avarice (2/2)
Part I
Jiyong really hates Hyunsuk’s office. Somehow, it’s never gotten more bearable with time. The mirrored walls reflect back a condensed image of all Jiyong’s flaws: the dark circles under his eyes, the tiny blemishes on his cheek, the three kilograms of weight he’s lost in the two months since the last time he was here. The salmon pink hair he let Youngbae try out on him is making him look a lot more washed out than he expected. Maybe the reason he hates Hyunsuk’s mirrors so much is they show him everything he tries so hard not to see.
“Jiyong. I have a proposal for you,” says Hyunsuk, in the kind of tone that slithers through the air like invisible tendrils. It’s the same tone he uses to fire his assistants. Jiyong swallows hard, and the breath in his lungs gets stuck in his throat on its way back out of them. Hyunsuk’s eyes are fixed on him intently, unreadable, shadowed beneath the brim of his grey tweed hat.
The devil wears Dolce & Gabbana.
“I’m sure you remember your last assignment.”
Jiyong does. It would be difficult to forget.
“I thought long and hard about it. What to do with you after that.”
Since that humiliating disaster, Jiyong has been relegated to pulling clothes for Seunghyun. Sometimes he gets to choose accessories, if he’s lucky. Most of the time, he’s not. He stayed behind at his desk in Seoul while Seunghyun went to Paris Fashion Week, dutifully scrolling through pictures online to find the royal blue Dries Van Noten jacket that Seunghyun ordered him to call immediately for. He’s become, in essence, a glorified assistant. An irrelevant job title and a few pitying looks from the other stylists are all that separate him from Mino. These days, he doesn’t have enough responsibilities to delegate any of them. He sends Hanbin out for coffee five times a day just to give him something to do.
“I considered doing nothing at all.”
Hyunsuk gets up from his desk and paces back and forth in front of the large windows, against the backdrop of the high-rise buildings surrounding the office. Jiyong knows Hyunsuk well; he knows what Hyunsuk’s doing. Hyunsuk is leaving a deliberate empty space between words, expecting Jiyong to fill it with worst-case scenario thoughts. And, falling right into the trap, Jiyong does. Knowing Hyunsuk’s game doesn’t make Hyunsuk any less skilled at playing it.
Hyunsuk lets ten different worst-case scenarios play out in Jiyong’s mind in excruciating detail before he stops pacing and turns to face him. “But I’ve decided to give you another chance.”
Jiyong feels like the tendrils have slithered into his chest and stopped his heart.
“I’ll let you create an editorial for the April magazine,” Hyunsuk says. “I’ll let you do your job. And if you prove to me that you’re still fit to do it, then you can have it back. We’ll put all this behind us. How does that sound?”
It sounds like the only thing Jiyong has going for him at the moment.
“I’m glad you agree.” Hyunsuk waves his hand to dismiss Jiyong, but then stops him in the doorway. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. “Don’t forget, Jiyong: this is your second chance, but if you disappoint me again, it will also be your last.” He turns back to the windows, bearing an uncanny figurative resemblance to the high-rise buildings outside. “That’s all.”
Jiyong takes this assignment as full permission to lose his mind.
He throws himself into it with a single-minded focus that manifests sometimes as genius, but usually as madness. In his better days, he was an insatiable perfectionist; these days, he’s just insatiable. He turns out design after design, trying out concept after concept, then rips them all up because they’re good.
Good is not going to save him. Good is not enough. Good, right now, is the worst possible thing.
It becomes Hanbin’s full-time job to catch things Jiyong throws. Jiyong throws crumpled papers, dull pencils, pens with the wrong kind of ink. He throws notebooks, sketchpads, pages ripped out of newspapers, classic novels with yellowed pages and fragile bindings. He throws coffee cups, soju bottles, cigarette packs, empty plastic packages from caffeine pills. At one point, he throws a shoe. Hanbin weighs the risks, opts to save himself and dives out of the way. The heel of the shoe breaks when it hits the door, but Jiyong doesn’t hold it against him.
