again.”

So you did. Over and over again, you melted into Joe’s touch and before you realized it, your shirt had been thrown across the room, as had his. He groaned when he saw the lingerie you had on, that until this point you’d forgotten about.

“You didn’t, like, plan this, did you?” Joe asked, your lips sucking a purple mark into his collarbone. “You’re not just gonna fuck me and expect me to leave tomorrow morning acting like none of it happened?”

“God, no. I want you. I’ve wanted you for a long time, I don’t know what made tonight so different but here we are, and fuck, I need you,” you said, desperation soaking through your voice. “I don’t just want sex, I’ve never been into that.”

“Oh thank God,” he groaned, pulling your face back to his and catching your lips in a bruising kiss.

You both spent the rest of that night making up for lost time, tangled between your bedsheets. Every touch set your skin aflame, something that should’ve felt so foreign with your best friend but after years of longing, it could only feel so right. Every whimper and labored breath, every cry of his name, Joe positively reveled in it. He leaned over you, his mouth level to your ear as he voiced sweet nothings to you, words he’d been dying to say and words you’d been dying to hear.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that? All mine,” he all but moaned, sending a delicious jolt through your body. You could only moan in response as he angled his hips just the slightest bit differently, watching your face as you inched closer and closer to pure bliss. He came with a cry of your name, his forehead pressed to yours, his expression angelic.

He held you so close to him afterwards, both of you slick with sweat but neither of you aware enough to care. He’d worked so hard to get you, he was never going to let you go. You held onto him just as tightly, savoring the moment and anticipating the ones to come.

“Told you I’d make it up to you,” Joe laughed, placing a delicate kiss to your hairline.

“God, please don’t leave me alone on Valentine’s Day ever again, unless you’re gonna make up for it like that,” you sighed, your face in his neck.

“Gladly.”

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON MAYDAY’S MAIN RAP, VOCAL LEE HAEUN…

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 22 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 15 COMPANY: Midas ETC: this member has begun to branch into acting.

IDOL IMAGE

some who know her might call her brand of confidence something like arrogance, self-righteousness, an undeserved pompous air that’s damn near suffocating in its blatancy, but she calls it self-awareness, she calls it knowing her own worth whilst being surrounded by the kind of people who bow and exalt in the presence of their higher ups, after years of being who the people around her wanted, needed her to be. nobody ever got what they wanted, what they deserved, by waiting on the sidelines for something beautiful to happen - the truly accomplished were the kind of people who took, take; the kind who suck opportunities dry and refuse “no” as an answer; the kind who don’t bother asking for what they want. (take, take, take)  it’s never a question, it’s a request.

she spends her first year as an idol getting called “fat and useless” by bitter weirdos on the internet.

what’s her purpose? she’s no vocalist, her limbs are long and awkward and her lack of rhythm hardly does her dancing any favors, she’s not even the prettiest member in mayday’s lineup - so, the public asks, where does she fit in? what she lacks in indisputable talent in singing or dancing, she makes up for presence and it’s that alone that gets her chosen for mayday’s final lineup.

when they first arrive on the scene, the higher ups take advantage of the fact that she’s still developing, with niche interests and philosophies, lost and unassuming, and they frame her as the quirky one - just a little different, a little off-kilter and peculiar. mayday’s bright little weirdo! isn’t she so admirable for making it this far in spite of it all? it’s ambition and drive and flexibility, she reminds herself, that’s gotten her where she is today, that’s keeping her there and making her something that midas wants to hold onto. it’s her talent for performing, her desire to improve that makes it easy for her to stay.

stars are born.

if there’s one thing she’s got in spades, it’s a personality, she knows who to be and when to be it and it works in her favor, nowhere more than on television. it starts out as stints on variety shows for personal promo, where there’s room for a sharp-tongue and good timing, and evolves. the acting lessons that midas executives shove her into feel like something flat out of nowhere but she shows potential. they find her niche and pounce when she sheds her baby fat and blossoms. pretty enough, sexy enough, slim enough, finally, to send to castings, for the netizens to look at her with something other than vague acknowledgement in the shadow of the members who can do it all.

her role is bold, a horror-based webdrama, but it’s enough for them to take her seriously. she’s an actress. she earns her keep.

they take risks with her as things progress and their concept develops, take advantage of her new healthy body - cropping her tops and keeping her bottoms fitted and short when it makes sense, and implying in no shortage of words that her body, hard-earned and shapely, is a talking point and that her presence (”her work ethic!” they shout from the rooftops) is just the cherry on top. she’s the white hot shot of sex appeal that a group as tame as mayday needs all while still maintaining the cute image the team portrays, the member you can fantasize about without feeling too dirty about it afterwards. it cuts deep when haeun thinks back on the harsh words she’d heard as a trainee, encouraging her to diet harder, to shed an extra 3 kilograms before she could debut, laced with the threat that she’s replaceable. why, now, is her body something to cash in on when they’d spent so much of her trainee days shaming her for the width of her hips and the thickness of her legs?

