euphoria

lee kiwon atlas' main vocal

[idryusan]

pantomime.

[idkiwon-blog]

idryusan‌:

san reaches out, hooks a finger into the loop of his shoelace and tugs at it. it’s an idle motion with no real purpose behind it. something to distract himself with. and it’s almost entirely the reason kiwon’s here with him now anyway. a distraction, though san’s not even sure of what. his own crippling inability to act like a functional human? perhaps that’s just it. “what were you up to?” he eventually asks, slides his hand away from kiwon’s shoe only after the knot has come undone. takes another sip as he waits for kiwon to retie it. “practice, too?” he guesses, or maybe something more exciting. “or, you’re promoting now. yeah?” he asks him. he should be better at keeping up with things like this.

“you would, though.” he points out, tilts his head and grins at him. kindly, softly, because the truth is that san is never going to really realize how impressive he is on stage. how incredibly he can command a performance. kiwon knows that he won’t because kiwon sees so much of himself in the older male, enough that he wants to wrap his arms around him and cradle him close and tell him it can be better than this, because kiwon desperately needs someone to do the same for him. but, when you’re known for being somewhat akin to the soft and ever present glow of sunshine on a lazy summer afternoon, people don’t comfort you. they come to you for comforting. and that’s fine, it is, kiwon has made that his role in life. made it that way because he needs a role so desperately, needs some assurance that he cannot so easily be forgotten, discarded. he thinks san needs the same thing. that comfort, that stability. so he’s here to give it to him if he can. to pay it forward, in case someday, someone returns the favor. but he’s not holding his breath for it. “you’d spin into it and decimate me  and i’d never be able to show my face again for the shame of it.” he laments this melodramatically, as if hamlet mourning the fallen horatio, and rolls his head to the side with a huff. 

toes tap to his and kiwon taps back. its a familiar give and take. for all that he’s younger than the other, he feels like he’s cornered a kitten in an alley, trying to coax it out towards him. it always feels a bit like that with san, as if he’s some feral creature, delicate but steely in it’s fury, with thin claws that sting like a razor’s edge when cornered. 

he thinks that’s how san must feel, a lot of the time. cornered. he thinks san must feel that way because kiwon himself feels that way, and maybe he’s projecting. but finding shades of himself in other people, finding bits and pieces to relate to, its the way he navigates the world. he unwinds people like tapestries, picking apart threads not to hurt but to understand, to marvel at the elaborate beauty of it, to design himself in their image, crafting himself into what they need. what they want. 

he sneaks his fingertips forward until they graze the back of san’s hand, slide down the lengths of his fingers, curling against them. at least san will never be able to mock the size of his hands, as others do, laughing at stubby fingers and small palms. or the things fan say about it - as if the size of his stature or hands or the slightness of his frame reflects in some inherent way on his masculinity, an idea that sours his mood upon any reflection. he sweeps his hand through peach pink hair, dye fading towards a salmon softness, and tries not to think about the way the world seems to find softness and masculinity diametrically opposed, and how he struggles to reconcile himself with either side of that. and he looks at san and thinks he might understand that too. “promoting, yeah, but i was practicing.” he sighs, nose scrunching upwards in displeasure. “i need it. it just doesn’t come as easily as it does for some people. like my body isn’t listening to what i’m telling it to do. it’s stupid. sometimes i think there must be some disconnect. like, i’m hearing all the same directions, my brain is giving all the same commands, but i never look quite...exactly right when it all translates to movement.” he puffs his cheeks out, shoulders raising in a bony shrug. he pauses, adds a casual-but-not-really, “what’s up these days?” 

[idkiwon-blog]

expendable.

