Round 26: Heat Death of the Universe
Title: Heat Death of the Universe
Team: Future
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Big Bang
Pairing: GD-centric, past GD/TOP
Summary: Eight years on, Jiyong and Seunghyun have dinner.
Prompt Used: supplementary prompt 2
Jiyong's ten bars deep into the new Jennie Kim single when Seungri finally blows it. Neither of them realize at first. Seungri still likes listening to himself talk a little too much to stop and reflect, and Jiyong's too preoccupied by the weird shit the autotune overlay is doing to the hi-hat for the slip to register. But then the crick that's been developing in his neck for the last hour pulls him out of his work-and there it is, right in his lap.
"Wait," he croaks, and shakes his shoulders out like a bear waking from winter hibernation. His mouth is so dry the back of his throat feels like it's about to crack clean in half. Either has to do with the horrible ventilation in this studio or the fact he hasn't ingested anything in about twenty hours. Probably a combination of the two. Jiyong rolls his head all the way back over the edge of his chair, the crack of his spine like a gunshot, and fixes Seungri with a cocked eyebrow. "Maknae. You had lunch with Seunghyun?"
"Yeah," Seungri says, blinking. His eyes are wide and guileless. That could mean anything.
Jiyong coughs delicately into a loose fist. "When?"
"Last Saturday. I thought I told you when he asked." His eyes thin with concentration, fingers fiddling with his expensive cuff links. For a minute, Jiyong's gaze arrests on the mother-of-pearl. His lower lip folds beneath his teeth. Sometimes it still feels strange that Seungri's at precisely the age where dressing in bespoke is the norm rather than an outlier. Then Jiyong remembers they'd all left military service behind a long time ago, and Seungri hasn't worn pants that sagged to his knees in at least five years. These days, playing with old toys seems to be a vocation of one. "I definitely told you," Seungri continues. "Last month, January, before the Volume Up with iKON. We went to that old noodle place he likes."
"Oh," Jiyong says. On the computer, his muted hi-hat keeps tapping. He breathes out, slow and controlled. The type of careful that immediately precedes a steep drop off the edge of the cliff. "I didn't even know he was in the country."
Turns out Seunghyun's been back in Seoul for weeks. Of course, Seungri never being able to keep his mouth shut is the recurring motif of the day (the decade, really), because two hours after he leaves the YG building, citing another radio engagement, Jiyong gets a text from an unknown number. Hey, it reads. Want to grab dinner?
Jiyong rolls his eyes. Weighs the options of agreeing to a consolation meal machinated by Seungri or staying holed up in the studio for the next x hours finishing this track, and then fires back: who dis? new number~
The phone starts ringing a minute later. Jiyong's thumb hovers over the red decline button for a solid two rings before it slides, grudgingly, toward the green one. "This is definitely not a new number," Seunghyun says without preamble, voice crackling down the line, and Jiyong almost laughs.
"No," he agrees, "but yours is."
"Just a temp. I'm not staying long." Another lie-Seungri said he'd been thinking about moving back. Fifteen years together, and still none of them have figured out to keep their secrets from him. Or maybe it was on purpose; maybe Seungri-filtered truths were easier to swallow. "You have time today?"
Jiyong bites down on the cuticle of his thumb. "Depends," he says.
Seunghyun huffs, amused. "On what?"
"Where are you taking me?"
After Big Bang's official indefinite hiatus/unofficial disbandment about three years back, Seunghyun had immediately wrapped his last acting project and bought a house in Sweden. It wasn't really an unprecedented move. Encouragement of his pet Scandinavian furniture project had come from most of the familiar sectors (family, YG, Daesung and Seungri), and bloomed into a business of its own during the years after he came back from the army. He'd liked the ring of CEO Choi Seunghyun so much that he decided he wanted to pursue it full time. "You don't even speak the language, oppa," Minji pointed out at the going away party two nights before Seunghyun left. "How are you going to survive? It's not like you can't design furniture in Korea."
