all the corners of my mind [ fic ]
the way we were
yb/seungri | pg, 2458 words, canon
a priest and a beggar walk into a bar.
i'm on fire and nothing's gonna hold me back
endless blue sky and a pocket full of tricks to try
you pick a colour and i'll sing it for you
i know you feel the same, say you feel the same
SUPERHUMAN TOUCH/ATHLETE
One minute the phenomenon known as Seungri isn't there, and the next he is.
It's the mornings the boy trips inside his room, under-eye circles darker when he's half-awake and pajamas too-big and trailing on the floor that Youngbae thinks maybe he's got it wrong.
Neither of them ever say anything. Youngbae stares at the space between the riffles of his pillow and the beginning smudges of Seungri's hair, and Seungri looks like he doesn't know where to keep his eyes. The consequential way he blinks too much with those eyelashes of his tickles Youngbae's neck.
Seungri tries, and Seungri coughs, and Seungri uses too much hands and not enough subtlety so that maybe it's not exactly the most pleasant thing in the world, but Seungri also purses his lips and looks lost and lets out breathless laughter when he gets it wrong. Youngbae, all he does is sit back and let him figure things out. Seungri has enough determination for the both of them.
Youngbae always watches the clock, and nudges the younger boy when it's time to go.
"I quit today," Seungri will always say (grumble) into the sheets. He holds onto the edge of Youngbae's shirt for too long until he pastes his winner-for-the-world smile back on. It's after the door closes, and when he's left with nothing but the smell, that Youngbae corrects himself - that, no, he got it right the first time.
There are sometimes rough construction-paper cards with the crayons and the stick figures taped to the top of his bento-boxed lunches, and that's how Youngbae knows whose turn it was in the kitchen that day.
It will say something along the lines of, I made this, hyung! I think the vegetables are overboiled, maybe, followed by a but the chicken is good and that's what's important because nobody cares about the vegetables anyways. Smily face and a proud signature worthy of a celebrity. The edges are sometimes ridden up and stained with finger smudges, parallel to the spider-yellow suns and cotton ball clouds, spiky tufts of grass and things a kindergartner grows out of halfway through the year scribbled at the extra space on the bottom.
There is always an extra piece of whatever Seungri cooks the best that day in Youngbae's box. If he were Jiyong, he'd give Seungri hell about his shoddy penmanship and magnet the handiwork to the fridge. If he were Seunghyun, he'd laugh and trap him in a noogie and write him something dry on the back of the paper. If he were Daesung, he'd compliment the maknae on his chicken (even though it's usually burnt).
If he were Taeyang, he'd throw the notes away.
But he's Youngbae, and he doesn't know what to do, and so he resorts to doing nothing at all. The notes go quietly into his bottom desk drawer. Bottom, because that's where all the odds and ends with no purpose and no belonging yet that he doesn't have time to deal with go. Drawer, because he doesn't want them to get ruined.
Seungri likes to sit with him during breaks in the practice room, their backs pressed against the mirrors.
"I'm doing everything right, aren't I?" he asks, breathing hard. It's more of a confirmation than a question, and when Youngbae gently points out everything wrong instead, Seungri blinks in confusion like he's not sure who they're talking about anymore. And it only takes him all of five seconds to brush it off his shoulder and give himself what he wanted to hear.
"Everything else is good though, isn't it? My footwork and stuff? I thought I did it well today."
Seungri will lapse into silence, and Youngbae takes the quiet to listen to their heartbeats slowing down and stare at their hands lying parallel on the ground pinkies almost touching. But before long he'll hear Seungri's brain again, his thoughts loud and confused and self-righteous before they spill their way out of his mouth in a tangle of questions about what exactly Youngbae thinks he's doing wrong, again, could he please explain, because he doesn't think he did it wrong and maybe it's just the angle Youngbae was looking at him from.
Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, until all it is is Youngbae being trapped into a corner yet again of telling Seungri that yes, he's doing the bridge choreography perfectly. And to that Seungri will drink all his water, make a self-satisfied face, and boldly lay his head on Youngbae's shoulder for a moment. Youngbae never has time to get comfortable before something else catches Seungri's attention and takes him away.