Eventually, he throws his phone. Hanbin lunges for it before it hits the ground, barely catching it on the tips of his fingers. It’s still ringing when he tries to hand it back to Jiyong, but Jiyong shakes his head. “Reject that call. Just … reject it.”
Jiyong was wrong. The worst possible thing right now isn’t good. It’s Seungri.
It was Seungri that made everything fall apart last time. Seungri is his vice. Jiyong knows that now. He isn’t going to make the same mistake again.
He tells Hanbin to keep his phone. He tells Hanbin to reject calls, delete texts and erase voicemails. To go back through everything, as far back as last November, and get rid of anything with Seungri’s name. Jiyong never tells him why, and Hanbin never asks. He wouldn’t have to, even if he wanted to; everything he deletes pieces together into the whole story. But Jiyong gets the feeling that, probably a long time ago, Hanbin had already guessed.
After five days, Jiyong looks down at his desk, and then he has it.
He calls it “Crooked”.
After that point, everything falls into place. All the clothes he chooses arrive within a week, the perfect model takes an hour to find and Jiyong throws around threats so vicious that no one dares to show up to the shoot late. The finished product is everything he wanted, but could never put into words.
He's changed his mind. This one is his favourite.
Right before the April issue of the magazine is released, Jiyong is called into Hyunsuk’s office.
He stands before the mirrors more confidently this time. They reflect the dark circles under his eyes that have exponentially deepened, the ashen tone of his skin, the additional two kilograms he’s lost. For the first time, Jiyong doesn’t care. He knows what he is. He’s finally accepted that he’s everything he doesn’t want to see. The mirrors don’t scare him anymore.
A copy of the magazine is laying on Hyunsuk’s desk. It’s open to a page that, this time, Jiyong isn’t ashamed to see.
“Congratulations, Jiyong,” says Hyunsuk, and for the first time in months, gives him a short nod of approval. “This might be your best work so far.”
This time, Jiyong actually answers. “Thank you.”
Hyunsuk’s face has the closest thing to a smile Jiyong’s ever seen on it. ”You did well. You’ve really turned things around.” He closes the magazine, and hands it to Jiyong. “Whatever you did, it worked. Keep it up.”
Jiyong tries.
He can't.
Seungri must really hate himself.
Jiyong called him at five-thirty after three weeks of pretending he didn’t exist, and here he is, beneath Jiyong in bed. Jiyong would say it’s loyal, maybe obedient, maybe masochistic, but it’s something more than that. He looks at Seungri, his long eyelashes and smooth skin and soft lips parted in a little gasp, and wonders why someone like Seungri would hate himself enough to keep sleeping with Jiyong.
Seungri looks different than the first day Jiyong met him. Jiyong remembers the cute, smiling barista, looking so innocent and full of possibilities. Seungri looks tired now, somehow weathered, and Jiyong would think it’s his new job, but it’s been long enough that he he knows it’s not.
Jiyong must really hate himself to keep sleeping with Seungri.
He must truly enjoy coming face-to-face with what a monster he is.
After seeing enough pictures of models, they begin to look interchangeable. High cheekbones, sharp jaw, jutting collarbones, vacant stares. Sometimes a peek of the deep ridges between their ribs. Beautiful coat hangers.
Nothing like Seungri.
Jiyong finds himself imagining Seungri’s face in the pictures - his thick eyebrows, the bags under his eyes, the slightly crooked bridge of his nose. He pictures Seungri’s body in the clothes - his broad shoulders, his solid biceps, the defined muscles of his chest. He tries to shake off the image, to focus on the long neck and translucent eyelashes and button nose of the Ukranian boy in the picture in front of him, appreciating the crisp seams and boxy shoulders of the androgynous grey jacket he’s modelling. But his eyes are dead, and he can’t stop thinking about how Seungri’s eyes are so alive. How they look at Jiyong like they’re living just for him.