@idaein backstage blues. 

kiwon is a study in lethargy, because waiting around for the encore stage when member schedules had required them to film nearly first means hours upon hours spent hunched in the waiting room over his phone. at fansigns he says he spends his time backstage reading, or doing yoga, or something equally life-affirming, but the god’s honest truth is that more often than not he’s just mindlessly scrolling clickbait articles and adding things to virtual shopping carts. sometimes he takes pictures, or stupid videos. plays with camera settings or filters or lenses or angles. but mostly, it’s things like buzzfeed. 

because while gun might have to go off for some interview or daein for some acting shoot, jinsung for whatever of the thousand opportunities call out to his multi-talented soul, kiwon just....doesn’t do much. fans talk about it. how he’s not really, you know, doing anything. how he seems to be wasted. that’s the narrative right now. that kjh doesn’t know what to do with him, that they’re wasting talent. but kiwon knows the truth. 

and the truth is he works best in a group. he’s not meant to stand alone. in any other group he’d be a lead vocal/lead dance, at best. he’s only got the vocal role because the songs don’t require that much of them, and what they do require matches the tone of his voice impeccably, these days, because gun or someone is writing it specifically with him in mind. maybe that’s the upside of a heavily invested producer. its another reason to hate gun though, for making himself so unhateable. the little urchin. 

today daein is similarly un-contracted, for the moment, so he’s slouching down on the couch beside the other man. tall and broad and boyishly handsome, it’s always been something of a personal trauma for kiwon that daein is so unflinchingly disinterested in him (on a more than friendly level) but the truth is crossing a boundary like that wouldn’t do him any good. daein needs someone to love, violently, and kiwon would be so swept up in it he’d dash against the rocks like a boat on the shore. “what’re you doing?” he asks, nosy as ever, all but ramming his face into an angle that will allow him to peruse the boy’s phone screen. “is it rian noona? you’re really in over your head.” he tuts slightly, chuckling a little bit as he crosses one ankle over the other, heels propped on the waiting room table. “you guys are filming for that netflix thing right? how’s it been going?” he glances askance at him before adding, “unless you don’t want to talk about it.” he pats his hand lightly at the other’s leg, withdraws it. he knows more than many and with less judgement, that daein feels more than a stoic expression shows. 

[idkiwon-blog]

mikrokosmos.

@ruwonid at a fancy noraebang.

ruwon understands it. ruwon understands him, maybe. kiwon is not what people expect him to be. despite his stature, despite his build, despite candy floss hair and an endless smile, despite a propensity to giggle and grin, despite a soaring falsetto, he is not under any circumstances half the flighty creature he seems to be. it is easy to write him off as someone frivolous or vapid, to label him a whore or an attention seeking child, to deem him immature or ignorant.

but he isn’t.

kiwon wants to be loved. kiwon wants to be adored. kiwon wants to be touched and cherished and more than anything else he wants to be necessary. in many ways he attempts to do this by crafting himself into the perfect chameleon. if they want wanton and pliable, he’s happy to deliver. if they desire a cheeky drinking companion, he’s there. if they want an endlessly listening ear, that’s fine too.

he’s not sure what ruwon wants, but he knows what he needs.

he knows this summarily,  because it’s exactly the same thing that kiwon needs. he’d known this the moment he watched him, at a party, the first time he’d seen him interacting in a more personal sphere, one that didn’t require the masks of idol life. what he saw was a boy still fully masked, grandstanding and showboating, putting on a performance for the amusement of others. the act was so incredible, so effortless, so well practiced, in fact, that someone who wasn’t kiwon would never have been able to guess it was at play. to the outside observer ruwon seemed genuinely happy go lucky, a surface level treat, a display in the comedic relief all friendships need.

