fic notes: backburner

[lackingdaze]

icb i'm still heejaywon-ing in the year 2022.....

anyways, i started this back in october, when the doc was titled "how to facilitate a break-up 101," with the original idea being that jay was convinced that heeseung was on the verge of breaking up with him.

but then:

famous last words...the good thing was i wasn't getting very far with the previous idea and i also wasn't interested in writing romcom for heejay again when i already wrote this love isn't crazy. at this point, i was already phasing out of heejay because i think their current optics are really dry and what can you say about two straight men in a gp-focused hybe boy group. though somehow i managed to come up with 8k....society if i was creating moguham narratives instead >>>

baseline dynamics

heejay is one of those ships that are better in theory than they are in practice, or rather that they require much more active delusional sustainment than they actually provide in real life lore. thankfully i'm great at being delusional. i think my favorite version of heejay will always be one where they are both miserable because they are inherently incompatible with each other. much of this comes from the fun of inflating heeseung's aversion towards indulging idolhood/overall allergy to any attempts of creating an engaging on-camera persona into a deeply private and avoidant personality. and of course, with jay being the way he is, it's very easy to dream up conflict.

settings & choices

i don't think i said it explicitly in the fic, but it should be very obvious to anyone who has read anything else by me that it's set at a college in ca. feel free to fill in the blanks as you will. i know, i'm eternally embarrassed about my inability to generate new settings/tendency to rewrite the same things over and over again but well i was lazy. also because where as in this love isn't crazy where the setting was not too important other than to set up a joke, lots of mechanisms in backburner would not be possible outside of a very ca setting. i would apologize but also the upcoming [redacted.docx] is also set in ca so um. i digress.

originally, when i started out with the exes to fwb premise, i was focused only on writing heejay and jungwon was there purely to round out the cast and offer jay advice. but it felt too one-note and i couldn't figure out where i wanted heejay's relationship to end up. outside of writing papers all year, i've only been writing romcom fics, so the beats were falling into that pattern and i really did not want heejay to have a happy ending.

then i wrote the jaywon scene at BCD (with different dialogue) and things clicked. it was also kind of killing two birds with one stone, since in the interim, i was writing a sunjaywon that will never see the light of day, except for this snippet:

If Sunoo lets himself mull on it enough, let it gnaw at him from the stomach out in the dark of his room, it becomes plain in its patheticness. Unrequited feelings. So many syllables for a synonym of losing.

The awful thing is that Jay isn’t even Sunoo’s type. He’s overbearing in his pretentiousness, less a moodmaker than a moodkiller, and a complete try-hard.

Then there’s the matter of what Jay is to him, which is really more a matter of what Jay thinks he is to Sunoo. Like I’m your babysitter, he’d grumble every time, coming out of the CU with a black bag in his hand, the Jinro bottles clinking. In a sense, he wasn’t wrong. He looked out for them. A kind of care that extended like a shade, a casualty of the spotlight. Plopping side dishes on his spoon, snagging his favorite milk from the snack shop before they sell out, remembering to order extra delivery even if he lied and said he wasn’t hungry. A multitude that would be enough to make someone feel special, until they remembered they were not the sole beneficiary.

yes i'm insane and it was supposed to be sunoo projecting unrequited feelings onto jay but i decided to upcycle the sentiments here for jaywon instead. all writing is re-writing, etc.

i don't think i have the greatest handle on jaywon dynamics, but i hope i managed to get across how jungwon here is subtly pointed. like obviously jay is an idiot and has issues with wanting to be perceived as someone who is in control when he is easily swayed, while jungwon asserts a much calmer demeanor that complicates their big/little relationship. but at the same time, jungwon isn't necessarily as passive in his pursuit of jay as he presents. in a way, he's the sole reason for heejay's break-up.

where heewon themselves are concerned, i definitely could have done a better job foregrounding their relationship beyond jay. it would have been interesting to contemplate how heeseung views jungwon/jay + vice versa, and the overall guilt, if any, that underlines their friendship. but again, i was lazy, and also hopefully able to get away with it because jay's pov allows him to fixate only on himself and not his surroundings.

style

since i rewrote this three times, the tone changed a lot over the various iterations. frankly i don't think the current beginning meshes with the rest of the fic (and especially the ending) but i was too attached to it to rewrite it (also lazy. mainly lazy.) i worked on it at the beginning of october, then stopped to focus on school work, and would write bits and pieces through out. since i was doing a lot of litcrit writing, i think that kind of pretentious academic tone bled into some of the scenes. imo it didn't turn out too bad, even if it is admittedly cringe but well that's just the reality of my writing.....

i always struggle with plotting/figuring out how to move the story forward beyond the premise of dynamics, as well as balancing scene with exposition, and i don't think this was any exception. the ending is rushed in my opinion, but i also just had nothing else to say lol. i didn't want to present an ending where jay and jungwon tied a bow on their relationship, nor did i really want to get into the logistics of heejay's second pseudo break-up, if it happens at all. part of it is because i'm a miser about dialogue and i hate writing conversations that edge too much into technicalities, since it's necessary for me to maintain an air of (pretentious) ambiguity to find things enjoyable. like you have no idea how many times i deleted and rewrote every single line of dialogue in this, even if they were one word. to what degree of success i have no idea, but again, i digress.