He can’t stop thinking about Seungri.
On the catwalk, the models are dynamic. Jiyong goes to a show in China for an obscure designer that has a decent chance of breakout success, hoping a glimpse of the models’ personalities will make him forget. The way they walk like they command something, their arms swinging just enough to give them a sense of momentum without being cartoonish, the way they demand the attention of everyone in the room with each pose. In person, they can’t be Seungri; they’re nothing like mannequins. But no matter how alive their bodies are, their eyes are still empty.
He points this out to Seunghyun, who’s sitting beside him. “Don’t they look kind of soulless?” he murmurs behind his hand.
“To be fair, Jiyong, you do too sometimes,” Seunghyun replies.
Jiyong spends the rest of the show wondering what the hell Seunghyun means. But he thinks maybe he doesn’t really want to know, and so he doesn’t ask.
Jiyong would like to turn Seungri into an editorial.
He doesn’t want to pick Seungri out, give him to Seunghyun and Youngbae to transform, then hand him over to Daesung to photograph; no, he wants to do it himself. He wants to sit Seungri down in the stylist’s chair and paint over the parts of him he doesn’t like, covering up the little flaws that only he looks closely enough to see. He wants to dress Seungri up in clothing he knows Seungri would never wear, and style his hair in a way Seungri hates. He wants to make his perfect version of Seungri and put him under the bright lights of the photo studio, in front of a blank white screen that accentuates everything about him perfectly. He wants to move Seungri’s arms and legs, turn his head, fix his eyes on Jiyong, contort and twist and bend him like a doll, and tell him, don’t move. Look at me.
He wants to capture that perfect Seungri, everything about him just the way Jiyong wants it to be. Maybe if he could see Seungri like that, that perfect glossy airbrushed version, he could understand why Seungri’s face fills his mind until he can think of nothing else.
And then, Jiyong wants to close that one-page world between the covers of a magazine and put it on a shelf. He wants to trap Seungri there on the page, nothing but ink and paper. Nothing that could ever hurt him. Maybe, in one-dimensional print, Seungri would become like the other models. Interchangeable. A beautiful coat hanger. A vacant stare in empty eyes. Jiyong could swap him out with anyone else at any given moment and feel nothing. He could close the pages and forget about him. Or maybe, if he couldn't forget, he could tear Seungri up and finally be free.
Jiyong allows himself three minutes this time. Three minutes to lay in Seungri’s arms, letting Seungri hold him like they have any chance of loving each other. But three minutes is long enough; probably too long, after the way he whispered I need you against Seungri’s mouth and kissed him desperately enough to let Seungri know he meant it. His hair is a mess, fringe falling into his eyes, and the aircon raises goosebumps on his bare skin as he breaks free of Seungri’s grasp and gets out of bed. His clothes are draped over Seungri’s desk, tossed haphazardly there almost as soon as he got in the door, and he shakes the wrinkles out of his trousers as he picks them up.
“Don’t go.”
Jiyong wonders if Seungri can see the way it takes him three tries to get the metal fastener of his belt in the right hole, fingers fumbling with the art of making haste look casual.
“What?”
“Don’t go.”
Seungri looks as low as Jiyong feels. It’s sick, but he feels something like satisfaction. Seeing Seungri lying there alone on the bed, curled in on himself with the confidence drained out of his pleading eyes, Jiyong is satisfied that he’s broken Seungri. Seungri is so beautiful and Jiyong wants to look at him, to appreciate the way he’s still wearing nothing but the sheets pulled just above his waist, to appreciate how small and pitiful he looks, but he knows the helpless look in Seungri’s eyes will make him hesitate and so he doesn’t.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s storming outside.”
“You’re over-exaggerating.”
Seungri isn’t. A splitting flash of lightning illuminates the room with a brief, eerie glow. The excuse is so blatant it’s ridiculous. But Jiyong has to pretend to believe his own deception, no matter how transparent, or it will all fall apart. He's become a master of that by now; he's been doing it all along. Outside the window, another round of thunder rumbles through the sky.