but one magician can see another’s tricks where others fail and kiwon recognized in ruwon a similar soul. so its familiar for them to be together, drinking into oblivion in an absurdly fancy cheongdam noraebang, the kind with shiny chrome and tinted floor to ceiling windows that allowed them an uninterrupted, private view of the city. he’s halfway through his third sangria (and yes, he likes his drinks as fruity and pink as his hair happens to be at the moment but if you’d like to imply that undermines his masculinity somehow, he’ll happily knock you down a peg) as he finishes crooning his way through an old ballad, smiling sweetly as he fits his hand to the other’s jaw, simpers the last few lines at him with a struggling-to-be-straight face, before he passes off the microphone and collapses down beside him on the plush velvet again. “i needed this,” he admits, “a night off.” ruwon might know what he means. even around his group, kiwon is pretending. trying. aching. to be less dispensable than he once was. to be more than he has been. he’s tired. he flops his head to the side, onto the other’s shoulder. sets the glass down and shifts, with a feline fluidity, to dump his head in the other’s lap. picks up his hand by the wrist and man-handles the other’s palm to his hair. “pet me.”

[idkiwon-blog]

home.

[idkiwon-blog]

idgun‌

he doesn’t last too long in position though, snorting as he lets his hand drop back down into his lap, “calm down, kiwi, it was just a mask. i can buy you another if it means that much to you. so if you’re done having a tantrum now, can i get back to mixing this track?” 

it’s difficult thinking about the past. he thinks this way with each new comeback. that remembering the before of atlas is painful. it’s a warped thing. he looks back now on those days, on chubby cheeks and the nickname that rattled him to his core despite its kind intentions. he thinks about how he’d chafed under illfitting jerseys and layers of supreme. there are still shades of who they had been once, threads of wanna-be hiphop interlacing their efforts. it’s difficult to remember being that boy, remembering how much he had struggled with the concept, how their music had annoyed him more often than not. 

it’s so ironic, perhaps. to think about this all now, and about how he would do anything to go back to that. the concepts are better for him now. the range and tone of their songs suits his voice more. the styling is better on him,  and it helps he lost the weight (and then some, and gained it back, and lost it, and on and on). it helps that he suits the funky hair colors they give him now, that he’s gotten more comfortable on stage, that he’s able to embrace being an idol now. 

but he hates it. 

he wants to go back to the before. when his biggest trouble was how insistently straight gunwoo was, when his greatest fear was how cruelly they were treated on broadcasts, nugus from a no name company, left to be ridiculed. but at least then he’d had the illusion that they were all in this together. that was the ridiculous part. that was the horrible thing. that he’d believed the narrative as much as any fan, that they were all underdogs climbing towards success together, that they were desperately reaching for the future - together. that had been the focal point. together. 

until they hadn’t been. until gun had been pied piper-ing away.  he resented, too, that it had all paid off so well. enjoyed the new songs and adored the concepts and found himself, conversely, crushed beneath the guilt of that feeling, frustrated his attempts at righteous fury were being stymied. “fuck you, gun, you don’t deserve knocking. respect my property and i’ll respect your personal space.” he snipes at him, clicks his tongue in a dismissive huff, rolling his eyes with disdain as the other shoots a glare in his direction. he’s stooped over the computer like a hunchback. “you look like a hunchback.” he tells him, the moment the thought blooms in his head. “and your dark circles are disgusting. they’re basically charcoal colored.” he sneers at him, flounces down onto the bed with a grunt, deposits what gun has referred to as his bony ass down atop the others legs. “pay me back now. you’re rolling in royalties, right, you can fucking afford it.” sometimes his digs at gun are more at his own expense than anything else. 

[sweaterpawsjimin]

♡

[idryusan]

pantomime.

[idkiwon-blog]

idryusan‌:

kiwon has a way of distracting people. or, at least distracting san. they don’t always match up. but san wants to climb out of his own head, and kiwon’s usually pretty good about throwing him down a rope. “teach me your new dance,” san asks as soon as kiwon’s in the room and dropping his things to the floor. san’s slumped in a corner. his shirt’s dotted with sweat spots. his legs ache. he probably shouldn’t dance anymore. but it’s his go to. overwork, to reach pain. to collapse into it. and then, into nothingness. a dreamless sort of sleep, and that’s what san’s been deciding lately counts as happiness. 

