caught between that proverbial rock and [ fic ]
a vice, a hard place
gd/top | hard r, 2362 words, ar
more tinman than terminator.
all the gold and the guns and the girls couldn't get you off
all the boys, all the choices in the world couldn't get you off
GOLD GUNS GIRLS/METRIC
Don't get involved.
Don't get involved. It's what you remember most whispered from your mother's bruised mouth; what somebody says to you when you're young and in school, wandering back alleyways and hearing the sirens blink blue and red in the distance; what you repeat from the bars to the four-in-the-mornings, from the four-in-the-mornings to the girls slinking out your front door.
Don't get involved, when Jiyong enters from your peripheral vision and carves himself a place somewhere between your ribcage and your head, and you find yourself veering a little bit more off-course each time Jiyong finds you again.
One week: he likes you, he says, after he decides he knows you enough to say so. Cigarette smoke is in the air and your cheek is pressed against the cold window of a taxi homeward (or somewhere with a bed) bound, and Jiyong, with his head lolling against the headrest in front of him, says he likes you, because you're like a machine. Machines, he slurs, they don't eat or sleep or go soft in the arms after a few weeks or fuck you badly or - or - puke all over your living room floor because they've had too much to drink.
And, Jiyong adds, machines don't disappoint you (until you have to change the battery or something, but whatever, that's not that complicated). This is accompanied by some semblance of trying to clean up your soiled floor with the hems of his shirt and his clammy palms, and you think about kicking him out. But his eyes are glazed, bottom lip caught between his teeth, and he looks like those lost children ads on the milk cartons you hate even through all the smeared eyeliner, so you get the mop and show him where the shower is.
Taking a girl home would've been easier, but the ones you like don't instinctively curl up around you when you lie down. And your sheets already smell like booze, so.
So Jiyong is knock-down drag-out drunk, and you let him stay.
Two weeks: he might love you. Or so he means, when you're high enough to stumble and he's somewhere down on your lap with the joint and this close to lighting your crotch on fire. You tip your head up so the ceiling can catch the drift of dirty gray smoke from your mouth before you let him kiss you. You return it, and he hums low against your mouth.
"I'll call you a cab," you say after you pull away.
Three months: he hates you.
"You're an asshole," he says, "you're a fucking asshole," he says, and you're thinking this is a total waste of a night and a thousand-dollar jacket when he pulls you from the couch and slams you against the back wall so hard your head knocks against it a few extra times.
"This isn't how it's supposed to go," he says. Maybe he's a little younger than you previously imagined. It must've been the eyeliner, or maybe he's one of those jealous fucks who carries a .45 around in his pants waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You roll your eyes. "Tell me how it's supposed to go, then," you say, too far over the moon to care, and his short nails dig into your shoulders. Normally, it'd probably hurt; tonight, it feels vaguely incredible and for a moment you are tempted to throw him on the couch instead. Or, whoever, two legs, one mouth, it's all the same.
"You're an asshole."
"And, you're - what - eighteen? nineteen?" Or maybe he was a virgin before you and got sentimental. You look around his skinny frame, but the bar-top dancer whose body heat you can still feel has already pulled her bra straps straight and fixed her lip gloss, has already stumbled into her platform shoes and back down the stairs into the strobing lights.
Jiyong takes a step back and pauses. "Fuck you." It's less scathing and more wounded, and you let him get five paces before catching him by the wrist and resentfully dragging him to the small bathroom at the back.
"Look," you say, resigned, reluctant - but you pull out a small bag of what look like skittles from your back pocket all the same. "There's this thing you should try." This is going to be a good night if it kills you.
It is. Twelve minutes before Jiyong is sprawled on the tiled floor; thirty before he sits up and belts his pants again, red in the face. He doesn't look at you now. The worn-down rubber soles of his shoes squeak against the linoleum on his way out.
It's not the same after that. (Not that you ever had constance, but ecstasy doesn't really ever begin to smell like old times or vodka, and you start missing it at some point.)
And then he decides he doesn't know you.
The girl has long hair, a slinky dress, and looks too deep-set in the eyes to be native. She's pretty, you think, except she has her legs wrapped around Jiyong like she's been paid. He's not any better, either, fingers in her longhairslinkydress, running down her arms and back up her thigh. They're breathing the same air but for however close they are their eyes might as well be miles away, staring past each other like they're out to prove something.
Jiyong brushes his lips across her neck a few times, traps her into the corner with his arms and spindly fingers spread out, but his mouth never quite makes it to hers.
