#no i will never complain about it bc Ash looks so dreamy here

[kindahoping4forever]

Somehow, another new clip from 5SOS's April 2022 Ask Anything Chat

[fmdtaeyongarchive]

↬ i’ll cover your deep heart and even your pain.

date: june 2020 / august 2020.

location: ash’s apartment studio / wellness retreat / ash’s apartment studio again.

word count: 1,866 words.

summary: ash writes a song for youngjoo’s birthday and decides to put it on his album.

triggers: n/a.

notes: creative claims verification. mentions of youngjoo ofc. i kinda... don’t... hate this 🥴

early june 2020.

he starts at home, where he usually does: in the comforting walls of his studio. it’s dark outside, but it’s the same level of low light it always is in his studio. the only sign of the late hour is the state of artistic drive his brain is in. a natural night owl, writing comes easiest at a late hour, a small blessing among few he has that has helped him survive life as an idol. 

youngjoo’s birthday is approaching and he needs something to give her. there’s no guide to shopping for your friend-question-mark-slash-hook-up-question-mark-slash-ex girlfriend-question-mark-slash-muse-question-mark. believe him, he’d searched both google and naver to try to find an idea.

the answer should be obvious. self-expression for ash comes far more easily through song than anything else. he’ll shower a lover in gifts if they ask him to, but she’s not his lover and they’re both too secure in their careers for an exchange of gifts, no matter how extravagant and expensive they may be, to hold all that much value based on sheer luxury alone. everything else, everything that would lend itself to sentimentality, feels like either too much or too little. there’s a line ash has to toe to keep from implying they’re more than they are without offending her by demoting her role in his life to that of a mere acquaintance.

a song can be shaped entirely by ash himself. he’ll be the auteur of its tone and content and everything it conveys. the problem ash has realized is that that turns back on him, forcing him to question what it is he wants to convey to her.

he’s written her a song once already. kind of. not really. he’d written songs to her and about her, but never directly for her. woo ah had taught him well enough that even showing him any of those songs is a bad idea, and yet here he is.

it’s obvious he needs to keep it simple. anything too romantic and it’ll come off as a confession. he doesn’t have a confession he’s looking to make, to start with, and even if he did, confessing on her birthday would be terribly self-centered of him. no one with half a brain and respect for others would believe that’s the right move to make.

what does he want to tell her? there’s a lot, but it’s easy to shift through and eliminate everything that wouldn’t be appropriate to make this song about. pulling to the forefront the specifics of what he can and should tell her is harder.

he abandons that and instead pulls out his one of his favorite guitars, his black gibson les paul, and sets to playing around with chord progressions and suitable keys. there’s a melody that bounces around in his head and he sends it soaring into the air through the strings, not satisfied until he finds a way to shape it into the kind of rolling comfort youngjoo provides him.

youngjoo’s a composer, a master with notes even if ash knows she doubts her lyrical ability at times. if words fail, he can hope she’ll connect with him in the heart of the song.

if he’s lyrics, so forward and obvious and often messy in execution under the excuse of heavy emotion, then youngjoo is the melody and harmonies that lay underneath, steady, strong, and deep.

mid-june 2020.

another night, he returns to the composition he’d written and he puts the instrumental on repeat as he pulls out a pen and a notebook and writes youngjoo a letter. if that’s what he wants to do through the song so badly, what better way to start than to do it for real? it’s not something she’ll ever read, but he'll have it.

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dear joo,

letters are romantic like no other form of writing that exists other than, perhaps, song itself. at the risk of sounding like one of those old men who complain that all the kids do these days is text, it wouldn’t be so bad to bring letter-writing back. it’s comforting to read a letter, isn’t it? there’s something so permanent yet fragile about written words on paper. it’s comforting and delicate all at once. that’s how you make me feel sometimes. you’ve seen parts of me i worry about you having seen. on late nights like this without anyone else around, i get terrified that the sides of me that aren’t perfect are going to be the ones that cost me you from my life.

i know what you’d say if you read this. ‘don’t be silly. you’re perfect the way you are, ash.’ you’re always so much better and so much more loving than i give you credit for, but it’s not your fault i don’t give you enough credit. i know the woman you are. i’ve been your friend a while now. once upon a time, you even granted me the privilege of being your lover. i know you. knowing you so well is why i can’t get you off of my mind.

