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writetomyheart2015-09-10 01:05 am
elindar.livejournal.com) wrote in writetomyheart2015-09-10 01:05 am
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[team one] zephyr
i'm late again but i absolutely wanted to finish this. this was inspired by a fb status of my acquaintance (how she always looped the same music with her neighbor) and this tumblr post.
There are times when Chanyeol just lies on his bed or down on the floor, his laptop beside him blaring his favorite music, volume to the max. He is nice, so he tries to do that during the daytime to disturb as few neighbors as possible and also when his roommate is not home (he and Sehun are a perfect match in every way except in their taste in music). He likes to fill the silence with loud and obnoxious rock, likes to just stare at the ceiling or the walls and let the melodies and lyrics wash over him. It relaxes him, eases the stress over school and his future and life in general.
For some reason, every year around the end of summer, Chanyeol always finds himself going back to listening to his old favorite albums from high school times. He doesn’t know why but there’s always something about the season that makes him feel nostalgic and want to hear those old favorites that he still knows all the lyrics to and can still play on guitar years later. And this year, too, when August is slowly ending and September rolling around, Chanyeol’s daily playlists are suddenly full of his old favorites from Muse, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others.
This year, though, his very own nostalgia sessions get a new kind of dimension when he realizes that his neighbor likes to listen to similar kind of music. It’s not once or twice when Chanyeol can hear familiar tunes coming from the room right above his. And to make it even odder (or better?) his neighbor seems to like many same songs as Chanyeol himself, judging from how many times they seem to loop them (just like Chanyeol). This makes Chanyeol curious, makes him wonder what kind of a person lives upstairs and whether they, too, like to lie around and drown their stress and worries into the vibrant rock melodies. They at least seem more unconcerned about the noise and disturbing neighbors since some days Chanyeol can hear the thumping music all the way until midnight, when he’s already either turned the volume down or plucked in his earphones. He doesn’t mind but he wonders about other neighbors; he’s sometimes gotten complaints of playing piano or guitar too loud for too long.
On one slow Wednesday forenoon Chanyeol is loitering at home because he has no lectures that day and only evening shift at work. He lifts his laptop on the bed beside him and puts on Red Hot Chili Peppers, clicking the volume up again because he’s pretty sure that every neighbor and their mom aren’t home this time of the day. Except one, it seems. One and half songs later, Chanyeol can hear the familiar, echoing thump of music through his ceiling. He glances up and smiles a bit to himself. He knows it’s stupid but the music his neighbor plays almost feels like a greeting. Chanyeol lies down, crossing his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling.
He starts wondering again. Maybe the neighbor is a student like him, because they’re home at such a random time. Or maybe they’re unemployed. Or a freelance designer who works at home. Chanyeol is kind of bursting with curiosity, he’s been trying to imagine the mysterious neighbor who likes to blare Chanyeol’s old favorite music the same way as him. Nowadays his stomach flips a little every time he runs into people in the stairway when he’s coming or going, automatically wondering whether they’re the one who lives above him. Chanyeol doesn’t see his neighbors that often and definitely doesn’t know all of them so it’s possible that he’s never even seen the mysterious neighbor. But now he kind of wants to. His curiosity is killing him. Sometimes he thinks of going and slipping a paper under the neighbor’s door or into their mailbox and asking which songs are their favorites and why. He also wonders whether the person living upstairs actually listens to his music, too, and finds it equally funny that their tastes are so similar. He wonders a lot.
For some reason Chanyeol feels kind of restless right then, so he pushes himself up and goes to grab his guitar on a whim. He hasn’t played for a while but listening to the RHCP classics make his fingers itch, and he sits back on the bed, the guitar in his lap and pauses the music. He crouches over the guitar and starts plucking the strings, digging up the right chords from the back of his memory. With some songs, his fingers move almost on their own, the muscle memory still there from high school when they used to cover Red Hot Chili Peppers songs with their band. He lazily plucks through a couple of songs he can still remember, so absorbed in playing that he doesn’t even realize that the music upstairs has stopped, nor does he hear Sehun coming home until his roommate sharply knocks on his doorframe and asks him to cut it out because he has a huge exam tomorrow and needs to study and wants silence, thankyouverymuch. Chanyeol gives his roommate a nod and a bit reluctantly puts down his guitar and grabs his earphones.