by the time i wrote the end, i figured what i wanted the fic to be most about was jay's indecisiveness. he's talked about taking a long time to come to decisions in previous vlives (namely the first sunjay one, yes i am so predictable). i've definitely latched onto that tidbit for this fic, so hopefully that works in tying the conclusion to the beginning and making it more coherent, even if it's kind of a mess.

also somehow i managed to write a fwb fic without any actual sex???? idek.

deleted scenes

all of these are from previous iterations with different plot points, so they may make no sense in the context of the finished fic.

a different confrontation

“We need to talk,” Heeseung says out of the blue, catching Jay off-guard in the middle of shoving on his sneakers. They (read: Jay) have made a routine out of it now, Jay coming over, then leaving before any dust has time to settle. A part of him is annoyed that 75% of the time, it’s him who has to make the 10 minute walk to Heeseung’s place, though these are circumstances mitigated by 1) Beomgyu always being holed up in lab and 2) Sunghoon nstalling a weight bench in the middle of their living room so he could “maximize his gains” at all odd hours.

When Heeseung says it, he’s leaning against the wall, his hands tucked in his varsity sweats. It’s such an obvious performance of casualness that at once, Jay feels like an animal in the middle of the highway, staring down at its fate going 90 mph.

“I think we should stop this.”

In the aftermath, Jay would stop to think about this conversation like a person with social tact and emotional maturity, coming up with no shortage of all the ways he could have responded and still gotten away with his dignity. I see. I agree. Okay. Instead, what comes to his mind in the moment is the same scene, only it was a year ago, rain tapping the roof of Heeseung’s car, a silence suspended by the fear of what would happen next.

So he does what any animal would do: he runs.

keeyunjay cinematic universe

It’s not like there was no one after Heeseung. Admittedly, the breakup dealt Jay a ten ton truck of psychic damage that had rendered him chained to his bed for three days of crying, then another two weeks of glowering at everyone in his line of sight. But then he tried to get over it. Got over it. There was that pity blind date that Sunoo had arranged for him with his business frat big, Yunjin, which might have panned out nicely had Jay not accidentally let it slip that he thought Midnights was a bad album. Then there was the on-and-off thing with Stephen, who he found on Tinder and could only tolerate when they were hooking up.

“So what am I doing here?”

It’s not like there was no one after Heeseung, but Jay’s options are slim. Which is why he’s sitting across from Stephen now at an overpriced coffee shop after two months of mutual radio silence, nursing a watery latte and regretting putting pomade in his hair. Stephen had slid into his seat sporting an artful/distressed hoodie and a dark beanie, gracefully toeing the line between looking like he wants to disappear and wants to be seen. Jay feels annoyed at how long he’d taken to deliberate on his own stiff, designer button-down.

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Stephen blinks at him over the top of his glasses. “Um, why?”

Jay tries to not let the judgment embedded in that question deter him, but he does. The words he planned to deliver gurgle and die in his mouth. He takes a sip of his coffee, willing them to come back.

“Why, is fucking your ex not working out anymore?”

ummm i was trying out some crazy agendas fr

The thing about their arrangement is that for some (partly delusional, partly egoistical) reason, Jay has been operating on the idea that he’s the only one Heeseung is fucking.

Which is why when he runs into the sight of Heeseung shoving his tongue down Jiung Choi’s throat at a random party, it takes everything in him to not blurt out, “But I thought he was homophobic?”

Instead, he claps his hand over his mouth and muffles a squeak. He’s just about to make his escape when he hears someone shout his name. Heeseung breaks off from Jiung’s mouth (ew?) and Jay turns with barely concealed dread towards a frozen Sunghoon, who looks like he may be contemplating homophobia for real.

“Um. Sunoo was looking for you,” Sunghoon mutters, then excuses himself back to the living room under the guise of getting another drink. Jiung looks back and forth between Heeseung and Jay like he’s anticipating a tennis match, and when there is only ensuing silence, he awkwardly fumbles for his lighter and disappears down the hall.

“I didn’t know you two were a thing,” Jay says, attempting to sound casual. He knows he’s not succeeding, if the concern in Heeseung’s creased brows is anything to go by. The pregame shots sour in his stomach, and he feels distinctly like he’s going to throw up.

“Not really, we just mess around sometimes.” Heeseung leans back, eyes dodgy.

A wave of shame licks through him. This is Jay’s fault. He was being presumptious. They hadn’t talked about, and really, did Jay want to know if Heeseung was sticking his dick into someone else (with the addendum of that someone being Jiung, who had just recently graduated from the tackiest blue bangs Jay has ever seen and once attemped to use Jay’s signed One Direction album as a coaster)? Besides, Jay had slept with plenty of people following their break-up. He could sleep with even more people now.

“Are you okay?” Heeseung’s asking, frowning. “You look kind of pale.”

“Yeah well, I’m anemic,” Jay says, biting out a smile that might have edged on crazed. “Guess I’ll go take some. Iron? See you around.”

music

from sza's sos:
- f2f
- kill bill
- low
- ghost in the machine
- nobody gets me
- low

others:
- niki's backburner (as per the title) + lowkey + i like u
- mallrat's surprise me ft. azealia banks + wish on an eyelash
- taylor swift's labyrinth
- gemini's going
- frank ocean's in my room

conclusions

overall i'm pretty satisfied with the fact that i finished this since i've not had the best relationship with writing lately (or well ever.) like tfw you're bad at the only thing you're good at....i don't know if this was really fun to write, but i'm glad i could realize everything i have to say about heejay in this so i can finally move on to worser things <3