Mostly, you just watch them from a situated distance, letting the crowd in between you mass and then clear out again. You see the lighter in his hand, the diamond on her finger.
They don't even leave together - after a while she untangles herself with a breathy smile and slips away - but after she's gone you swear to God he catches your eye over the cupped hand lighting his cigarette. His cheeks look flushed, a proud-little-boy in his stance - which, after a moment, melts to shifting feet before he turns away. You feel something steel itself in you despite yourself (your jaw clenches, or your fist tightens) and are seized by a mad impulse to jump the railing and punch him across the face.
Eventually you reset, and then you're the guy who doesn't care (who just happens to bump into someone's fiance in a parking lot and decides to be a good samaritan).
The fiance's name is Youngbae. He doesn't help.
At first, you didn't even think he cared, but after a couple of days you realize it's actually a fucking contrary: occasionally, daughter-son business mergers end up with somebody falling in love.
He calls you, sometimes. Just in case you're interested in things.
"They're in my living room." Take tonight. Apparently, Jiyong has taken extra measures to light up all the lamps in her apartment like christmas morning and conduct business against the glass. It's probably not a coincidence that they live on the third floor and have ceiling-to-floor length windows. Tonight, live peep show, free for all!
You pinch the bridge of your nose, sit up in bed, and wish you were still asleep. "Where are you?"
"Outside. God - anybody could look up and see this -" Youngbae's voice cuts off; for a moment all you hear from his end is a brief wash of white noise, a car passing by on the asphalt. "I don't want to deal with it tonight. Not tonight." His tone is carefully flat. "I'm leaving."
So sometimes it ends like this, with you flopping backwards on your pillow and tossing your phone into a cabinet after you turn it off.
Other times, it culminates into watching the pair of them at some after-hours bar or back alleyway or subway station (etc, etc) with Youngbae next to you, eyes narrowed and sharp profile of a future conglomerate CEO sawed to a point.
After he starts shaking out the prescription pills into the palm of his hand, you briefly wonder if you should've told him at all, but with a missus like that, you figure it's better for Youngbae's health to get used to it while he's still young.
When Jiyong kisses her, his eyes stay open.
You take the pill bottle from Youngbae's hand and tip a couple down your throat without ever breaking your gaze. It washes down nicely with your scotch.
Champagne for celebration leads to vodka for liquid courage leads to dirty martinis for her which finally leads to scotch for a long night in, bring a weekend bag. Jiyong stops looking for you by the time the weather gets cold.
Youngbae stops calling after he finds them in his bed, skin white and writhing in the darkness.
You wait till Jiyong works his way up to whiskey by the gallon, dry, before you decide you can stop, too, any time you want.
"Who the hell do you think you are?"
You pause at the door. Something that looks like candy is scattered all over the floor; a few curtains are torn down. Jiyong is spread-eagle on your bed, in a white shirt too big for him with a hand on his temples. You add up costs in your head and look annoyed. "Is this a trick question?"
"Don't give me that." Jiyong, he shoots up like he's been waiting for this, rushes you and pins you against the wall, and oh dear, how this brings back memories. Your shoulders might still have those half-moon scars, five on each, in fact!
"Do you think it's funny, getting her boyfriend involved? Think it's hilarious she's in the hospital or do you enjoy getting off on this shit?" His breath smells like beer this close. There are traces of white powder below his nose. He's degenerated, you think, a broken-down tin man you can't escape on the fucking yellow brick road.
"You're even more insane than I thought." You push him off only to have him press against you even tighter with a heavy grunt.
"Why can't you just leave me alone, huh, Seunghyun? Huh?" His hands scrabble at the bottom of your shirt, digging underneath until he's got those two ice-cold palms against your chest, right on top of your pulse. He roughly nips at your ear, licks your jaw, breathes you in. "You like what you saw? You like when I'm fucking her in her dumbass boyfriend's little apartment and she's screaming my name, you sick fuck? Do you?"
Jiyong, however angry, is smaller and forever clumsier when he's distracted - and it's easy enough to brace a hand on his neck and twist around until he's the one up on the wall. Smash his head against a sharp corner where protruding window ledge meets plaster till he hisses, eyes screwing shut, and then you wedge your knee between his legs to keep him there. Both of you are breathing hard. After staring at him for a second, you bite the inside of your cheek and snort. "Don't flatter yourself."