Seunghyun, tipsy from the three full glasses of red wine, had smiled broadly and looped an arm over Daesung's shoulders. "Remember what they said when they sent us to Japan? Immersion is the best way to learn."
So he'd left. Jiyong stayed, to help run Nonagon and rack up royalties by writing music for Pink Punk. Daesung started spending half the year in Osaka with his girlfriend and the other half in Seoul, taking the occasional variety gig and guest starring on Seungri's radio show every quarter. Youngbae's the only one Jiyong sees regularly. At first, it felt like traveling back in time to 2001, when it was just the two of them with the sunbaes at the old building in Hapjeong. Then Youngbae reverted back to the familiar two-inch fauxhawk and it felt like being stuck in 2008, except instead of putting hours in at the studio he was helping Jinu run YG's A&R division. Akdong Musician's 2021 second quarter rebranding into a darker, edgier image had been his doing. ("I'm working through some shit," Youngbae said, grimacing through his beer when Jiyong took him out the night before release.) The year Jinhwan left for military service, Youngbae went down to Hongdae and recruited half the kids for the new boy group. It was a good fit. Past all the dougieing and #swaggie, he'd always been the most nurturing one.
Seunghyun suggests some upscale sushi restaurant in Gwangjin. Jiyong agrees because Seunghyun offers to pay, and because his stomach is about to mutiny by crawling out of his mouth. Nothing much feels out of the ordinary on the way there, beyond the deluge of sleety February rain flooding the streets. Seeing Seunghyun sitting at the bar, though, feels a bit like a punch in the gut. He's settled into his mid-thirties with gentlemanly aplomb, dark hair slicked back in a fluffy coiffure. There's a splash of red blooming from the pocket of his suit jacket. Thick-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose. If Jiyong squints, tilts his head, and shaves off ten kilos, this could be 2010.
By contrast, Jiyong literally pulled himself off the floor of the studio twenty minutes ago to get here. He isn't even sure what color his jeans are. Long songwriting binges like this always make him wonder if he actually cares about clothing at all. Jiyong almost pulls his beanie over his ears again and turns on his heel, but then the server stops next to Jiyong's place setting and drops off two miso soups and salads. Seunghyun's already ordered for both of them. Jiyong's stomach does the rest of the convincing.
"Nice pocket square," Jiyong says, plopping down in the chair on Seunghyun's right and peeling his face mask off.
Seunghyun's smile is warm. So is the embrace, when it comes, like hugging a hot pile of laundry just as it slides out of the dryer. "You still like tuna nigiri best, right?"
"Always," Jiyong says, and ignores the uncomfortable clench of his throat. He tugs the beanie off and cards a hand through his greasy hair, grimacing.
Seunghyun's eyes flick to his forehead. "You know the netizens call you G-Donatella now," he murmurs. The corner of his mouth jumps.
Jiyong snorts. The last Botox injection had been years ago, for Christ's sake. Netizens never knew how to let things go. "I can't believe you're still keeping tabs on Daum."
The first round comes a minute later. Jiyong inhales sushi and mops his eyes when the wasabi shoots up his nose. Seunghyun manages to keep pace without looking like a total animal, which Jiyong finds incredibly unfair, but then Seunghyun's always had a weird way of remaining dignified while acting ridiculous. Maybe it was still just the aura, even after all these years.
When they're finished, Jiyong checks off round two and sends the slip off to the kitchen. "How's the business?" he asks carefully, propping his chin on a palm. Two-day-old stubble rubs against his skin.
Seunghyun pushes the last piece of his lettuce around in its ginger dressing. "Not great. Pretty shitty, actually." His voice is dry. "You know IKEA kind of has the furniture industry on lock. I've been thinking about coming back."
Jiyong puts his chopsticks down to hide the embarrassing tremor in his hand. "Yeah?" he says, voice level. "You still have the house, right? The huge villa?"