On a Sunday morning that week, Chanyeol’s somehow up before noon, lying on his bed and again plucking his guitar; he hasn’t been able to put it away since Wednesday, much to Sehun’s annoyance. He’s been rediscovering their band’s old cover songs and trying out some new stuff, too, and he just feels like he could play and play all the time.
On his way to kitchen to get some juice, Chanyeol notices a folded piece of paper on the floor by their front door. He goes and picks it up, thinking it’s something Sehun has dropped but is surprised when he opens the paper.
A request for the guitarist. I think I heard you playing bits of RHCP’s The Zephyr Song the other day, could you maybe play it again?
The handwriting’s a bit messy but readable and Chanyeol can only stare at the paper for a moment while his mind tries to fit all the pieces together. His first thought is that the message must be from the neighbor upstairs, it can’t be anyone else. They heard his playing? And they want to hear more so they must’ve liked it even a little. Chanyeol finds his heart pounding and hands shaking slightly as he retreats back to his room.
His guitar rests on the bed, beside his bundle of blankets and laptop. Chanyeol reads the short message over and over, still completely incredulous. He’s indeed been playing The Zephyr Song, it was one of the covers they used to do in high school, and it’s a song that Chanyeol really likes to play.
Could you maybe play it again? Chanyeol can’t help a flip in his stomach as he reads the words again; it’s been so long since someone specially asked him to play anything. But when should he play? Is the neighbor home right now? Could they be sitting upstairs, waiting? Chanyeol doesn’t know but decides to give it a try, and he can always play it again later.
Chanyeol drops the paper on his bed and picks up his guitar in turn. He walks to open the window and sits down by it. He searches the lyrics online just in case, plucks a couple of times to check the tune, flexes his fingers and exhales slowly, his heart still pounding weirdly fast. And then he starts playing. His voice comes out a bit rough with the lack of practice lately and he can’t keep up with all the lyrics but he plays on, trying to make up the slight flaws with the energetic rendition and powerful choruses. When Chanyeol plucks the last, fading chords that escape out of the window to the sunny weather, he feels weirdly accomplished, like he would’ve played to a huge audience instead of… well, basically no one.
But after a couple of seconds of silence, he can clearly hear clapping coming from outside, from one storey up. Chanyeol sits very still, listening, and can feel himself swelling with happiness. He can only grin stupidly at grumpy Sehun, who barges into the room a moment later, demanding what the hell is the noise so early in the morning.
Later that day, after Chanyeol’s gathered enough courage for couple of hours, he quietly opens their door and slips out, climbing the flights to next storey. He stops in front of the apartment right above his and Sehun’s - number 11 - and squeezes a folded and a bit crumbled piece of paper in his hand. Chanyeol just wants to thank the stranger, as playing the cover for them made him feel so great and happy for some reason. Just slip the paper under the door like they had done and go back in, Chanyeol thinks but can’t quite make himself approach the door.
Chanyeol would’ve probably stood there for hours, hesitating, hadn’t the very door he was staring at opened suddenly. Chanyeol twitches, completely startled, and is suddenly looking at a boy around his own age. The boy, who seems to freeze mid-step, looks equally startled to see Chanyeol just standing there in front of his door. They stare at each other awkwardly a couple of seconds, Chanyeol taking in The Mysterious Neighbor and thinking that he’s nothing like Chanyeol imagined. He’s kind of short, has a delicate, ordinary looking face and light brown hair that falls over his eyes from under the white snapback. He’s wearing a plain white shirt under a green flannel one and ripped jeans. He looks like half of the guys in Chanyeol’s university.
Chanyeol gives him a tentative smile. “Hi. I’m... from downstairs,” he says and points.