But he doesn't let up. "You wanna know what she was like under me, Seunghyun? When her legs were around me and my dick was in her mouth?" Another slam against the wall doesn't deter him - only makes him twist forward an inch until your noses touch, his breath hitting your cheek too hot, too high. "You know," he says, so low you have to read his lips to understand, "I think the best part about it was her boyfriend, what the fuck was his name, listening outside the door - or was it you on the phone, listening along, too -"
You hit him.
Smash him hard from his pretty little cheek to the edge of his jaw. He stumbles a few feet, caught off guard, yet almost looks like he expected nothing less when he wipes a smear of blood from his lips.
"Get a fucking hold of yourself," you snarl. "Don't try and act like you give half a shit about her."
"Yea. Right." He hunches forward, panting slightly, his hands braced on his knees. "I forgot you wrote the whole damn book on how to lie to yourself."
When you reach for him this time, you don't know what's going to happen. So when you end up with your lips crushed against his on top of him on your scuffed wood paneling, you figure it's as good as any.
He's already turned on and you're not very far behind, if how fast you unbuckle his pants and help him kick his boxers down is any indication. Your shirt goes above your head easily and the blood on his lip stains your mouth, the hollow between neck and shoulder that he used to like, your fingers, your body.
And where is your resolve, where is your resolve?
His phone rings. "It's the hospital," he says.
He hoists himself up to a standing position, tugging his shirt back over his head.
"You're still gonna keep that up?" Maybe you catch him grinning for a second, maybe it's just a grimace as he belts his pants.
If you've taught him anything, it's to linger by the door and say something cutting. But he doesn't look back, and though he leaves one of his rings behind, you're pretty sure it's not on purpose. This is what happens when you give too much away.
Some time later you get a text message, though you don't remember ever giving him your number.
stay out of it this time. tell your friend youngbae not to get involved either.
Two years, and you might like him, might love or hate him, or maybe you never really knew him well enough to judge and you're the proverbial tin man who for some reason is still pining after a ticking heart.
The same week your car breaks down, if any of it is connected. If any of it means anything.
note: inspired by big bang's beautiful hangover music video, originally supposed to be a challenge response but i didn't finish in time. however! i actually wrote this pretty fast considering i usually go the pace of molasses. idk whether to be proud of myself or not :| anyway, thanks so much to whetstone for looking it over and reassuring me i don't suck :) :|
gd/top | hard r, 2362 words, ar
more tinman than terminator.
all the gold and the guns and the girls couldn't get you off
all the boys, all the choices in the world couldn't get you off
GOLD GUNS GIRLS/METRIC
Don't get involved.
Don't get involved. It's what you remember most whispered from your mother's bruised mouth; what somebody says to you when you're young and in school, wandering back alleyways and hearing the sirens blink blue and red in the distance; what you repeat from the bars to the four-in-the-mornings, from the four-in-the-mornings to the girls slinking out your front door.
Don't get involved, when Jiyong enters from your peripheral vision and carves himself a place somewhere between your ribcage and your head, and you find yourself veering a little bit more off-course each time Jiyong finds you again.
One week: he likes you, he says, after he decides he knows you enough to say so. Cigarette smoke is in the air and your cheek is pressed against the cold window of a taxi homeward (or somewhere with a bed) bound, and Jiyong, with his head lolling against the headrest in front of him, says he likes you, because you're like a machine. Machines, he slurs, they don't eat or sleep or go soft in the arms after a few weeks or fuck you badly or - or - puke all over your living room floor because they've had too much to drink.
And, Jiyong adds, machines don't disappoint you (until you have to change the battery or something, but whatever, that's not that complicated). This is accompanied by some semblance of trying to clean up your soiled floor with the hems of his shirt and his clammy palms, and you think about kicking him out. But his eyes are glazed, bottom lip caught between his teeth, and he looks like those lost children ads on the milk cartons you hate even through all the smeared eyeliner, so you get the mop and show him where the shower is.
Taking a girl home would've been easier, but the ones you like don't instinctively curl up around you when you lie down. And your sheets already smell like booze, so.
So Jiyong is knock-down drag-out drunk, and you let him stay.
Two weeks: he might love you. Or so he means, when you're high enough to stumble and he's somewhere down on your lap with the joint and this close to lighting your crotch on fire. You tip your head up so the ceiling can catch the drift of dirty gray smoke from your mouth before you let him kiss you. You return it, and he hums low against your mouth.
"I'll call you a cab," you say after you pull away.
Three months: he hates you.