"Yeah. Mom still lives there, alone. After Hyeyoon got married, she's been lonely." Seunghyun signals the server for more sake. When his hand settles back in his lap, he's grinning, cheeks creasing with his dimples. Big dumb dog, Jiyong thinks. He remembers the night after dinner at Jiro's ten years ago, tilting his head up and tasting sweet soy sauce on Seunghyun's tongue, and resists the urge to reach out and mess up his hair. He hasn't been allowed to do that for a long time now. "Park Hongsoo expressed interest in working with me again. Another political thriller, I think."
"Congratulations," Jiyong says, and drums his fingers against the table.
"So what have you been working on?" Seunghyun asks, face open and curious. He sounds genuinely interested, which makes it worse, somehow.
It isn't supposed to be so easy, falling back into the familiar patterns. Catching up like old times, when they'd go half the year without seeing each other between promotional periods and Seunghyun would have to spend the first weeks back rebuilding the right muscles to dance.
Normally, Jiyong is very good at compartmentalizing. Everything goes neatly in its own space: work, pleasure, pre-Big Bang friends, post-Big Bang acquaintances, fashion, performance, songwriting. Any time they mixed was deliberate and precise, a carefully calculated experiment. But Seunghyun-Seunghyun's always been an unquantifiable entity. He refuses to stay in any of Jiyong's boxes. He's the kind of catalyst that makes Jiyong do incredibly stupid shit, like sleep with him, or drag him back to YG for a second audition, or stick an entire piece of wasabi in his own mouth, raw, just to see Seunghyun crack the fuck up. Dami told him once, when she first met Seunghyun before they debuted: that's the type of boy you take home to your mother. Even dressed up in baggy BAPE and faded jeans, watching the look on her brother's face, she'd known. Maybe it's because he's still working in the same damn building a decade later, but if Jiyong closes his eyes he can remember it all like it happened a heartbeat ago, swapping shitty mixtapes after training, frenetic teenage handjobs at night in the dorm, their chests rising and falling in tandem after twelve hours sweating it out in the practice room with the rest of the band. Telling Seunghyun his lyrics were shit, and getting a sound kiss on the mouth just to shut him up. One heartbeat, two. For Seunghyun, it must seem like another lifetime.
Seeing him again wasn't a mistake, but it isn't easy, either. The detached part of Jiyong looks down at the bar and thinks, with a sort of vicious finality, you'll always be a little bit in love with him. But sometimes you love someone too much. So much that it's all you can see, all you can hear, all you can say. So much that it scares you. Crushes you, piece by infinitesimal piece, until the only choices left are to give in wholeheartedly or turn tail and run.
And sometimes you love someone, but they stop loving you back.
"Jennie Kim's new solo album is slated to come out this summer," Jiyong says, dragging his spoon through the last of his miso soup. "Knowing YG, he'll push it back another half year rejecting my title tracks."
"No wonder," Seunghyun says. He grins when Jiyong raises his eyebrows. "You look like shit."
"Fuck off," Jiyong says, wry, and then the next plate of sushi arrives with the sake.
"You want to go back to the studio with me?" Jiyong asks, afterwards, when they're out on the street. "Sajangnim might have a heart attack."
"Give me another few weeks to work up the courage," Seunghyun says, and chuckles. His shiny shoes glint beneath the streetlights. When Jiyong sits down on a dry-ish piece of curb to wait for a cab, Seunghyun joins him.
"Don't mess up your suit," Jiyong says, appalled.
Seunghyun just shrugs. His beautiful loafer steps straight in the slush. "I have a hundred more where these came from."
"Still. Take some responsibility."
They pause, Jiyong hunched over his knees, Seunghyun halfway down to the sidewalk. He slips the rest of the way, feet splashing. "You aren't," he says, almost too gentle to hurt, "my leader anymore."
"I know, I know." The alcohol's loosened his tongue and his inhibitions, which is why Jiyong turns, buoyed by infinite possibility, and asks, "Want to come back to my place?"