“That was thunder and lightning, Jiyong. It’s dangerous.”
What’s dangerous is the way Jiyong wants, more than anything, to crawl back into bed and fall asleep in Seungri’s arms. What’s dangerous is that, even though he’s always liked hurting and playing more than loving, he just keeps playing even when it’s crossing over into loving and it’s hurting him too.
“It’s only a bit of rain.”
Jiyong can pinpoint the exact moment Seungri gives up.
And it’s so fucked up, because he needs Seungri, but more than that he needs to know that Seungri needs him. It’s control, Seungri’s helpless look as he watches Jiyong leave, unable to make him stay no matter how hard he tries. And it’s control, when Jiyong actually manages to pull himself away.
He’s losing his mind. This isn’t control; this is a weak grasp for it. If he were in control he could’ve stayed there, slept there beside Seungri, and felt nothing.
He focuses on that helpless, hurt look in Seungri’s eyes because it makes him feel like maybe he’s not the one who lost this time.
Deep down he knows they’re both losing, again and again and again. But Jiyong just keeps playing the game.
The radio signal in the car is three-quarters static, made almost unrecognisable by the storm, but Jiyong catches bits and pieces of a familiar song:
I only call you when it’s half-past five, the only time that I’ll be by your side
I only love it when you touch me, not feel me
When I’m fucked up that’s the real me, yeah
Without any resistance, Jiyong lets work devour him again. It’s not difficult to be swallowed up. It’s also not like he has much of a choice.
Seunghyun quit in the second week of May, moving to a significantly higher salary at Elle Korea. Jiyong feels betrayed at first, but brushes it off. That’s the way it always works in this industry: you take whatever opportunity comes along to rise up the ranks, hoping to someday reach the top. He doesn’t blame Seunghyun. He would probably do the same.
With Seunghyun gone, all of his work falls upon Jiyong. Hyunsuk won’t have it any other way; most of the other stylists have fallen out of his incredibly fickle favour, and his perfectionism has caused him to reject every single candidate that could be Seunghyun’s replacement. Everything becomes a frenzied rush as Jiyong races against time to finish three photoshoots, create two editorials, design red carpet looks for four actresses who have been nominated at various award shows and make public appearances at any function Hyunsuk determines his presence is required at. He has Hanbin working twenty-hour days beside him, running on caffeine pills and adrenaline, making frantic calls all around the globe to obtain every piece of clothing and jewellery Jiyong demands. He borrows Mino, saving him from being sacked, and Mino becomes his link to the outside world. Jiyong doesn’t really leave the office anymore.
Two weeks go by, then three. He lets Seungri’s texts sit unread in his message inbox, and lets Seungri’s calls go to voicemail. It’s like March all over again. He gets the feeling this is a cycle they’re falling into. He only picks up once, in a late night moment of weakness.
“Jiyong.” Seungri’s voice is relieved. “I’m glad to hear you’re alive.”
“Okay.”
There’s a long silence. A full minute goes by before Seungri asks, “Don’t you miss me at all?”
Jiyong hangs up, and doesn’t answer again.
Eventually, Hyunsuk replaces Seunghyun with a slightly spacey woman named Bom who previously worked for Marie Claire UK, but has come directly to Korea from a one-week stint at the American edition of Runway. One week was all she could stand. Her cherry red hair sits almost directly across the colour wheel from Seunghyun’s favourite shade of toothpaste teal, but her stories about her five hellish encounters with Miranda Priestly make Jiyong laugh. He hands Mino over to her, not a moment too soon for the fragile remainder of Mino’s sanity, and chain-smokes half a pack of cigarettes outside in the fresh air and direct sunlight for what feels like the first time in years.
