#& death fixation that peeks through in some of these verifications esp. related to youngjoo aren't meant to romanticize it or imply they're

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

↬ we are no more than friends, i know.

date: august 2020 / october 2020.

location: kiha’s studio / ash’s apartment studio

word count: 2,048 words.

summary: idk. ash has issues other than the vogue korea september issue if you catch my drift. the ending of this is so melodramatic but so is ash, leave us alone

triggers: alcohol mentions + metaphorical suicidal imagery and gun violence imagery. also metaphorical blood imagery. yeah, ash is on his love = death shit again. i’m sorry. he’s not taking his antidepressants in the later parts of this + he’s read too much about bonnie and clyde for this song + meningitis causes “emotional disruption” so please just blame it on all of that.

notes: creative claims verification. more mentions of youngjoo. also…  an appearance from npc ash’s producer crew friend kiha so i gotta say now that kyung and kiha have both made appearances in ash solos... erin is the only one of ash’s npc crew trio friends with a brain to mouth filter, which is why he gets along with her the best.

ash doesn’t have much experience with unrequited love.

for someone who’s defined so much of his music-making by the heartbreak he’s been through, he knows the heartbreak of once-requited or still-requited feelings far more than he does the heartbreak of loving someone who doesn’t feel the same way. perhaps it’s one small way in his life that he’s been lucky. rarely have his feelings that weren’t returned ever gotten very serious. he knows getting starry-eyed over someone who doesn’t know he exists or affection for someone who doesn’t see him as an option, even yearning for someone he suspects might be yearning for him in return without confirmation, but love? love is a two-way street.

which is why he’s caught off-guard when kiha asks him if he’s in love with some chick who doesn’t love him back when ash shows him the latest song he’s been working on.

“huh?” the shock on ash’s face is genuine, but kiha laughs like ash is fronting for the sake of evading their conversation.

“come on, man. no one who actually doesn’t care writes a whole bryson tiller knockoff with the lyrics ‘just friends, who cares?’ that’s rule number one of the friendzone.”

ash scoffs and turns back around in his seat, trying not to show that the other’s words had caused some hurt, which only earns another chuckle from his friend.

kiha really gets on ash’s nerves sometimes. being his go-to clubbing buddy doesn’t make him an expert on what’s going on in ash’s life, and ash doesn’t even believe in the friendzone anyway. that’s for people who believe the world revolves around whether or not they can have sex with each person they have in their lives.

he only gets more annoyed as kiha speaks yet again. “what? too much of a hot shot for the girls and guys not to jump at the chance to get with you?”

kiha is joking and ash knows, but it strikes a tender nerve that ash would very much prefer were left alone. there come times like this when their different worlds clash too strongly. kiha finds the whole idol thing to be a joke and, frankly, so does ash, but that doesn’t mean he wants to deal with his friend mocking his entire public image.

he burns red with guilt at the simple fact one person immediately comes to mind as kiha drones on about ash ‘getting in his feelings’.

it’s not like he thinks he and youngjoo have anything in common with infamous american criminals on the run, but he has to channel feelings from somewhere and despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, ash knows very well where nearly all of the romantic feelings he lays bare in his music come from these days.

it’s not that ash hasn’t considered that what he feels for youngjoo isn’t reciprocated, but then again, there are times she says things and does things and he lets his hopes get the best of him in believing he isn’t the only one feeling what he does. and even if she feels nothing for him, that’s fine, too. it’s not like he’s fallen head over heels, unable to get up, can’t eat or sleep without her. he has a little crush, and that’s fine. he’s not the first person on earth to have a crush and he won’t be the last and, considering their history, it’s only natural that sleeping together again for such an extended period of time would reawaken once-dormant feelings. he’s let himself get comfortable, that’s all. he could stop feeling the way he does any time he wants to.

it doesn’t matter whether her feelings for him go beyond what they have or not, anyway. that’s the point of the song. nothing’s ever going to happen between them again besides what they have now, so it doesn’t matter if they’re just friends or if either of them want more. that’s where the bonnie and clyde metaphor had come in — doomed no matter what they do, playing with fire, not belonging to each other.

after all, bonnie parker had been wearing her wedding ring from another man when she’d died by clyde barrow’s side.

bonnie and clyde may very well be lovers immortalized in name together and romanticized in media, but sworn to one another is something they’d never been.

as if on cue, ash’s silence prompts kiha to speak again. “and what’s the bonnie and clyde thing about?”

“american bank robbers? the quintessential romanticized reference of doomed lovers, if you aren’t counting romeo and juliet.” ash doesn’t bother to turn around from where he’s fiddling with one of the vocal lines to check and see if recognition lights up kiha’s eyes or not. if he’s going to be a dick, ash isn’t above being a little condescending about his song inspiration. “bonnie and clyde died for their crimes instead of as casualties of a violent feud between families, though. they saw their death as inevitable, if bonnie parker’s poems are to be believed. nihilism in the form of passionate love. i’ve been reading up on them here and there. they’re pretty interesting, actually, once you shed the lore around them and look at them as real people who did some bad shit.”

“damn, you’re ready to die for some girl?”

of course that’s what he’d taken from everything else ash had said. all ash had wanted was to ask kiha if he thought the vocal delivery should be looser or not, and this is where he’d gotten. he isn’t sure why he’d expected anything better.

“that’s not what i said, kiha.” ash rolls his eyes, knowing full well that the older man can’t see him, as he puts the finishing touches on his work before saving it and beginning to pack his things up as fast as he can manage while still looking unaffected. “it’s probably best if i go. it’s getting late.”