In the dance room, Seungri asks nothing, wants nothing. Youngbae would even buy the confident way Seungri saunters out of the room at the end of the day, if not for the thinly veiled self-doubt in his eyes and the fact that the walk is stolen (from him) and fits the younger boy about as well as modesty.
Youngbae ignores Seungri onstage.
It can be a mere five seconds before where his hands still shake and his smile is half-formed on his face like he's not sure whether to expand it or push it off. He'll be all over the place behind the risers, legs jittery and refusing to stay still, shoulders not feeling Youngbae's smoothing hands and ears blocked from all Youngbae's words of 'calm down' - and then a spotlight can shine, and he'll have eaten his spinach. He'll push Youngbae away to better embrace the world.
He's safe sex and almost-charm in a white suit and cuff links smeared with soot, and they love him. Grown women grab at his legs, teenage girls scream undying devotion and carry light boards with his name in sparkles. Seungri eyes them, struts around, and Youngbae can't see his eyes from here and feels like smashing a wall behind his piano and underneath his cap. He stays on the other ends of the stage and mostly sings with his eyes closed.
Because, what can he really do?
Seungri commences to fall apart with the dimming of the lights. His legs are back to jelly by the time the cameras are stowed away. He manages to always find Youngbae and pull him into a back room somewhere to sprawl across his lap as soon as they are stationary. His hands are cold traveling around Youngbae's body.
"Did you see me, hyung? I did it all right this time, didn't I? Were you listening? I was good, right?" His laughter comes out shaky and not even close to exhilaration against Youngbae's cheek.
"You did good," Youngbae says because Seungri will have nothing else. He hopes the smile on his face looks real enough in the dark.
The fire escape is, at one point, a silent war zone.
It takes a few bread crumbs and a self-help book permanently stuck on page one between the metal slots for Youngbae to know who it is. A few more days and he catches Seungri, freezing with his knees drawn up to his chest.
"What are you doing?" Youngbae says as he crawls onto the small balcony. He knows Seungri knows this is Youngbae's thinking spot, he knows Seungri knows this is the place he comes to unravel himself and dissolve into the background and just be. Everybody knows, and even their manager, even Hyunsuk when he visits, stays away.
But Seungri doesn't apply to the rules, and he just shrugs and says something about hoping it's okay with Youngbae that he's here too.
It's not, but Seungri stays anyways.
Mostly it's humming, and staring at Youngbae, and blowing on his fingers to keep them from falling off and sometimes slurping on cups of soup and generally being an eyesore as Youngbae does his best to ignore the younger boy and train his eyes on something else across the view of the city.
"A priest and a beggar walk into a bar," Seungri tries once, but Youngbae scoots farther away.
Ultimately it comes down to a test of character. Seungri makes it until his eyes seal shut and his nose is red and drippy and his teeth won't stop chattering before he weakly says he'll see Youngbae later and stumbles back inside to defrost. A casualty of the Cold War, in more ways than one.
Youngbae hardly feels the chill out here. He grips onto the railings, throwing his head up to look at the stars and ignore the wheedling at the back of his mind telling him to follow the shivering mess and see if he's okay.
He thinks it's over, but Seungri comes back when winter melts away.
Seungri kisses him at the worst times, when they're balanced on a narrow railing a foot above ground with their arms out like wings and teetering with video cameras on either side of them. Youngbae falls off the edge with a thump.
And the look on his face must be one of incredulous disbelief because Seungri catches his fingers again and whispers, "Nobody saw, hyung, I checked first."
He looks so smug about it all and how smart he is and this game of incognito that he's okay with as he pulls Youngbae back on the ledge. His makeup has smeared at the edges. Youngbae watches him tightrope-walk to the edge, turn and balance his way back to where he's standing.
"Your turn," Seungri says about the expanse of beam that Youngbae has yet to try, but the video director waves at them and Youngbae steps off the rail.
He's five steps away when Seungri calls him back. His expression in the five seconds has changed completely, and he's looking downwards, hands stuffed into his pants pockets and scuffing the toe of his expensive shoes on the cement.
