warnings ── cursing, mentions of mental illness, insomnia, and abuse (verbal), lyr's subconsciously projecting his trauma onto the writer's block he's getting and UGH it's kinda sad
Lyr sat at his upscale desk, laptop taunting him as he chewed at his plump, peach-flavored lips.
The song he had been working on for a week at a brisk pace had suddenly come to a stop, and no matter what beats he changed or melodies he switched around, it just didn't seem to be clicking like the rapper wanted it to.
Even the lyrics jotted down in his stuffed notebook weren't making sense to him anymore, and the looming frustration was beginning to show as he hit the backspace key with an unnecessary force, nearly jamming the key inside the keyboard.
Glancing over at his phone, he groaned when seeing the time: it was four in the morning, and yet and still he hadn't gotten finished with the chorus of the song. Nothing was working for Lyr like the way he wanted to anymore, and it was pissing him off more than he wanted it to. He had sat at this desk since seven p.m. yesterday night, and he didn't even have the melody of the chorus completed.
Hell, he hadn't even started writing the lyrics for the chorus.
Pushing back from the suffocating desk, Lyr stood up and stretched, hands on his head as he walked around his room, impatiently pacing back and forth as he racked his brain of anything that would click at the moment. The Russian-Korean was desperate at this point in time, and it hurt him to lower his expectations of himself, and call someone for help.
Due to his passive agressive personality disorder, he couldn't admit that he needed help: it was something he always struggled with, and he seeked to do his best by himself and without the help of any other individuals. He felt better that way──stronger, that way. He wasn't about to call someone for a second opinion and waste both his and their time.
He could figure it out on his own, and that was what he was going to do.
That's what he always did. Why would he stop now?
Walking over to the bookshelf stored in the corner of Lyr's massive studio room, he glanced at the spine of the books, hoping to gleam something from the titles. Nothing happened, and he was tempted to hit the bookshelf before biting back the urge and instead settling for an annoyed "Fuck."
Storming his way back to his desk, he collapsed in the office chair, backspacing more of the recorded notes as he grabbed his guitar and quickly tuned it up, hoping to find the right key. Nothing was working for him as he tried random chords that he had thought of, and it was starting to show how mentally blocked the rapper really was. He kept strumming a G chord, hoping something──anything──would go off in his brain and come up with a stunning idea, but absolutely nothing happened.
Frustrated at the lack of change, Lyr angrily tossed the guitar towards the wall, the guitar itself making a terrible strum before tumbling to the ground. Unbothered and silently enraged at the amount of nothing changing, Lyr went back to replaying the song over and over and over again, hoping something would stick out to him and spur him forward.
Lyr had a habit of playing things over and over again: he replayed memories like vhs tapes, and when things were important to him──such as his music career and traumatic family life──he never forgot about it. He never forgot about the hardships him and his mother endured to get the life that have now.
He'd never forget about the names and comments his grandfather and father would say about him behind closed doors. He would never forget the oppressive atmosphere of his house when his father came home from work in a sour mood, and would never forget the look of fear and hurt on his face when his father called him to the dinner table, reminding him how useless and talentless he really was because he messed simple tasks up.
There were moments like that Lyr Dokyeom-Ivanov would never forget, and those were the same moments that kept pushing the Russian-Korean rapper to his limits.
Finally yet reluctantly giving up on finishing the song tonight, Lyr sighed a heavy sigh as he shut his laptop, tossing his baseball hat onto his bedside table as he grunts when hitting the pillow.
Insomnia was a bitch to Lyr, and he usually spent most of his nights like this, staying up until five or 6 a.m and sleeping in until one p.m. Sometimes he even pulled all-nighters. His almost nonexistent sleep schedule was jacked up, but he'd do anything to get music out for his fans. They are what kept him going, if no one or nothing else did the job.
"Fuck, I'll do it tomorrow." Lyr wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, but said it out loud anyway, resorting to laying in his bed with wide open eyes until sleep finally slowly but surely greeted him.
Anything was better than thinking of the past at this point.
a/n ── there's some lore to unpack here but it's 12 am for me so i'm going to sleep 😭 let me know your thoughts on this small chapter and OH tysm for 1.8k reads!!! i'm so happy lyr has gotten popular with a lot of you ❤ ugh this oc has been with me through thick and thin he's been here ever since 2022 i wanna say so yeah this means so much to me 🤕 okay byeee
