san diego - endless summer leaves a hell of a sunburn
and just in case you've never seen the tabloid graphic i made for this fic:
im terribly proud of this even now, almost three years later.
that is a real barcode! i ripped it off some magazine somewhere when i made this, but i did painstakingly draw each of the bars i think with a ruler built into my digital drawing software.
and in case the image continues to corrupt (fucking discord links and i are in a fight and i am losing), this is the final image of the fic:
analytics for this are fully ripped from a 5sos announcement tweet of that time lol so those are Real Numbers lmfao. be extra! i sure am!
and finally, last thing i'm embedding before i begin yapping in full, noah kahan just dropped a song that had me thinking about endless summer once more, about maybe exploring this world some more or even writing a sister fic in some way shape or form. it's called 23. you'll find it here.
endless summer is something i wrote primarily in a month. i wanted to challenge myself with choosing a band that wouldn't be the most popular pick, picking a song that wouldn't be the most picked by any means, and writing something that was just,, different. it's hard to put it into words, even now.
i tried this fic a few different times, as is usual for me. it shockingly didn't have a few different iterations, but instead a full document of darlings that i had to kill but couldn't quite let go of completely. it includes gems like:
- "Sometimes, fifty bucks and the promise of free coffees for a month is a bargain."
- "seok and gyu have a clear younger sibling energy. but where gyu becomes quiet and clingy, needy for attention and affection, seokmin is different. [...] seokmin can be soft and gentle and protective in a way that screams he has done this before, he will do it now, and he will do it again. jihoon figured it must be because of the kids that look up to him or the ones theat know he's kind and reach for him in their time of need."
- this interaction we never see between ji and cheol:
“Hey sleepyhead.” A hand shakes his shoulders softly, but Jihoon still ignores it. He’s comfortable, and he feels warm and soft and sleepy, so sleepy. Why would he ever wake up?
“Jihoonie, c’mon. The bugs are gonna get bad.” The word bugs catches his attention, and Jihoon finds himself slowly forcing his eyes open. Seungcheol’s slightly hovering over him, and he smiles when he meets Jihoon’s tired gaze. It’s disarming, that smile, and Jihoon’s exhausted brain almost tells him as much.Â
- and this wedding i never even remember considering:
“Are you planning on going?”
Jihoon looks up, meeting Seokmin’s eyes in the mirror.Â
“Going where?”Â
“Kwannie’s wedding. Are you planning on going?” Seokmin’s expression is searching, and Jihoon knows that if he isn’t careful then Seokmin will read through his facade without an ounce of difficulty.
and the outline for the end of the fic written solely in dialogue snippets that are uncapitalized, meaning i wrote them fully on my phone and likely on the go. (maybe even on the clock. get paid to yaoi once in your life folks.)
i wrote this fic a year into my job when i hated my life and everything about it. i hadn't made friends despite being where i was for a year, my boss was impossible and overly sexist, i was being paid pennies for work i hated doing, it all felt like shit. it wasn't hard to come up with a premise of someone being on rock bottom, only just barely having hit ground in a never ending spiral. it got better for me post endless summer. it gets better for jihoon too. it'll get better for you, too, dearie.
lore time with b: i have an addictive personality. it's more than a little common in the family. people think it's funny that i'm so far on the straight and narrow, and that's on purpose. it's not that i don't trust myself not to stumble and fall at the slightest push, but it's exactly that i don't trust myself not to stumble and fall lol. i work really hard to keep my vices small, keep them to only affecting me, hurting me. it isn't very difficult to imagine a world in which i wasn't so scared shitless and lost myself somewhere along the line, what it would be like to have to live in the post haze of all of your bad decisions. i already am plagued by thinking about shit i said a decade ago and how the elementary schoolers bullied me for being queer and having a crush on a girl over a full decade before i'd come to realize what was happening there. to have something heavier on my shoulders than just the classic fuck ups we all have, the harsh words of elementary school girls, and the classic what ifs that will haunt me until my dying breath, it would take a lot more out of me to even manage trying to move through life.