"Um," Seungri says (stutters actually, since it takes him about seven tries to say it), "I can stop... if you want."
Youngbae opens his mouth to say something offhand, but is saved by a bell that is a makeup artist come to retouch their faces for the camera.
"What are you doing?" Jiyong asks when they're leaning over a sheet of half-formed lyrics in the studio and it's somewhere past four in the morning.
Youngbae thinks it should be obvious (except he knows helping him figure out the hook to this song is not what Jiyong is talking about), and the blond twirls his pen. "You and Seungri. What are you doing?"
It takes Youngbae a while to form words, since the only thing that surfaces in his mind is a white expanse of blank, empty planes in the midst of clouds.
"Nothing." It's pretty much the truth, since he really isn't.
Jiyong frowns, but doesn't say anything. Youngbae stares down at the scrawled lettering in front of them again. The words are starting to blur and fuzz in front of his eyes; he can't tell where one verse ends and another begins, they all bleed into each other like so.
"Just," Jiyong says after a moment, and puts his pen down. "Seungri's way too excited about this. Be careful, okay?"
How strange that it's not you, Youngbae suddenly thinks. You're Seungri's hyung, you're who people see when Seungri shows up, you're his logical fit. Strange it's not you. Maybe Seungri's not as predictable as everyone thinks.
"Did Seungri tell you?"
Jiyong shakes his head. "He doesn't talk about it," he says. "But he's not hard to read, so."
Youngbae swallows a rift. They go back to working on the song.
And then one day, he's peeling an orange in the kitchen and Seungri's hanging off the refrigerator handles at the edge of his vision somewhere between talking and just peering at him from weary eyes.
Youngbae asks him if he's feeling okay, to which he instantly nods, his crooked-tooth grin perking a little. He gives him a one word answer of yes that doesn't sound all the way committed.
"I'm just kinda tired," he says with a nonchalant shrug. "From the musical rehearsals. It's nothing."
Youngbae notices a flap-eared script with coffee and other colors splashed across the pages tucked between Seungri's arm and his side, and remembers that he's been carrying it around with him lately, muttering lines to himself under his breath when the other four take naps.
"You should get some rest," Youngbae says, and he concentrates on cutting the orange evenly so he doesn't see Seungri's reaction, whether it's a nod or a brushing off.
The smell of citrus fills the kitchen. White noise from the television filters back to them from the living room.
"Well, I'm gonna..." Seungri gestures halfheartedly to the living room and holds up the script - starts shuffling away.
Lee Seunghyun's made of determination, but when it suddenly falters at the eleventh hour, Youngbae has to be there to pick up the slack however late he is in the making. Breakthroughs come at the oddest times. With Seungri, Youngbae suddenly learns, there's no such thing as being late.
He hastily sets the half-cut fruit on the counter, missing the cutting board by about a foot, and manages to grab Seungri's arms and veer him towards his bedroom instead. The script is quashed between their bodies, and Seungri barely even has time to register the thing that's happening to him, them, right now, on his face before Youngbae closes the door behind them and makes the maknae get under the covers.
It's dark and neither of them turn the lights on, the ones from the city outside the window providing enough. Seungri is tangled rather awkwardly around Youngbae, jutting legs and a mouth to his collarbone, one of his hands trapped between them and feeling both their hearts beat.
"I'm okay, hyung," the other boy insists, but Youngbae doesn't hear it or ignores it and anyway the sound is all muffled in here in Seungri's room.
"Stop overworking yourself," he says. And he doesn't know in which context he's telling Seungri to do that for.
"Okay," Seungri complies. His eyes close and his hold tightens on Youngbae's shirt. Their lips brush a bit sloppily across each other's, and Seungri's breath fans his cheek. Youngbae thinks that perhaps he did have it wrong after all. He lies back and listens to the crickets chirp outside and the distant noises of the other three talking on the other side of the door.
"Hey, did you know you smell like oranges?" Seungri says. Youngbae can hear the smile in his voice and decides not to call him out on the obvious before he falls asleep.