kiwon is in the practice room, because he needs to be. being the main vocalist doesn’t mean a whole lot when they aren’t a vocally focused group. this isn’t olympus, he’s not out here belting in exceptional harmonies. he’s just gotta carry the tune and do his best. and he does. daein does too. it isn’t as if they’re horrible vocalists, it’s just that kiwon knows, now, that it isn’t the focal point. atlas has always very clearly been about the rappers. now they’ve added a layer of dance expectation to things that runs him down. ragged, tired. he’s not a bad dancer, either, but he’s not the best there ever was. it takes time for him to catch up. 

he’s working on that when san messages him. he hears the kakao notification as the song comes to an end and for a moment he thinks, i don’t want to go. i want to take a shower and i want to go to bed. i want to do a facemask and watch a drama. but part of beinng kiwon is that when he’s called, he always goes. part of being kiwon is being available whenever someone needs him, wants him. because if he isn’t, they’ll go to someone else, and if they do that, what’s he going to do, really? fall apart at all his edges, flounder in a feeling of solitude that makes him uncomfortable. 

so he goes, like he always does, like he always will. san’s slumped in the corner of a practice room in another building and has clearly been struggling, in turn, with his own demons. not with dance. san never struggles with dance. it seems to come as easily to him as breathing, and then he practices until his bones grind down and he’s remade into something golden and incredible. kiwon sort of envies the outcome,but he doesn’t envy the process. 

he crouches down in front of him, brows lifting as he ruffles his hand through his own pink dyed hair. “you look like you’ve done enough dancing for today already,” he tells him helpfully, hands over a bottle of water. he pauses, looks at the other’s flushed skin, feverish with overwork, and tilts his head forward bodily, so that he can press the still-cold-from-the-convenience-mart-fridge water  bottle to the side of his neck, the back, the other side, until the quick paced breaths slow. then he releases his head, hands over the bottle. “that ones yours, since you sweated all over it.” he sits across from him,legs folded, and untwists the cap of his own bottle. “you’d learn our dance too quickly and then do it better than me, i don’t want to teach you.” 

[idkiwon-blog]

make it right.

@idjowi at a club a little after returning from chile.

when kiwon first met jowi, it was with gunwoo by her side. they'd hit it off well enough, and despite himself he maybe felt a little jealous, though he couldn't put his finger on who of at the time. if asked now, however, he'd say of gunwoo because hell if he'd be considered jealous of jowi being with a traitor. and because when kiwon met her the second time, it was when she'd messaged him to check up on what the hell was going on with gun. at his insistence, because he was both concerned and nosey, they proceeded to go out and share their grievances over the jackass and, well. a few drinks and two pairs of wandering hands later, it became something of a routine out of need, no gunwoo mess required. 

except for tonight, if jowi’s messages cursing his group member and asking kiwon to come hang out at the bar with her were anything to go by.

{ sms → jojowi } i’ll be there soon { sms → jojowi } don’t start without me { sms → jojowi } or you're buying my first round !!

he sends his reply within seconds, desperate to dig himself out of the self-deprecating hole he's gotten into after hours of trying to perfect a single high note he keeps botching lately. after all, it's easier to forget how right everyone's comments are when drunk and listening to someone else's problems. he shakes the thought on his way back to the dorm, dressing himself in dark clothing (uselessly so, due to the peeping pink of his hair) before slipping out and heading to the bar.

it's a familiar place by now, as there are only so many bars idols can trust, so it doesn't take him long to navigate his way through people and to a booth near the back corner. she's hard to miss, and a smile, though small due to the circumstances bringing her here, blooms on his lips the moment his eyes find her. “jowi noona,” he drawls out by way of greeting, leans heavy on his busan satoori because he knows she loves it on him. 

“aw come on, i told you not to get started without me, now i have a lot of catching up to do,” he complains, though the playful smile pushing his eyes up into crescents betrays him, and slides into the booth next to her easily. his hand naturally finds the small of her back, while the other reaches for the bottle of soju on the table and pours himself a shot. he downs it quick, followed by a hiss and an elbow thudding onto the table, allowing him to rest his cheek in his hands. idly, his thumb circles against the fabric of her shirt and he smiles sympathetic towards her,  “so tell me, what did my dumbass groupmate do this time and how should i get back at him for you?”