Seunghyun's smile goes a little strained. "Your place."
Jiyong lines his sneaker up with the elegant taper of Seunghyun's dress shoe. Looking back, 2020 had been an uncharacteristically scandal-less year for YG Entertainment until Jiyong's highly publicized falling out with Kiko Mizuhara. Among other things, it had come out to the press in no uncertain terms that Jiyong was really fucking gay. Flaming homosexual, liked it up the ass. Things people had already suspected for some time-but there's a difference between murmured rumors perpetuated by netizens and having the entire sordid story splashed on the front page of every major news site.
It wouldn't have mattered much to the public if he hadn't been prepared to marry her. It still hadn't mattered much, considering Big Bang hadn't done anything as a group for at least a year by then. It was easy for Yang Hyunsuk to make the executive decision to shelve them permanently and repurpose their individual talents elsewhere. Jiyong went through the requisite nine-to-twelve months of self-reflection and filled three notebooks with music that ended up in every company release the next year. None of them were doing anything they hadn't already done before-except Seunghyun, who'd moved to a totally different continent. Running away, Jiyong called it, at the going away party. Starting fresh, Seunghyun countered, and hadn't spoken to him for the rest of the night.
If he leans forward, he can catch a faint whiff of Seunghyun's spicy cologne. Being this close used to mean something.
"Aren't seeing anyone, are you?" Jiyong says. Sorry, he thinks, as the next moment coalesces. Sorry I'm selfish, sorry I don't know how to stop wanting things, sorry I don't know what's good for me. "I know it isn't your villa, but it's a pretty nice apartment-"
"Jiyong," Seunghyun says.
Jiyong leans back, palms skidding hard against the pavement behind him, eyes glued to the smoggy clouds overhead. "What?"
"What do you want?"
"I dunno," Jiyong says. He doesn't look over. "I missed you. I miss you."
I'm right here, he expects, absurdly, but this isn't a movie. "You don't miss me," Seunghyun says. "You miss-that time. Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. Maybe you just miss the idea of me. The idea of love."
"It was a good idea," Jiyong says. When he finally turns to stare at him, Seunghyun's eyes are shuttered behind his glasses. His breath comes out in billows of white steam. Every song I ever wrote was about you, Jiyong thinks. Even if it isn't true, the sentiment behind it is. "You know, forget I said anything."
Seunghyun picks himself off the pavement and dusts his pants. Jiyong looks up. From this angle, Seunghyun seems impossibly tall. "You're the one who left me," he says, sounding frustrated. The kind of voice that used to preface their fights, muted emotion simmering beneath the surface, roughened over by the years. "You don't get to be mad about it." Before, when Seunghyun took that tone, they wouldn't speak again for a week. Not until Jiyong needed him to record again, or one of them threw in the towel and crawled beneath the covers with the other, a silent apology. Now, Seunghyun just pauses. The silence stretches out between them, thick and heavy, before he exhales. The tension bleeds out of his shoulders. "In Sweden," he says, "they call that-" Three garbled syllables.
"You sound like you're eating marbles," Jiyong says.
When Jiyong stands, Seunghyun's close enough to touch. Jiyong reaches out to curl a hand in the silky material of his jacket. Seunghyun lets himself be reeled in, breath sharp and acidic. He lets Jiyong kiss him. Even kisses back, tongue sliding against Jiyong's, slow and smooth. When they break apart, Jiyong's stares at him, eyes dropping to the perfect divot of Seunghyun's philtrum, the wet red of his lips. The world does not reset. Seunghyun squeezes Jiyong's shoulder once, where his hand had landed during the kiss, and lets go.
In the cab on the way back to the studio, an unfinished GD&TOP track comes up on shuffle. Serendipity. Movie magic. A younger Jiyong might have considered chucking his phone out the window in a fit of terrible dramatics. As it is, he listens for a moment, letting the deep suede of Seunghyun's rapping wash over him, and then hits the next button.