she’s fit and desirable without being too complicated. men eat it for breakfast and it gets her noticed for all the wrong reasons. she flushes red with embarrassment the first time she stumbles across one of those gross sexy idol subreddits and sees a gif of her skirt flying up with wind at a festival as a thumbnail. she cries when her manager tells her that these things happen.

the industry makes her wicked.

she’s a company’s wet dream but she spends her days hidden away when she can, just to breathe and wonder what she’d done to deserve the kind of pressure that comes with notoriety. ever so eager to please, desperate, she hopes she doesn’t disappoint them. that fear, of being less than great, makes her break her own back, working herself into a sweat in all the time she has away from her group members, behind the scenes. sometimes she envies them, wishes she had the luxury of a fresher faced simplicity. when it really hits her, she works even harder, holes herself away in the studio, late into the night, and practices their routines, the lines of working scripts that come her way, strains her voice until she gets it. she has to get it. it’s all she’s got.

haeun, honestly, doesn’t know where she’d be right now if it weren’t for midas seeing something in her and taking her in like a fallen baby bird from a nest too far up, with wings that weren’t quite ready to fly the way they wanted to, the way they twitched and fluttered to. she feels like she owes them for their hospitality, their willingness to teach her the things she hadn’t had the chance to learn back home. thank you isn’t ever enough, is it? not for something as big and life-changing as this opportunity, so she takes whatever they throw at her in stride. if they want her to play the role of the giggling goofball with the curves and the reverse charms, she can do it, if they want sex and charisma and easy-to-consume dancing and singing and mediocre rapping, she’ll reach into the very depths of herself to make it happen even if it feels like stepping out of her own skin.

it gets better, easier, as the years pass, for her to compartmentalize and own her persona. the masses don’t want complexity, they want easy to swallow, pretty faces in pretty outfits with relatable personalities. she gives them a version of herself that isn’t altogether real and finds her peace behind closed doors, through skin-on-skin and chilled bottles of soju. she feels through shock horror and scary movies to remind herself that she can.

it’s better, she always reminds herself, than wallowing in her past failures and taking a flight back home to face her family’s disappointment should mayday be another flash in the pan of success and recognition. it’s hardly practical, she thinks sometimes, to build a career off of something so utterly insincere but, then, she doesn’t think practicality ever suited her much anyway.

IDOL HISTORY

tw mentions of alcoholism

her mother is a zainichi korean living in japan and pursuing a career in music, she wants to be a singer; her father, a hockey player who’d grown up overseas in canada. there’s no reason they should ever cross paths but: they do, and they have haeun after a brief, passionate tryst that turns into a twelve year marriage that ends when her father is caught cheating with one of the only friends her mother had made after following him to toronto. it ends with a clap and a bang, and she packs up and takes haeun with her.

her mother never fails to mention that haeun being born on valentine’s day is the cruelest irony in their love story. haeun hates birthdays.

growing up, she only ever knows change, the sole regularity in her life being new environments and homes and apartments across the expense of the small island she’d been planted in. her solace is her home-learned knowledge of japanese and her ability to adjust. she’s a chameleon in the face of adversity; she sets out to become the person she needs to be to survive and it works. it’s fake, but it never matters when it’s never a matter of if they’ll leave again but when. when: she’s fifteen years old and her mother wants to touch base with her roots, her background as a blood-born korean raised in japan is just another barrier for her to overcome in her journey to find herself or succeed, or - something. haeun never really knows what her goal is, she works odd jobs in lounges and clubs and brings home enough to keep the lights on but she never sees her mother sing unless it’s late at night over a glass of wine out of many - enough to empty half the bottle before she passes out at the dinner table.

she always wakes up to her making bacon and eggs, fish in the oven and rice in the steamer with tomoko aran playing loudly from the stereo they’d gotten secondhand. her mother always tells her that she could’ve been just like tomoko if the timing had been right. “yes, mother,” she says. haeun knows better than to question her and eats her food, watches saturday morning anime on mute while her mother has a breakdown on the phone. she tries to be empathetic but it’s moments like that where she finds herself missing her dad. she feels weak knowing that there’s not much she can do about it or the way her mother feels.

in any case, south korea is another new beginning that haeun’s become accustomed to and she spends the week before their flight over watching kdramas with subtitles on. she’s studying - the language or the mannerisms, she’s not as certain of, but she takes it in nonetheless. it’s her only hint at figuring out who she has to be to make it this time, who she needs to be to survive.

the one thing haeun and her mother have in common is performing, so it only makes sense that she follow in her mother’s footsteps once they’ve settled in.

it begins as forced mother-daughter entries into talent shows across seoul until they go their separate ways and enter as solo acts, her mother singing ballads and songs by powerful soloists while haeun leans into the softness of her voice. it becomes a competition, one that reaches a head when they both decide to take their talents to an agency.

it’s only kind of awkward when haeun’s the only one who makes it.

she’s surprised that her mother even signs the forms to set her up as a trainee but doesn’t address the elephant, neither of them do - how she’d failed again at achieving her dream, how she’s not the young girl she’d been before, how haeun’s now got the world laid at her feet standing where she’d always pictured herself.