Seungri is still there in the next minute, and the next.
note: i've been meaning to write them for a while now, but i'm never 100% sure on how to write yb.
yb/seungri | pg, 2458 words, canon
a priest and a beggar walk into a bar.
i'm on fire and nothing's gonna hold me back
endless blue sky and a pocket full of tricks to try
you pick a colour and i'll sing it for you
i know you feel the same, say you feel the same
SUPERHUMAN TOUCH/ATHLETE
One minute the phenomenon known as Seungri isn't there, and the next he is.
It's the mornings the boy trips inside his room, under-eye circles darker when he's half-awake and pajamas too-big and trailing on the floor that Youngbae thinks maybe he's got it wrong.
Neither of them ever say anything. Youngbae stares at the space between the riffles of his pillow and the beginning smudges of Seungri's hair, and Seungri looks like he doesn't know where to keep his eyes. The consequential way he blinks too much with those eyelashes of his tickles Youngbae's neck.
Seungri tries, and Seungri coughs, and Seungri uses too much hands and not enough subtlety so that maybe it's not exactly the most pleasant thing in the world, but Seungri also purses his lips and looks lost and lets out breathless laughter when he gets it wrong. Youngbae, all he does is sit back and let him figure things out. Seungri has enough determination for the both of them.
Youngbae always watches the clock, and nudges the younger boy when it's time to go.
"I quit today," Seungri will always say (grumble) into the sheets. He holds onto the edge of Youngbae's shirt for too long until he pastes his winner-for-the-world smile back on. It's after the door closes, and when he's left with nothing but the smell, that Youngbae corrects himself - that, no, he got it right the first time.
There are sometimes rough construction-paper cards with the crayons and the stick figures taped to the top of his bento-boxed lunches, and that's how Youngbae knows whose turn it was in the kitchen that day.
It will say something along the lines of, I made this, hyung! I think the vegetables are overboiled, maybe, followed by a but the chicken is good and that's what's important because nobody cares about the vegetables anyways. Smily face and a proud signature worthy of a celebrity. The edges are sometimes ridden up and stained with finger smudges, parallel to the spider-yellow suns and cotton ball clouds, spiky tufts of grass and things a kindergartner grows out of halfway through the year scribbled at the extra space on the bottom.
There is always an extra piece of whatever Seungri cooks the best that day in Youngbae's box. If he were Jiyong, he'd give Seungri hell about his shoddy penmanship and magnet the handiwork to the fridge. If he were Seunghyun, he'd laugh and trap him in a noogie and write him something dry on the back of the paper. If he were Daesung, he'd compliment the maknae on his chicken (even though it's usually burnt).
If he were Taeyang, he'd throw the notes away.
But he's Youngbae, and he doesn't know what to do, and so he resorts to doing nothing at all. The notes go quietly into his bottom desk drawer. Bottom, because that's where all the odds and ends with no purpose and no belonging yet that he doesn't have time to deal with go. Drawer, because he doesn't want them to get ruined.
Seungri likes to sit with him during breaks in the practice room, their backs pressed against the mirrors.
"I'm doing everything right, aren't I?" he asks, breathing hard. It's more of a confirmation than a question, and when Youngbae gently points out everything wrong instead, Seungri blinks in confusion like he's not sure who they're talking about anymore. And it only takes him all of five seconds to brush it off his shoulder and give himself what he wanted to hear.
"Everything else is good though, isn't it? My footwork and stuff? I thought I did it well today."
Seungri will lapse into silence, and Youngbae takes the quiet to listen to their heartbeats slowing down and stare at their hands lying parallel on the ground pinkies almost touching. But before long he'll hear Seungri's brain again, his thoughts loud and confused and self-righteous before they spill their way out of his mouth in a tangle of questions about what exactly Youngbae thinks he's doing wrong, again, could he please explain, because he doesn't think he did it wrong and maybe it's just the angle Youngbae was looking at him from.
Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, until all it is is Youngbae being trapped into a corner yet again of telling Seungri that yes, he's doing the bridge choreography perfectly. And to that Seungri will drink all his water, make a self-satisfied face, and boldly lay his head on Youngbae's shoulder for a moment. Youngbae never has time to get comfortable before something else catches Seungri's attention and takes him away.