Poll
Team: Future
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Big Bang
Pairing: GD-centric, past GD/TOP
Summary: Eight years on, Jiyong and Seunghyun have dinner.
Prompt Used: supplementary prompt 2
Jiyong's ten bars deep into the new Jennie Kim single when Seungri finally blows it. Neither of them realize at first. Seungri still likes listening to himself talk a little too much to stop and reflect, and Jiyong's too preoccupied by the weird shit the autotune overlay is doing to the hi-hat for the slip to register. But then the crick that's been developing in his neck for the last hour pulls him out of his work-and there it is, right in his lap.
"Wait," he croaks, and shakes his shoulders out like a bear waking from winter hibernation. His mouth is so dry the back of his throat feels like it's about to crack clean in half. Either has to do with the horrible ventilation in this studio or the fact he hasn't ingested anything in about twenty hours. Probably a combination of the two. Jiyong rolls his head all the way back over the edge of his chair, the crack of his spine like a gunshot, and fixes Seungri with a cocked eyebrow. "Maknae. You had lunch with Seunghyun?"
"Yeah," Seungri says, blinking. His eyes are wide and guileless. That could mean anything.
Jiyong coughs delicately into a loose fist. "When?"
"Last Saturday. I thought I told you when he asked." His eyes thin with concentration, fingers fiddling with his expensive cuff links. For a minute, Jiyong's gaze arrests on the mother-of-pearl. His lower lip folds beneath his teeth. Sometimes it still feels strange that Seungri's at precisely the age where dressing in bespoke is the norm rather than an outlier. Then Jiyong remembers they'd all left military service behind a long time ago, and Seungri hasn't worn pants that sagged to his knees in at least five years. These days, playing with old toys seems to be a vocation of one. "I definitely told you," Seungri continues. "Last month, January, before the Volume Up with iKON. We went to that old noodle place he likes."
"Oh," Jiyong says. On the computer, his muted hi-hat keeps tapping. He breathes out, slow and controlled. The type of careful that immediately precedes a steep drop off the edge of the cliff. "I didn't even know he was in the country."
Turns out Seunghyun's been back in Seoul for weeks. Of course, Seungri never being able to keep his mouth shut is the recurring motif of the day (the decade, really), because two hours after he leaves the YG building, citing another radio engagement, Jiyong gets a text from an unknown number. Hey, it reads. Want to grab dinner?
Jiyong rolls his eyes. Weighs the options of agreeing to a consolation meal machinated by Seungri or staying holed up in the studio for the next x hours finishing this track, and then fires back: who dis? new number~
The phone starts ringing a minute later. Jiyong's thumb hovers over the red decline button for a solid two rings before it slides, grudgingly, toward the green one. "This is definitely not a new number," Seunghyun says without preamble, voice crackling down the line, and Jiyong almost laughs.
"No," he agrees, "but yours is."
"Just a temp. I'm not staying long." Another lie-Seungri said he'd been thinking about moving back. Fifteen years together, and still none of them have figured out to keep their secrets from him. Or maybe it was on purpose; maybe Seungri-filtered truths were easier to swallow. "You have time today?"
Jiyong bites down on the cuticle of his thumb. "Depends," he says.
Seunghyun huffs, amused. "On what?"
"Where are you taking me?"
After Big Bang's official indefinite hiatus/unofficial disbandment about three years back, Seunghyun had immediately wrapped his last acting project and bought a house in Sweden. It wasn't really an unprecedented move. Encouragement of his pet Scandinavian furniture project had come from most of the familiar sectors (family, YG, Daesung and Seungri), and bloomed into a business of its own during the years after he came back from the army. He'd liked the ring of CEO Choi Seunghyun so much that he decided he wanted to pursue it full time. "You don't even speak the language, oppa," Minji pointed out at the going away party two nights before Seunghyun left. "How are you going to survive? It's not like you can't design furniture in Korea."