a lighter fun fact: i used to watch Mom with my parents when i was still at home. that show likely helped shape the support network seen in this fic. those women show up for each other whenever they need it and do whatever they can for each other, at least from my recollection.
however, you'll probably notice, endless summer has no AA in it. it's because i didn't want it there. there are different ways to get clean, to stay clean. AA is in many of them. i decided it didn't need to be in here, too.
besides, i think an AA plotline would have bloated out this plot. this isn't the fault in our stars, the group meeting is not a pivotal point in the narrative. what i'm exploring with endless summer is the individual and the existing support system, the village working to take care of one of its own.
now onto the bands behind this fic: there were a few inspirations, with the main two being Green Day and blink-182. both bands are primarily known as 3 man bands even if they haven't always been, and looking at how both of them work was a big key to figuring out the logistics here. the rift and the cheol leaving was inspired pretty heavily by blink-182. one of the three original members, tom delonge, left the band before the album that san diego is pulled off of. there was a lot of shit that happened there including a breakup where they got back together after travis barker was in a plane crash before they broke up again, delonges side project first the band and then the UFO shit, but the big thing to mention is tom delonge's manager told the band that he was quitting. not tom himself. hence why seungcheol also makes what i would happily consider a very shitty decision that soils those relationships. to finish out the story, mark hoppus accidently tells the world he has a rare form of cancer and that's ultimately what gets blink-182 back together again. despite that being the inspiration for this fic, i don't see that happening here.
it's been almost three years since i finished endless summer. i will admit, i do not remember everything about her, nor do i remember what i thought happened once the fic wraps. but i can tell you what me, future b, suspects was in the cards.
they don't get back together. they just don't. these three do not get that happy ending. what seungcheol did is considered as too heinous by soonyoung and wonwoo both, and jihoon and soonyoung refuse to let wonwoo leave the band. i think fans who get mad at artists who experiment with sound are rather silly - things get boring after a time, just relisten to your favorite old songs cowards. i think cryptides share this thought too, so having wonwoo there to help change there sound enough to keep them interested, they like it. they're having fun.
besides, soonyoung trusts wonwoo to save jihoon from himself more than he'd ever be willing to trust seungcheol again. i think that's blatantly clear, and i doubt he'd ever change his mind on it either. even with wonwoo not pulling the brakes as hard or as fast as soonyoung does when jihoon starts to spiral and begins to write in an unhealthy way, he would pull them in an instant if he thought it were necessary.
besides, wonwoo found out his girlfriend was being shitty to jihoon and immediately broke up with her. he plays it off, but he probably loved that woman. soonyoung doesn't take that kinda shit lightly. in his mind, wonwoo will watch out for his jihoonie as much as he will. the three of them together is what makes it special now.
jihoon and seungcheol might try again, but inevitably they flame out. they do not work until they have some very heavy and mature conversations. i cannot see the seungcheol of this fic willing or able to do the work to make them work.
who does jihoon end up with? who's to say. because it's me, i have half the mind to tell you seokmin (lolol), but i really don't know. not soonyoung or wonwoo, he has learned his lesson about shitting where he eats and i think jihoon would take away the lesson that if he's not willing to risk the friendship then it isn't worth attempting a relationship. i can't exactly fault him for it.
what about jeonghan and minghao? those guys, it's harder to say. seeing as they didn't appear any earlier in the fic you might want to assume they didn't have as impactful of a relationship with jihoon, but i'm just not sure that's true. when it comes to Rough Times, whether that be in terms of addiction or depression or any other rough and mentally ill fiasco someone's got cooking, you often lose friends. say what you will about how or why it happens, but it just happens. i can easily see a world where these two were important to jihoon but when he was spiraling he lost them, for whatever reason.
i left this ending pretty open for a few reasons. the main one was it felt right. a smaller one is i don't have all the answers and i doubt i ever will.
to summarize, i'll leave you with what i put in the end notes three years ago:
let me just say this:
growing up feels a lot like duct taping yourself back together every time you fall apart
thanks for reading dearie. i'll catch you on the flip.
endless summer leaves a hell of a sunburn
more behind the scenes on my fics