In the dance room, Seungri asks nothing, wants nothing. Youngbae would even buy the confident way Seungri saunters out of the room at the end of the day, if not for the thinly veiled self-doubt in his eyes and the fact that the walk is stolen (from him) and fits the younger boy about as well as modesty.
Youngbae ignores Seungri onstage.
It can be a mere five seconds before where his hands still shake and his smile is half-formed on his face like he's not sure whether to expand it or push it off. He'll be all over the place behind the risers, legs jittery and refusing to stay still, shoulders not feeling Youngbae's smoothing hands and ears blocked from all Youngbae's words of 'calm down' - and then a spotlight can shine, and he'll have eaten his spinach. He'll push Youngbae away to better embrace the world.
He's safe sex and almost-charm in a white suit and cuff links smeared with soot, and they love him. Grown women grab at his legs, teenage girls scream undying devotion and carry light boards with his name in sparkles. Seungri eyes them, struts around, and Youngbae can't see his eyes from here and feels like smashing a wall behind his piano and underneath his cap. He stays on the other ends of the stage and mostly sings with his eyes closed.
Because, what can he really do?
Seungri commences to fall apart with the dimming of the lights. His legs are back to jelly by the time the cameras are stowed away. He manages to always find Youngbae and pull him into a back room somewhere to sprawl across his lap as soon as they are stationary. His hands are cold traveling around Youngbae's body.
"Did you see me, hyung? I did it all right this time, didn't I? Were you listening? I was good, right?" His laughter comes out shaky and not even close to exhilaration against Youngbae's cheek.
"You did good," Youngbae says because Seungri will have nothing else. He hopes the smile on his face looks real enough in the dark.
The fire escape is, at one point, a silent war zone.
It takes a few bread crumbs and a self-help book permanently stuck on page one between the metal slots for Youngbae to know who it is. A few more days and he catches Seungri, freezing with his knees drawn up to his chest.
"What are you doing?" Youngbae says as he crawls onto the small balcony. He knows Seungri knows this is Youngbae's thinking spot, he knows Seungri knows this is the place he comes to unravel himself and dissolve into the background and just be. Everybody knows, and even their manager, even Hyunsuk when he visits, stays away.
But Seungri doesn't apply to the rules, and he just shrugs and says something about hoping it's okay with Youngbae that he's here too.
It's not, but Seungri stays anyways.
Mostly it's humming, and staring at Youngbae, and blowing on his fingers to keep them from falling off and sometimes slurping on cups of soup and generally being an eyesore as Youngbae does his best to ignore the younger boy and train his eyes on something else across the view of the city.
"A priest and a beggar walk into a bar," Seungri tries once, but Youngbae scoots farther away.
Ultimately it comes down to a test of character. Seungri makes it until his eyes seal shut and his nose is red and drippy and his teeth won't stop chattering before he weakly says he'll see Youngbae later and stumbles back inside to defrost. A casualty of the Cold War, in more ways than one.
Youngbae hardly feels the chill out here. He grips onto the railings, throwing his head up to look at the stars and ignore the wheedling at the back of his mind telling him to follow the shivering mess and see if he's okay.
He thinks it's over, but Seungri comes back when winter melts away.
Seungri kisses him at the worst times, when they're balanced on a narrow railing a foot above ground with their arms out like wings and teetering with video cameras on either side of them. Youngbae falls off the edge with a thump.
And the look on his face must be one of incredulous disbelief because Seungri catches his fingers again and whispers, "Nobody saw, hyung, I checked first."
He looks so smug about it all and how smart he is and this game of incognito that he's okay with as he pulls Youngbae back on the ledge. His makeup has smeared at the edges. Youngbae watches him tightrope-walk to the edge, turn and balance his way back to where he's standing.
"Your turn," Seungri says about the expanse of beam that Youngbae has yet to try, but the video director waves at them and Youngbae steps off the rail.
He's five steps away when Seungri calls him back. His expression in the five seconds has changed completely, and he's looking downwards, hands stuffed into his pants pockets and scuffing the toe of his expensive shoes on the cement.