“never knew you were so masochistic. that just emotional or does it make you freaky in bed, too?”

the look on kiha’s face tells ash he’s finally realized too late that ash isn’t in the mood for the kind of jokes he’s cracking about the song or the untold story behind it. kiha doesn’t try to stop ash from leaving, though, and he doesn’t open his mouth again until ash is in the doorway and turns around to concede a goodbye.

“hey. you don’t strike me as the hell-raising clyde type, but if some girl, this ‘bonnie’ of yours doesn’t like you back, you gotta get yourself together and move on. why would you put everything on the line for some girl you have to fake not caring about? you gonna repeat history? sounds like bonnie and clyde didn’t get their happily ever after the first time around.”

ash forgets why he’s friends with kiha sometimes. the other man is a great songwriter for someone who seems so unwilling to experience his own emotions and so willing to give advice ash hadn’t asked for.

he has the misfortune of thinking kiha is done right before he pipes up again. “i know you’re done with relationships or whatever, man, but no one who doesn’t want to be loved back writes the shit you come in here and show me, so… i don’t know. go out there and find someone who will love you back so i don’t have to sit through your weird double homicide, dying side by side love fantasies until we’re old and grey and that pretty boy face can’t work its magic from our rocking chairs anymore.”

“hey, kiha? didn’t ask.” that’s all he gets for parting words before ash leaves and forgets everything kiha had said under more shots than he can keep track of.

it doesn’t bother him that kiha cuts right through every layer of armor he’s constructed so easily without so much as lifting a finger when all ash had wanted was some objective musical criticism.

no.

ash wants a drink after a long day. that’s all.

_____________________________________________________________

that’s all.

ash finds himself mentally repeating the phrase more and more as time races on.

kiha hadn’t said the song was a stupid idea, but in the days following their conversation, ash wonders if it is. the concept had been a spur of the moment one, based on a first verse spinning off into something new when he’d fallen down a rabbit hole online one night and he’d begun to wonder: in a different life, would he be a clyde barrow or a roy thornton? the thrill ride or the one that gets left behind?

because those are the only two options for someone like him in a situation like he’s in, in the end.

the song teeters dangerously on the edge of low synths and hi-hats, distorted brass and whispers under the track, a sonic mirror image of the clashing in his head. he thinks if he asked someone with more experience to their name with writing hits, they’d tell him it’s too busy to ever be a fully mainstream record, but ash is past writing for the mainstream with this song.

he doesn’t know if he even wants anyone to hear this. will they pity him? mock him? know him more than he wants them to, like kiha had when he’d reached right into the center of ash’s chest and squeezed around the bloody pulp his heart has become?

each time he ponders any one of the one hundred questions swimming through his head for too long, he’s tempted to leave everything behind again to find his way to the nearest club with a semi-safe standard for who they let in their doors. instead, he gets catharsis by kicking up the percussion up a few levels in volume and re-recording vocals over the parts that feel too soft listening to them back. his tone is darker now, more destructive instead of the romantic interpretation he’d taken on the first demo recording, but everything falls apart after the second chorus and in a peak-climbing moment of emotion, he exits the file completely, leaving him with two-thirds of a track and the remaining self-preservation not to come back to it while it’s playing games with his mind.

his self-preservation must get dropped somewhere in the ocean during his plane trips from seoul to indonesia to malaysia to seattle back to seoul, because coming back to the track happens only a few months after he abandons it.

the first night he returns to it, he weighs it down with the sound of his heart — a call that can’t be made.

if his heart is a payphone, he doesn’t have any change left to sound out a call for help, for forgiveness. 

if he were to call her, would she answer or has she already cleared his number from her phone and blocked it permanently?

the track drops out and mellows where he’d left off. 

even still would you remember me? nah, nah, i’m just...

he’d only hate himself more if the goodness of her heart could be great enough to give him a second, third, tenth chance.

the head-pounding bass kicks back in and then all of the air is sucked back out of it like being flung out into the black abyss of space.

a gunshot.

it’s the closest he can come to describing what he’d done to himself in his bedroom that night. he’d grabbed the gun and put it to his own head. there’s no one else to blame.

_____________________________________________________________

only a few days later, he opens up the file bonnieandclyde again, this time in his studio with full awareness of what it is and where he’d left it. the tequila shots he’d had to celebrate his return home to a dark and empty apartment after the end of his day aren’t enough to get him past the outskirts of tipsy.

the confusion of loss he’d left off at isn’t the correct ending anymore. a week after, and he knows the song doesn’t end with the trigger being pulled, but the last thoughts he’d had as every held-back thought had trickled out of his head in a bright red stream onto his carpet, his own heart beating in his ears — the only part of him foolish enough to keep fighting to stay alive.

i want, want you to know baby, i want you to know how much i love you how much i need you

#fmdverification #suicidal ideation tw #gun violence tw #death tw #&& when you're screaming but they only hear you whisper | self para #i wrote a whole essay in the tags initially but it felt annoying so i'll just leave a smaller note saying that the suicidal ideation #& death fixation that peeks through in some of these verifications esp. related to youngjoo aren't meant to romanticize it or imply they're #direct result of youngjoo or ash's non-relationship with her #those thoughts aren't limited exclusively to these moments i #just don't like to write about those things a lot in general because they can be triggering for me but considering the songs ash is writing #for his album moments of that particular mental health struggle of ash ended up appearing in some of these verifications #he needs more help than he's getting with his mental health + those moments aren't actually romantic even if he acts like they are + etc etc #&& queued