He can see the boy’s eyebrows rise in surprise.
“I just... Um, here,” Chanyeol stammers and instead of trying to find the words just hands the paper to the boy. The other takes it, unfolds and reads. The corners of the boy’s mouth curl upwards and when he raises his eyes at Chanyeol again, he’s smiling. (He has a nice smile.)
“Thank you for the cover, I liked it. And I would love to hear more sometime.”
Chanyeol’s smile widens, and he thinks that those are reasons good enough for a possible friendship.
you're up,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lattelotus!
There are times when Chanyeol just lies on his bed or down on the floor, his laptop beside him blaring his favorite music, volume to the max. He is nice, so he tries to do that during the daytime to disturb as few neighbors as possible and also when his roommate is not home (he and Sehun are a perfect match in every way except in their taste in music). He likes to fill the silence with loud and obnoxious rock, likes to just stare at the ceiling or the walls and let the melodies and lyrics wash over him. It relaxes him, eases the stress over school and his future and life in general.
For some reason, every year around the end of summer, Chanyeol always finds himself going back to listening to his old favorite albums from high school times. He doesn’t know why but there’s always something about the season that makes him feel nostalgic and want to hear those old favorites that he still knows all the lyrics to and can still play on guitar years later. And this year, too, when August is slowly ending and September rolling around, Chanyeol’s daily playlists are suddenly full of his old favorites from Muse, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others.
This year, though, his very own nostalgia sessions get a new kind of dimension when he realizes that his neighbor likes to listen to similar kind of music. It’s not once or twice when Chanyeol can hear familiar tunes coming from the room right above his. And to make it even odder (or better?) his neighbor seems to like many same songs as Chanyeol himself, judging from how many times they seem to loop them (just like Chanyeol). This makes Chanyeol curious, makes him wonder what kind of a person lives upstairs and whether they, too, like to lie around and drown their stress and worries into the vibrant rock melodies. They at least seem more unconcerned about the noise and disturbing neighbors since some days Chanyeol can hear the thumping music all the way until midnight, when he’s already either turned the volume down or plucked in his earphones. He doesn’t mind but he wonders about other neighbors; he’s sometimes gotten complaints of playing piano or guitar too loud for too long.
On one slow Wednesday forenoon Chanyeol is loitering at home because he has no lectures that day and only evening shift at work. He lifts his laptop on the bed beside him and puts on Red Hot Chili Peppers, clicking the volume up again because he’s pretty sure that every neighbor and their mom aren’t home this time of the day. Except one, it seems. One and half songs later, Chanyeol can hear the familiar, echoing thump of music through his ceiling. He glances up and smiles a bit to himself. He knows it’s stupid but the music his neighbor plays almost feels like a greeting. Chanyeol lies down, crossing his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling.
He starts wondering again. Maybe the neighbor is a student like him, because they’re home at such a random time. Or maybe they’re unemployed. Or a freelance designer who works at home. Chanyeol is kind of bursting with curiosity, he’s been trying to imagine the mysterious neighbor who likes to blare Chanyeol’s old favorite music the same way as him. Nowadays his stomach flips a little every time he runs into people in the stairway when he’s coming or going, automatically wondering whether they’re the one who lives above him. Chanyeol doesn’t see his neighbors that often and definitely doesn’t know all of them so it’s possible that he’s never even seen the mysterious neighbor. But now he kind of wants to. His curiosity is killing him. Sometimes he thinks of going and slipping a paper under the neighbor’s door or into their mailbox and asking which songs are their favorites and why. He also wonders whether the person living upstairs actually listens to his music, too, and finds it equally funny that their tastes are so similar. He wonders a lot.