[idkiwon-blog]

home.

@idgun at su casa

as fingers run back through peach pink hair, kiwon can’t help but spend a moment admiring himself in the mirror. perhaps, however, admiring is not a fully accurate description of his actions. perhaps more apt would be “examining” as it makes some reference to the hawklike precision of his eyes as they canvas his own appearance, picking apart each and every detail therein. pores, too big. eyelids, too swollen. cheeks, slightly pink. there’s a lingering spot beside his hairline. his scalp is too dry, likely from the aggressive bleaching. if he twists just so, he almost has a double chin, he’s sure of it. people tell him not to get so fussed about these things. that half of it can be covered with makeup and that the rest is a figment of his imagination, but every time he looks off stage into the telescopic lenses that capture every microsecond of him, each expression and every falter, every pause and every facet, he knows he needs to step out onto the stage that is his life with the most polish possible. atlas is succeeding despite all odds on the backs of the talent of the rap line - as much as he hates to admit it - and there is no room for error. when they’re up in the running against olympus, with a handful of vocal powerhouses and a dark horse main dancer, kiwon has to recognize he’s carrying a lot on his back.

and he loves (loved) the rap line, but it’s not like performance is their strong suit, mostly. not in the way that it is his. not in the way that olympus or indigo have been trained into dance since they entered. kjh spent years on them wasting time with dreams of “real” rapping or whatever. shoehorning in half the vocal line just for the sake of being “proper idols” often felt like an afterthought, especially in the early days. and as it was proven to him he was expendable, kiwon knew he had to be on top of his game, every moment and every second, if he was going to make it through all this with a future, with promise, with a career.

so, when he goes fishing for the mask he’d been saving for tonight, to cool down the redness and brighten dark circles, and finds it missing, he knows exactly the culprit. the only person in the dorm who would take something of his without asking, who wouldn’t bother buying his own stupid masks, and who would, on top of that, be battling the same genetic dark circles he was. he stomps down the hall, exaggerated footfalls, and into the other’s room, barging in aggressively. “you took it, you took my mask, right?” he grumbles, it’s enough to turn his mood, to sour it. “you’re such an inconsiderate fuck, hyung,” he continues, wrenches one of the desk drawers open and begins to rummage around in it. ‘i’m gonna take something too, see how you like it,” he announces with pursing lips, glances to the side to shoot a glare at the other. it’s petty, but he’s in a bad mood, he’d wanted that time to rest. like meditation, dozing without anything to think about but maybe a podcast. an excuse to stop moving. because without one, kiwon is perpetual motion, activity incarnate, expending energy far faster than he can accumulate it.

[idkiwon-blog]

**DRUMROLL please welcome your new favorite chaotic bisexual, kim kiwon, atlas’ main vocal and cf representative. i’m jojo but i’m not important, so back to the boy. busan born and raised, got into idols because of his older sister, stuck with it because it was fun and he wanted to make people smile. laaaaame. he’s flighty and immature and not the smartest boy ever, but he has a high emotional intelligence and tries to keep people generally happy. he can be petty, shitty, and juvenile if you piss him off though. i guess he’s kind of an immature fuckboy who needs the validation of other people to keep his head on straight (and even then it’s wobbling around up there). it’s pretty easy for him to use other people and also to be used, but in the long run he’s just trying to get by with as few people hating him as possible bc the thought of people not liking him makes him want to puke. he used to be fiercely loyal to atlas until he realized the rap line were a bunch of shithead traitors and now he’s ready to rely on himself alone. even if that thought terrifies him. please hit up his PROFILE / PLOTS and message me or hit that heart (and thanks to everyone who’s already given me and my boy such a warm welcome!)

[parkjmzl]