her mother takes her out for ice cream after all is said and done. “it’s probably the last time you’ll be able to have some for a while, hm?” she says, smiles and sticks her plastic spoon into a cup of half-melted vanilla. it doesn’t reach her eyes.

it’s not until she gets scouted for mayday that haeun starts to get the feeling that her mother has begun to resent her. by then, six years have passed with little to say for it, never enough for her to serve as an actual threat to her mother’s ego. not that she ever really could’ve been, she’s a decent singer, sure, but there’s stronger singers in any subway, stronger dancers, rappers. haeun gets by on charisma. and her mother, she keeps trying to make her dream happen, too, while haeun trains to be a better version of herself. she auditions for 99, msg, even koala.t and a handful of nugu companies in a moment of sincere desperation, weakness when haeun turns eighteen and moves out on her own. she doesn’t realize how bad it’s gotten until haeun comes over, a woman with the world at her feet, to tell her the news and her mother throws a lamp at her head.

the breakdown she has is terrifying. haeun doesn’t recognize her anymore.

it’s sad, she thinks, because she doesn’t want this the same way she does. she hasn’t worked her whole life to be a singer the way she has, hasn’t spent every hour of her life wanting something with every fiber of her being the way she does. haeun wants it - of course, she does, more than anything at this point in her life. but mayday is a means to an end, a stepping stone on a pathway to wealth and notoriety, the leading way to becoming a household name. it’s not the air she breathes. she’s a performer, trained in the art of channeling and projecting her emotions and yet. she feels guilty, holds her mother while she cries herself to sleep and takes the key to the liquor cabinet with her when she has to go, the sun peaking over the horizon and through the always-drawn curtains of her apartment. it’s the first time she feels her heart ache this way but she manages to shove the feeling down just in time for mayday’s debut showcase.

(she calls her everyday, just in case. promises to bring her on stage to sing with her one day. eventually, her mother stops answering and, wow, haeun thinks. this is what it feels like to be alone.)

the rise of mayday is a slow but steady ride; it burns with the same intensity as a flame. it begins as a flicker on the end of a match and sets ablaze all of its surrounding and engulfs the five of them with it. it’s not enough until they win. haeun thinks it’s pride she feels when she sees her face fill up the screen during comebacks, when she smiles and winks during music show performances and harvests cheers during group promotions. this isn’t a group, she decides after a year. it’s a collective of individuals with a drive to succeed. it gives her something to look forward to, a needle to prick her finger on in the haystack of opportunity. she feels greedy, wants it all for herself and more.

she thinks that maybe she gets it from her father, this lack of loyalty and allegiance. she thinks maybe she’s still a little bitter that he’d left her and her mother to rot, bitter that her mother had abandoned her to navigate the world all on her own under the touch-and-go care of industry executives, but then she hears fans chanting her name and she doesn’t much care.

you sacrifice the best parts of yourself for success around here. she learns it the hard way during the lull before they regroup and comeback with glass shoes. she feels pathetic, weighed down by the sinking feeling of never truly being enough. it gets dark and desperate and she can see it in the way management gets frustrated backstage. she feels it, the feeling of failure and it claws at her, tears away at her self-esteem when she watches her members excel. she’s just like her mother. she drinks, she wallows.

she looks in the mirror and watches her innocence wither day-by-day.

her image suffers during interviews that year, her growth buried under a minor attitude scandal. her new source of solace becomes senior idols, friends who know better. she learns. she adjusts. she misses her parents and resents herself for being weak and feeling too much. it feels good when they get their first win, with what is love? and the smile that stretches across her face when they hold their first trophy feels genuine.

she only feels slightly vindicated when her acting career takes off, when she starts picking up roles with names attached to them rather than monikers and wordless appearances.

their songs are still cheap and generic, cute and upbeat to the point where she yearns for something different, but it sells and it’s made apparent by the responses of their fans. they like it, like her and the persona she adopts to suit the concept, the one they built for her. she let’s them remember her as the girl she was at debut, diligent and quirky, if not a little uncouth. she’s changed. it’s what she’s good at. she learns to bite her tongue against slick digs at her company, avoid being too vocal about her opinions, keep her hands to herself lest there be any cause for controversy - she toes the line of being too much and not enough and gets called alluring. she wonders if even the people who criticize her know what they want from her.

in any case, it seems to be working in some ways more than others. midas media is a hellscape of strict management and the stifling of its idols, but she makes it her duty to ensure her group’s success in one way or another - maybe that’s part of why she lets the media have at her. what she lacks in tact, she makes up for in talent and when they criticize her dancing, she works even harder, passive aggressively posts videos of her progress on her instagram. there’s no such thing as bad press, right? she stays on the fingertips of online pseudo-journalists when they want clicks. it’s good.

regardless of her agenda, midas dangles the promise of success in acting over her head as a means to keep her in line. it’s hard not to bite the hand that feeds her, better to be predator than prey, but the new year feels like an opportunity for her to be something more.

haeun wills it to last, even if they test her patience daily. she won’t be weak again. she’ll be better.