For some reason Chanyeol feels kind of restless right then, so he pushes himself up and goes to grab his guitar on a whim. He hasn’t played for a while but listening to the RHCP classics make his fingers itch, and he sits back on the bed, the guitar in his lap and pauses the music. He crouches over the guitar and starts plucking the strings, digging up the right chords from the back of his memory. With some songs, his fingers move almost on their own, the muscle memory still there from high school when they used to cover Red Hot Chili Peppers songs with their band. He lazily plucks through a couple of songs he can still remember, so absorbed in playing that he doesn’t even realize that the music upstairs has stopped, nor does he hear Sehun coming home until his roommate sharply knocks on his doorframe and asks him to cut it out because he has a huge exam tomorrow and needs to study and wants silence, thankyouverymuch. Chanyeol gives his roommate a nod and a bit reluctantly puts down his guitar and grabs his earphones.
On a Sunday morning that week, Chanyeol’s somehow up before noon, lying on his bed and again plucking his guitar; he hasn’t been able to put it away since Wednesday, much to Sehun’s annoyance. He’s been rediscovering their band’s old cover songs and trying out some new stuff, too, and he just feels like he could play and play all the time.
On his way to kitchen to get some juice, Chanyeol notices a folded piece of paper on the floor by their front door. He goes and picks it up, thinking it’s something Sehun has dropped but is surprised when he opens the paper.
A request for the guitarist. I think I heard you playing bits of RHCP’s The Zephyr Song the other day, could you maybe play it again?
The handwriting’s a bit messy but readable and Chanyeol can only stare at the paper for a moment while his mind tries to fit all the pieces together. His first thought is that the message must be from the neighbor upstairs, it can’t be anyone else. They heard his playing? And they want to hear more so they must’ve liked it even a little. Chanyeol finds his heart pounding and hands shaking slightly as he retreats back to his room.
His guitar rests on the bed, beside his bundle of blankets and laptop. Chanyeol reads the short message over and over, still completely incredulous. He’s indeed been playing The Zephyr Song, it was one of the covers they used to do in high school, and it’s a song that Chanyeol really likes to play.
Could you maybe play it again? Chanyeol can’t help a flip in his stomach as he reads the words again; it’s been so long since someone specially asked him to play anything. But when should he play? Is the neighbor home right now? Could they be sitting upstairs, waiting? Chanyeol doesn’t know but decides to give it a try, and he can always play it again later.
Chanyeol drops the paper on his bed and picks up his guitar in turn. He walks to open the window and sits down by it. He searches the lyrics online just in case, plucks a couple of times to check the tune, flexes his fingers and exhales slowly, his heart still pounding weirdly fast. And then he starts playing. His voice comes out a bit rough with the lack of practice lately and he can’t keep up with all the lyrics but he plays on, trying to make up the slight flaws with the energetic rendition and powerful choruses. When Chanyeol plucks the last, fading chords that escape out of the window to the sunny weather, he feels weirdly accomplished, like he would’ve played to a huge audience instead of… well, basically no one.
But after a couple of seconds of silence, he can clearly hear clapping coming from outside, from one storey up. Chanyeol sits very still, listening, and can feel himself swelling with happiness. He can only grin stupidly at grumpy Sehun, who barges into the room a moment later, demanding what the hell is the noise so early in the morning.
Later that day, after Chanyeol’s gathered enough courage for couple of hours, he quietly opens their door and slips out, climbing the flights to next storey. He stops in front of the apartment right above his and Sehun’s - number 11 - and squeezes a folded and a bit crumbled piece of paper in his hand. Chanyeol just wants to thank the stranger, as playing the cover for them made him feel so great and happy for some reason. Just slip the paper under the door like they had done and go back in, Chanyeol thinks but can’t quite make himself approach the door.
Chanyeol would’ve probably stood there for hours, hesitating, hadn’t the very door he was staring at opened suddenly. Chanyeol twitches, completely startled, and is suddenly looking at a boy around his own age. The boy, who seems to freeze mid-step, looks equally startled to see Chanyeol just standing there in front of his door. They stare at each other awkwardly a couple of seconds, Chanyeol taking in The Mysterious Neighbor and thinking that he’s nothing like Chanyeol imagined. He’s kind of short, has a delicate, ordinary looking face and light brown hair that falls over his eyes from under the white snapback. He’s wearing a plain white shirt under a green flannel one and ripped jeans. He looks like half of the guys in Chanyeol’s university.