"Um," Seungri says (stutters actually, since it takes him about seven tries to say it), "I can stop... if you want."
Youngbae opens his mouth to say something offhand, but is saved by a bell that is a makeup artist come to retouch their faces for the camera.
"What are you doing?" Jiyong asks when they're leaning over a sheet of half-formed lyrics in the studio and it's somewhere past four in the morning.
Youngbae thinks it should be obvious (except he knows helping him figure out the hook to this song is not what Jiyong is talking about), and the blond twirls his pen. "You and Seungri. What are you doing?"
It takes Youngbae a while to form words, since the only thing that surfaces in his mind is a white expanse of blank, empty planes in the midst of clouds.
"Nothing." It's pretty much the truth, since he really isn't.
Jiyong frowns, but doesn't say anything. Youngbae stares down at the scrawled lettering in front of them again. The words are starting to blur and fuzz in front of his eyes; he can't tell where one verse ends and another begins, they all bleed into each other like so.
"Just," Jiyong says after a moment, and puts his pen down. "Seungri's way too excited about this. Be careful, okay?"
How strange that it's not you, Youngbae suddenly thinks. You're Seungri's hyung, you're who people see when Seungri shows up, you're his logical fit. Strange it's not you. Maybe Seungri's not as predictable as everyone thinks.
"Did Seungri tell you?"
Jiyong shakes his head. "He doesn't talk about it," he says. "But he's not hard to read, so."
Youngbae swallows a rift. They go back to working on the song.
And then one day, he's peeling an orange in the kitchen and Seungri's hanging off the refrigerator handles at the edge of his vision somewhere between talking and just peering at him from weary eyes.
Youngbae asks him if he's feeling okay, to which he instantly nods, his crooked-tooth grin perking a little. He gives him a one word answer of yes that doesn't sound all the way committed.
"I'm just kinda tired," he says with a nonchalant shrug. "From the musical rehearsals. It's nothing."
Youngbae notices a flap-eared script with coffee and other colors splashed across the pages tucked between Seungri's arm and his side, and remembers that he's been carrying it around with him lately, muttering lines to himself under his breath when the other four take naps.
"You should get some rest," Youngbae says, and he concentrates on cutting the orange evenly so he doesn't see Seungri's reaction, whether it's a nod or a brushing off.
The smell of citrus fills the kitchen. White noise from the television filters back to them from the living room.
"Well, I'm gonna..." Seungri gestures halfheartedly to the living room and holds up the script - starts shuffling away.
Lee Seunghyun's made of determination, but when it suddenly falters at the eleventh hour, Youngbae has to be there to pick up the slack however late he is in the making. Breakthroughs come at the oddest times. With Seungri, Youngbae suddenly learns, there's no such thing as being late.
He hastily sets the half-cut fruit on the counter, missing the cutting board by about a foot, and manages to grab Seungri's arms and veer him towards his bedroom instead. The script is quashed between their bodies, and Seungri barely even has time to register the thing that's happening to him, them, right now, on his face before Youngbae closes the door behind them and makes the maknae get under the covers.
It's dark and neither of them turn the lights on, the ones from the city outside the window providing enough. Seungri is tangled rather awkwardly around Youngbae, jutting legs and a mouth to his collarbone, one of his hands trapped between them and feeling both their hearts beat.
"I'm okay, hyung," the other boy insists, but Youngbae doesn't hear it or ignores it and anyway the sound is all muffled in here in Seungri's room.
"Stop overworking yourself," he says. And he doesn't know in which context he's telling Seungri to do that for.
"Okay," Seungri complies. His eyes close and his hold tightens on Youngbae's shirt. Their lips brush a bit sloppily across each other's, and Seungri's breath fans his cheek. Youngbae thinks that perhaps he did have it wrong after all. He lies back and listens to the crickets chirp outside and the distant noises of the other three talking on the other side of the door.
"Hey, did you know you smell like oranges?" Seungri says. Youngbae can hear the smile in his voice and decides not to call him out on the obvious before he falls asleep.
Seungri is still there in the next minute, and the next.
note: i've been meaning to write them for a while now, but i'm never 100% sure on how to write yb.