"You're an asshole," he says, "you're a fucking asshole," he says, and you're thinking this is a total waste of a night and a thousand-dollar jacket when he pulls you from the couch and slams you against the back wall so hard your head knocks against it a few extra times.
"This isn't how it's supposed to go," he says. Maybe he's a little younger than you previously imagined. It must've been the eyeliner, or maybe he's one of those jealous fucks who carries a .45 around in his pants waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You roll your eyes. "Tell me how it's supposed to go, then," you say, too far over the moon to care, and his short nails dig into your shoulders. Normally, it'd probably hurt; tonight, it feels vaguely incredible and for a moment you are tempted to throw him on the couch instead. Or, whoever, two legs, one mouth, it's all the same.
"You're an asshole."
"And, you're - what - eighteen? nineteen?" Or maybe he was a virgin before you and got sentimental. You look around his skinny frame, but the bar-top dancer whose body heat you can still feel has already pulled her bra straps straight and fixed her lip gloss, has already stumbled into her platform shoes and back down the stairs into the strobing lights.
Jiyong takes a step back and pauses. "Fuck you." It's less scathing and more wounded, and you let him get five paces before catching him by the wrist and resentfully dragging him to the small bathroom at the back.
"Look," you say, resigned, reluctant - but you pull out a small bag of what look like skittles from your back pocket all the same. "There's this thing you should try." This is going to be a good night if it kills you.
It is. Twelve minutes before Jiyong is sprawled on the tiled floor; thirty before he sits up and belts his pants again, red in the face. He doesn't look at you now. The worn-down rubber soles of his shoes squeak against the linoleum on his way out.
It's not the same after that. (Not that you ever had constance, but ecstasy doesn't really ever begin to smell like old times or vodka, and you start missing it at some point.)
And then he decides he doesn't know you.
The girl has long hair, a slinky dress, and looks too deep-set in the eyes to be native. She's pretty, you think, except she has her legs wrapped around Jiyong like she's been paid. He's not any better, either, fingers in her longhairslinkydress, running down her arms and back up her thigh. They're breathing the same air but for however close they are their eyes might as well be miles away, staring past each other like they're out to prove something.
Jiyong brushes his lips across her neck a few times, traps her into the corner with his arms and spindly fingers spread out, but his mouth never quite makes it to hers.
Mostly, you just watch them from a situated distance, letting the crowd in between you mass and then clear out again. You see the lighter in his hand, the diamond on her finger.
They don't even leave together - after a while she untangles herself with a breathy smile and slips away - but after she's gone you swear to God he catches your eye over the cupped hand lighting his cigarette. His cheeks look flushed, a proud-little-boy in his stance - which, after a moment, melts to shifting feet before he turns away. You feel something steel itself in you despite yourself (your jaw clenches, or your fist tightens) and are seized by a mad impulse to jump the railing and punch him across the face.
Eventually you reset, and then you're the guy who doesn't care (who just happens to bump into someone's fiance in a parking lot and decides to be a good samaritan).
The fiance's name is Youngbae. He doesn't help.
At first, you didn't even think he cared, but after a couple of days you realize it's actually a fucking contrary: occasionally, daughter-son business mergers end up with somebody falling in love.
He calls you, sometimes. Just in case you're interested in things.
"They're in my living room." Take tonight. Apparently, Jiyong has taken extra measures to light up all the lamps in her apartment like christmas morning and conduct business against the glass. It's probably not a coincidence that they live on the third floor and have ceiling-to-floor length windows. Tonight, live peep show, free for all!
You pinch the bridge of your nose, sit up in bed, and wish you were still asleep. "Where are you?"
"Outside. God - anybody could look up and see this -" Youngbae's voice cuts off; for a moment all you hear from his end is a brief wash of white noise, a car passing by on the asphalt. "I don't want to deal with it tonight. Not tonight." His tone is carefully flat. "I'm leaving."
So sometimes it ends like this, with you flopping backwards on your pillow and tossing your phone into a cabinet after you turn it off.
Other times, it culminates into watching the pair of them at some after-hours bar or back alleyway or subway station (etc, etc) with Youngbae next to you, eyes narrowed and sharp profile of a future conglomerate CEO sawed to a point.
After he starts shaking out the prescription pills into the palm of his hand, you briefly wonder if you should've told him at all, but with a missus like that, you figure it's better for Youngbae's health to get used to it while he's still young.
When Jiyong kisses her, his eyes stay open.
You take the pill bottle from Youngbae's hand and tip a couple down your throat without ever breaking your gaze. It washes down nicely with your scotch.