Seunghyun, tipsy from the three full glasses of red wine, had smiled broadly and looped an arm over Daesung's shoulders. "Remember what they said when they sent us to Japan? Immersion is the best way to learn."
So he'd left. Jiyong stayed, to help run Nonagon and rack up royalties by writing music for Pink Punk. Daesung started spending half the year in Osaka with his girlfriend and the other half in Seoul, taking the occasional variety gig and guest starring on Seungri's radio show every quarter. Youngbae's the only one Jiyong sees regularly. At first, it felt like traveling back in time to 2001, when it was just the two of them with the sunbaes at the old building in Hapjeong. Then Youngbae reverted back to the familiar two-inch fauxhawk and it felt like being stuck in 2008, except instead of putting hours in at the studio he was helping Jinu run YG's A&R division. Akdong Musician's 2021 second quarter rebranding into a darker, edgier image had been his doing. ("I'm working through some shit," Youngbae said, grimacing through his beer when Jiyong took him out the night before release.) The year Jinhwan left for military service, Youngbae went down to Hongdae and recruited half the kids for the new boy group. It was a good fit. Past all the dougieing and #swaggie, he'd always been the most nurturing one.
Seunghyun suggests some upscale sushi restaurant in Gwangjin. Jiyong agrees because Seunghyun offers to pay, and because his stomach is about to mutiny by crawling out of his mouth. Nothing much feels out of the ordinary on the way there, beyond the deluge of sleety February rain flooding the streets. Seeing Seunghyun sitting at the bar, though, feels a bit like a punch in the gut. He's settled into his mid-thirties with gentlemanly aplomb, dark hair slicked back in a fluffy coiffure. There's a splash of red blooming from the pocket of his suit jacket. Thick-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose. If Jiyong squints, tilts his head, and shaves off ten kilos, this could be 2010.
By contrast, Jiyong literally pulled himself off the floor of the studio twenty minutes ago to get here. He isn't even sure what color his jeans are. Long songwriting binges like this always make him wonder if he actually cares about clothing at all. Jiyong almost pulls his beanie over his ears again and turns on his heel, but then the server stops next to Jiyong's place setting and drops off two miso soups and salads. Seunghyun's already ordered for both of them. Jiyong's stomach does the rest of the convincing.
"Nice pocket square," Jiyong says, plopping down in the chair on Seunghyun's right and peeling his face mask off.
Seunghyun's smile is warm. So is the embrace, when it comes, like hugging a hot pile of laundry just as it slides out of the dryer. "You still like tuna nigiri best, right?"
"Always," Jiyong says, and ignores the uncomfortable clench of his throat. He tugs the beanie off and cards a hand through his greasy hair, grimacing.
Seunghyun's eyes flick to his forehead. "You know the netizens call you G-Donatella now," he murmurs. The corner of his mouth jumps.
Jiyong snorts. The last Botox injection had been years ago, for Christ's sake. Netizens never knew how to let things go. "I can't believe you're still keeping tabs on Daum."
The first round comes a minute later. Jiyong inhales sushi and mops his eyes when the wasabi shoots up his nose. Seunghyun manages to keep pace without looking like a total animal, which Jiyong finds incredibly unfair, but then Seunghyun's always had a weird way of remaining dignified while acting ridiculous. Maybe it was still just the aura, even after all these years.
When they're finished, Jiyong checks off round two and sends the slip off to the kitchen. "How's the business?" he asks carefully, propping his chin on a palm. Two-day-old stubble rubs against his skin.
Seunghyun pushes the last piece of his lettuce around in its ginger dressing. "Not great. Pretty shitty, actually." His voice is dry. "You know IKEA kind of has the furniture industry on lock. I've been thinking about coming back."
Jiyong puts his chopsticks down to hide the embarrassing tremor in his hand. "Yeah?" he says, voice level. "You still have the house, right? The huge villa?"