i’ve thought so hard about what i think you want to hear from me. i think about that a lot, actually, even when your birthday isn’t approaching. what do you want me to say? what do you want me to do? what do you want me to be? but none of that is what you’d want me to do, i know, so i’m now beginning to think it would be better if i didn’t think too hard about that. i’ll think about what i want to tell you.

song is a gift. i don’t believe in a god or a greater design, but music is the closest thing the human race has created to true divinity. in music, we can express everything we can’t say without a melody or a rhythm or a harmony to support us.

i’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, about us, and about this world we live in. there are days i feel so empty that i ache with the coldness of it. do you have those days, too? you must. i don’t know if you know i realize this because i’m in my own head so often, but i know my life isn’t the only hard one out there. i’m lucky in so many ways i take for granted. i know your relationship with your parents isn’t what you deserve it to be, and i know your heart is so big that you’ll do anything to see the good in anyone who crosses your path, even if it hurts you in the end. it may have seemed like i blamed you for it when we were together, but i understand you didn’t hide your feelings from me on purpose. i’ve never fully understood that about you. we’re so different in that way. but, now, it worries me more than anything. are there other feelings you don’t show me? fear, sadness, hurt?

i hope you know that you can share all of those emotions with me. i won’t judge you for them and they won’t be a burden to me. i meant it when i said i wanted to be a light for you. let me shine for you when your world is dark and let me be your blanket when you feel cold both inside and out.

i’m a greedy man and i want so much i shouldn’t, but please know that you allowing me to be that would make me happy. if i could return a fraction of the comfort and peace you’ve brought me, being able to give you that for your birthday and beyond would be the greatest gift i could ever give you.

yours, ash

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the letter turns easily into lyrics after that. the letter is compressed into something much shorter, but it’s brief and to the point, avoiding the detours and scenic walks his stream of conscious letter had taken him on. it isn’t his most winding, poetic feat of storytelling, but he has no intention of it being. this isn’t a song meant to touch any listener who hears it. this is a song meant to touch one listener.

recording it comes similarly easily, and he insists on recording the song in one take. half an hour passes and he stops. there are times he’ll spend hours upon hours recording one song in the studio, but this song doesn’t need that. to fret over every intricacy of delivery and vocal technique would be to strip the song of its rawness, to present it as overly polished and perfected, and he already tries so hard to be some idealized version for himself in front of youngjoo already.

this is honesty.

august 2020.

the draft he sends youngjoo before he performs the song for her isn’t what the finished product of the song ends up being. it’s rough and short in comparison to what he ends up turning in to bc entertainment, but he’d had no intention of turning it into the company in the first place when he’d started. it’d been meant to be only for her, but as his album falls more and more into place, he realizes, in a lot of ways, it’s become a reflection of the past year of his life. it’s only natural that an album he’s played such a role in writing ends up as such, and songs inspired by youngjoo are all over the track list. when he looks back on it, she’s been a big part of his life for the last several months. some of his saddest moments had been with her, and that’s more than clear from the songs he’s written about her, but his happiest had been, too. his birthday and her birthday both stand out as times his self-hatred and internal resentment had been pushed away for long enough for him to genuinely smile in a way he remembers.

youngjoo won’t be the cure for his problems, much like he can’t be the cure for hers, but it’s times like their night together at the retreat that make ash want to try harder to solve his problems himself. this song, this piece titled ‘joo’ that he’ll undoubtedly need to rename, listening to it reminds him of the better person he can be if he lets himself. in a turn of fate, the song he’d meant to be a comfort to youngjoo also comforts him in the knowledge he’s capable of more than destruction. 

the song deserves a place on his album and he’s prepared to fight for it. so much of the album is dark, because that’s what he’s felt so much lately, but this one isn’t. the orchestral outro is added completely of his own accord, a further representation of how youngjoo makes him feel in their best moments together: light, dreamy, and nostalgic for days they’re supposed to have left behind them.

when he sends it into bc, it’s the only track in that email, and he includes a note, bolded and underlined so they can’t pretend they didn’t see it: this has to be the last track. it’s the final piece of the story.