Champagne for celebration leads to vodka for liquid courage leads to dirty martinis for her which finally leads to scotch for a long night in, bring a weekend bag. Jiyong stops looking for you by the time the weather gets cold.
Youngbae stops calling after he finds them in his bed, skin white and writhing in the darkness.
You wait till Jiyong works his way up to whiskey by the gallon, dry, before you decide you can stop, too, any time you want.
"Who the hell do you think you are?"
You pause at the door. Something that looks like candy is scattered all over the floor; a few curtains are torn down. Jiyong is spread-eagle on your bed, in a white shirt too big for him with a hand on his temples. You add up costs in your head and look annoyed. "Is this a trick question?"
"Don't give me that." Jiyong, he shoots up like he's been waiting for this, rushes you and pins you against the wall, and oh dear, how this brings back memories. Your shoulders might still have those half-moon scars, five on each, in fact!
"Do you think it's funny, getting her boyfriend involved? Think it's hilarious she's in the hospital or do you enjoy getting off on this shit?" His breath smells like beer this close. There are traces of white powder below his nose. He's degenerated, you think, a broken-down tin man you can't escape on the fucking yellow brick road.
"You're even more insane than I thought." You push him off only to have him press against you even tighter with a heavy grunt.
"Why can't you just leave me alone, huh, Seunghyun? Huh?" His hands scrabble at the bottom of your shirt, digging underneath until he's got those two ice-cold palms against your chest, right on top of your pulse. He roughly nips at your ear, licks your jaw, breathes you in. "You like what you saw? You like when I'm fucking her in her dumbass boyfriend's little apartment and she's screaming my name, you sick fuck? Do you?"
Jiyong, however angry, is smaller and forever clumsier when he's distracted - and it's easy enough to brace a hand on his neck and twist around until he's the one up on the wall. Smash his head against a sharp corner where protruding window ledge meets plaster till he hisses, eyes screwing shut, and then you wedge your knee between his legs to keep him there. Both of you are breathing hard. After staring at him for a second, you bite the inside of your cheek and snort. "Don't flatter yourself."
But he doesn't let up. "You wanna know what she was like under me, Seunghyun? When her legs were around me and my dick was in her mouth?" Another slam against the wall doesn't deter him - only makes him twist forward an inch until your noses touch, his breath hitting your cheek too hot, too high. "You know," he says, so low you have to read his lips to understand, "I think the best part about it was her boyfriend, what the fuck was his name, listening outside the door - or was it you on the phone, listening along, too -"
You hit him.
Smash him hard from his pretty little cheek to the edge of his jaw. He stumbles a few feet, caught off guard, yet almost looks like he expected nothing less when he wipes a smear of blood from his lips.
"Get a fucking hold of yourself," you snarl. "Don't try and act like you give half a shit about her."
"Yea. Right." He hunches forward, panting slightly, his hands braced on his knees. "I forgot you wrote the whole damn book on how to lie to yourself."
When you reach for him this time, you don't know what's going to happen. So when you end up with your lips crushed against his on top of him on your scuffed wood paneling, you figure it's as good as any.
He's already turned on and you're not very far behind, if how fast you unbuckle his pants and help him kick his boxers down is any indication. Your shirt goes above your head easily and the blood on his lip stains your mouth, the hollow between neck and shoulder that he used to like, your fingers, your body.
And where is your resolve, where is your resolve?
His phone rings. "It's the hospital," he says.
He hoists himself up to a standing position, tugging his shirt back over his head.
"You're still gonna keep that up?" Maybe you catch him grinning for a second, maybe it's just a grimace as he belts his pants.
If you've taught him anything, it's to linger by the door and say something cutting. But he doesn't look back, and though he leaves one of his rings behind, you're pretty sure it's not on purpose. This is what happens when you give too much away.
Some time later you get a text message, though you don't remember ever giving him your number.
stay out of it this time. tell your friend youngbae not to get involved either.
Two years, and you might like him, might love or hate him, or maybe you never really knew him well enough to judge and you're the proverbial tin man who for some reason is still pining after a ticking heart.
The same week your car breaks down, if any of it is connected. If any of it means anything.
note: inspired by big bang's beautiful hangover music video, originally supposed to be a challenge response but i didn't finish in time. however! i actually wrote this pretty fast considering i usually go the pace of molasses. idk whether to be proud of myself or not :| anyway, thanks so much to whetstone for looking it over and reassuring me i don't suck :) :|