"Yeah. Mom still lives there, alone. After Hyeyoon got married, she's been lonely." Seunghyun signals the server for more sake. When his hand settles back in his lap, he's grinning, cheeks creasing with his dimples. Big dumb dog, Jiyong thinks. He remembers the night after dinner at Jiro's ten years ago, tilting his head up and tasting sweet soy sauce on Seunghyun's tongue, and resists the urge to reach out and mess up his hair. He hasn't been allowed to do that for a long time now. "Park Hongsoo expressed interest in working with me again. Another political thriller, I think."
"Congratulations," Jiyong says, and drums his fingers against the table.
"So what have you been working on?" Seunghyun asks, face open and curious. He sounds genuinely interested, which makes it worse, somehow.
It isn't supposed to be so easy, falling back into the familiar patterns. Catching up like old times, when they'd go half the year without seeing each other between promotional periods and Seunghyun would have to spend the first weeks back rebuilding the right muscles to dance.
Normally, Jiyong is very good at compartmentalizing. Everything goes neatly in its own space: work, pleasure, pre-Big Bang friends, post-Big Bang acquaintances, fashion, performance, songwriting. Any time they mixed was deliberate and precise, a carefully calculated experiment. But Seunghyun-Seunghyun's always been an unquantifiable entity. He refuses to stay in any of Jiyong's boxes. He's the kind of catalyst that makes Jiyong do incredibly stupid shit, like sleep with him, or drag him back to YG for a second audition, or stick an entire piece of wasabi in his own mouth, raw, just to see Seunghyun crack the fuck up. Dami told him once, when she first met Seunghyun before they debuted: that's the type of boy you take home to your mother. Even dressed up in baggy BAPE and faded jeans, watching the look on her brother's face, she'd known. Maybe it's because he's still working in the same damn building a decade later, but if Jiyong closes his eyes he can remember it all like it happened a heartbeat ago, swapping shitty mixtapes after training, frenetic teenage handjobs at night in the dorm, their chests rising and falling in tandem after twelve hours sweating it out in the practice room with the rest of the band. Telling Seunghyun his lyrics were shit, and getting a sound kiss on the mouth just to shut him up. One heartbeat, two. For Seunghyun, it must seem like another lifetime.
Seeing him again wasn't a mistake, but it isn't easy, either. The detached part of Jiyong looks down at the bar and thinks, with a sort of vicious finality, you'll always be a little bit in love with him. But sometimes you love someone too much. So much that it's all you can see, all you can hear, all you can say. So much that it scares you. Crushes you, piece by infinitesimal piece, until the only choices left are to give in wholeheartedly or turn tail and run.
And sometimes you love someone, but they stop loving you back.
"Jennie Kim's new solo album is slated to come out this summer," Jiyong says, dragging his spoon through the last of his miso soup. "Knowing YG, he'll push it back another half year rejecting my title tracks."
"No wonder," Seunghyun says. He grins when Jiyong raises his eyebrows. "You look like shit."
"Fuck off," Jiyong says, wry, and then the next plate of sushi arrives with the sake.
"You want to go back to the studio with me?" Jiyong asks, afterwards, when they're out on the street. "Sajangnim might have a heart attack."
"Give me another few weeks to work up the courage," Seunghyun says, and chuckles. His shiny shoes glint beneath the streetlights. When Jiyong sits down on a dry-ish piece of curb to wait for a cab, Seunghyun joins him.
"Don't mess up your suit," Jiyong says, appalled.
Seunghyun just shrugs. His beautiful loafer steps straight in the slush. "I have a hundred more where these came from."
"Still. Take some responsibility."
They pause, Jiyong hunched over his knees, Seunghyun halfway down to the sidewalk. He slips the rest of the way, feet splashing. "You aren't," he says, almost too gentle to hurt, "my leader anymore."
"I know, I know." The alcohol's loosened his tongue and his inhibitions, which is why Jiyong turns, buoyed by infinite possibility, and asks, "Want to come back to my place?"