Chanyeol gives him a tentative smile. “Hi. I’m... from downstairs,” he says and points.
He can see the boy’s eyebrows rise in surprise.
“I just... Um, here,” Chanyeol stammers and instead of trying to find the words just hands the paper to the boy. The other takes it, unfolds and reads. The corners of the boy’s mouth curl upwards and when he raises his eyes at Chanyeol again, he’s smiling. (He has a nice smile.)
“Thank you for the cover, I liked it. And I would love to hear more sometime.”
Chanyeol’s smile widens, and he thinks that those are reasons good enough for a possible friendship.
you're up,
lattelotus!
no subject
It's a lovely, lovely story and you wrote the lead-in so well and sprinkled it with all these bits of cool and pieces of precious, and it was such a wonderful read! Aside from all that, there was a time in my past when I used to play RHCP, Green Day and Muse on a loop so your selection made me so happy ♡. Like Chanyeol, I didn't play the music too loudly or too late bc Idw to disturb my neighbors LOL.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story!
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i love EEEEEEEEEEVERY single bit in this fic! i got so into this that i didn't notice anything else around me. TOTALLY GOT ME. i love all the characters here (lmao poor sehun and suffering because of chanyeol, i can so imagine this happening XD) and how you described the music. *____* it felt like i could totally hear the music and those songs in my head!!! AAAAAAAH. and although i kinda had an idea what would happen in the end it was STILL so touching when the mysterious neighbor finally appeared when chanyeol went to see him!!!! (i think i have a guess who he might be.......... I THINK :D) POSSIBLE FRIENDSHIP YEAAAAAAAAAAH (or maybe something else too ;DDD), the ending was somehow really touching! everything is just soooo beautiful here i can't even know how to say it? ;;;; all in all i love everything music-related stuff with chanyeol because daaaaaamn that guy is just too talented for his own good and he just knows, understands, FEELS the music in a very very special way. and congratulations, you managed to capture that!!!
I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WEREN'T SURE IF I'D BE DISAPPOINTED ABOUT THIS FIC because i just want to read this again and again?!?! *_________* SO PRETTY I WANT TO CRY. just thank you thank you thank you for writing this and sharing with us, ahhhh these kind of fics are always a good reminder why shiritori rocks because it might bring awsomeness like this! ♥ (THIS COMMENT SUCKS I'M SORRY. DDD:::) WRITE ME A SEQUEL OR TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. 8D;
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and i'm so happy you liked this because i had fun writing it! and omg, what a conincidence hahaha XD<3 i picked the bands that chanyeol's said were his favourites.
and i was contemplating whether or not i should make them introduce each other at the end, maybe i should have...
thank you for the lovely comment! :D
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i think your guess about the neighbor is right! XD i'm not 100% satisfied with the ending, i was struggling a bit with how to end it smoothly but meh, it's like that now! loll sehun and the struggle...
ah, chanyeol was so perfect for his role in here, and tbh now i'd just want to hear more and more covers from him, i'm sure he could do countless rock songs with his guitar and that perfect voice of his u__u
LOL I'M HAPPY YOU LIKED THIS, i really am ;;;<3 as for what happens next... hmmm.
The boy's name is Baekhyun and he turns out to be fun and easy to talk and be with. Turns out that when one gets to know him a little, he never really shuts up, cracking jokes and throwing witty comments around all the time. And he's sort of a music enthusiast just like Chanyeol; he plays piano and sings. It doesn't take long for them to end up hanging out on each other's rooms, music blaring and them passing time, doing homework together or talking about everything and nothing. And now whenever Chanyeol plays his favorite songs on guitar, Baekhyun joins him, singing with his soft and clear voice and humming or laughing quietly when he doesn't know the words. Chanyeol finds that he loves those moments the most.
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I had a feeling it was baekhyun! Thanks again for this lovely story ♡