Seunghyun's smile goes a little strained. "Your place."
Jiyong lines his sneaker up with the elegant taper of Seunghyun's dress shoe. Looking back, 2020 had been an uncharacteristically scandal-less year for YG Entertainment until Jiyong's highly publicized falling out with Kiko Mizuhara. Among other things, it had come out to the press in no uncertain terms that Jiyong was really fucking gay. Flaming homosexual, liked it up the ass. Things people had already suspected for some time-but there's a difference between murmured rumors perpetuated by netizens and having the entire sordid story splashed on the front page of every major news site.
It wouldn't have mattered much to the public if he hadn't been prepared to marry her. It still hadn't mattered much, considering Big Bang hadn't done anything as a group for at least a year by then. It was easy for Yang Hyunsuk to make the executive decision to shelve them permanently and repurpose their individual talents elsewhere. Jiyong went through the requisite nine-to-twelve months of self-reflection and filled three notebooks with music that ended up in every company release the next year. None of them were doing anything they hadn't already done before-except Seunghyun, who'd moved to a totally different continent. Running away, Jiyong called it, at the going away party. Starting fresh, Seunghyun countered, and hadn't spoken to him for the rest of the night.
If he leans forward, he can catch a faint whiff of Seunghyun's spicy cologne. Being this close used to mean something.
"Aren't seeing anyone, are you?" Jiyong says. Sorry, he thinks, as the next moment coalesces. Sorry I'm selfish, sorry I don't know how to stop wanting things, sorry I don't know what's good for me. "I know it isn't your villa, but it's a pretty nice apartment-"
"Jiyong," Seunghyun says.
Jiyong leans back, palms skidding hard against the pavement behind him, eyes glued to the smoggy clouds overhead. "What?"
"What do you want?"
"I dunno," Jiyong says. He doesn't look over. "I missed you. I miss you."
I'm right here, he expects, absurdly, but this isn't a movie. "You don't miss me," Seunghyun says. "You miss-that time. Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. Maybe you just miss the idea of me. The idea of love."
"It was a good idea," Jiyong says. When he finally turns to stare at him, Seunghyun's eyes are shuttered behind his glasses. His breath comes out in billows of white steam. Every song I ever wrote was about you, Jiyong thinks. Even if it isn't true, the sentiment behind it is. "You know, forget I said anything."
Seunghyun picks himself off the pavement and dusts his pants. Jiyong looks up. From this angle, Seunghyun seems impossibly tall. "You're the one who left me," he says, sounding frustrated. The kind of voice that used to preface their fights, muted emotion simmering beneath the surface, roughened over by the years. "You don't get to be mad about it." Before, when Seunghyun took that tone, they wouldn't speak again for a week. Not until Jiyong needed him to record again, or one of them threw in the towel and crawled beneath the covers with the other, a silent apology. Now, Seunghyun just pauses. The silence stretches out between them, thick and heavy, before he exhales. The tension bleeds out of his shoulders. "In Sweden," he says, "they call that-" Three garbled syllables.
"You sound like you're eating marbles," Jiyong says.
When Jiyong stands, Seunghyun's close enough to touch. Jiyong reaches out to curl a hand in the silky material of his jacket. Seunghyun lets himself be reeled in, breath sharp and acidic. He lets Jiyong kiss him. Even kisses back, tongue sliding against Jiyong's, slow and smooth. When they break apart, Jiyong's stares at him, eyes dropping to the perfect divot of Seunghyun's philtrum, the wet red of his lips. The world does not reset. Seunghyun squeezes Jiyong's shoulder once, where his hand had landed during the kiss, and lets go.
In the cab on the way back to the studio, an unfinished GD&TOP track comes up on shuffle. Serendipity. Movie magic. A younger Jiyong might have considered chucking his phone out the window in a fit of terrible dramatics. As it is, he listens for a moment, letting the deep suede of Seunghyun's rapping wash over him, and then hits the next button.
Poll