Hyunsuk gives Jiyong two days off, an unprecedented occurrence for anyone who has ever worked in this pressure-cooker hell. He nearly sprints out of Hyunsuk’s office before Hyunsuk can change his mind, and sleeps for twelve hours straight. But after twelve hours, Jiyong doesn’t know what to do with the time he has to breathe again.
Within thirty-six hours, he finds himself on the way to Seungri’s.
This is all just part of the cycle.
But then Jiyong breaks the cycle.
He stays.
Jiyong knows all too well what four AM looks like through Seungri’s window. Eight AM is an entirely different experience. It’s somehow idyllic; the noise of the street below has a steadier rhythm, the lights of the surrounding buildings are illuminated and there’s a peaceful look on Seungri’s face that Jiyong hasn’t seen in a long time. He doesn’t know if he likes it or not.
He needs a cigarette so badly.
Leaving is a familiar process. It’s automatic by now: the search for his clothes, the quick pat-down of his pockets for his keys and his phone, the urge to look back that he always ignores. What’s not automatic is the way he hesitates at the door to the balcony on his way out. It should be automatic to keep walking, to shut the front door behind him, to leave no indication that he was ever here. No indication that he ever wanted to be. But somewhere along the line, Jiyong’s autopilot turned off.
He leaves the balcony door open behind him, letting the warm May air into Seungri’s perfectly temperate apartment as he lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. There are some nerves the nicotine soothes. There are others it doesn’t.
It feels somehow inevitable when he hears Seungri’s footsteps behind him.
“Jiyong?” Seungri says. He sounds as surprised by this turn of events as Jiyong feels. Jiyong pictures an exaggerated Greek drama mask on his face. “I thought you would’ve - would’ve gone to work by now.”
They both know Seungri really means, I thought you would’ve already left.
“It’s Sunday,” Jiyong says.
“Oh.”
The silence stretches on for so long that, travelling at the speed of light, it could’ve already reached the sun. Seungri hangs back, like he’s not sure how to approach Jiyong, and that’s fine. Jiyong’s not sure how to approach Seungri either. Not sure if he even wants to. He finishes one cigarette, and reaches into his pocket for another.
On his third cigarette, Seungri comes up beside him. He follows Jiyong’s gaze, looking down at the street beneath them, watching the same ebb and flow of traffic they always hear at night. In the morning, the pattern is different.
Travelling in the opposite direction, the speed-of-light silence could’ve been halfway to Jupiter.
Jiyong wonders if he’s made this seem like a peace offering, cigarette smoke clouding the clear morning air like sacrificial incense. He didn’t intend to, but telling that to Seungri would mean he’d have to admit the thought crossed his mind. So he remains silent, continuing to watch the ebb and flow until the speed-of-light silence could have breached Jupiter’s atmosphere.
“If you want,” Seungri says, hesitating, like he’s afraid to push things too far, “you can stay for breakfast.”
Jiyong taps the ash off his cigarette, dragging it out for much longer than he has to. “I have things to do.”
“Oh.”
Seungri doesn’t sound disappointed anymore. He doesn’t sound like anything at all. He leans off the railing, turning back towards the door. “I’ll see you later, Jiyong.”
It doesn’t occur to Jiyong until much later that it may have been a question.
Jiyong spends several days sketching the galaxy. He fills it with stars, then adds in the helpless moons and planets pulled into orbit around them. Each time, he spaces the stars and the moons a little further apart. In the end, he can’t figure out anything to turn the drawings into, and throws them all out.
Jiyong gets Seungri’s text, Can I come over? right before he falls into bed with tonight’s girl. She’s an up-and-coming actress, one he’s styling a photoshoot for in the August issue of the magazine, and couldn’t resist inviting out for drinks afterwards. And similarly, he can’t keep himself from replying with yes before he puts his phone on silent and drops it on top of the pile of discarded clothes on the floor beside the bed. He forgets about it as soon as she straddles him, dragging her nails down his chest, and loses himself in the soft curves of her body.
They take longer than he expected, losing track of time somewhere around the point where she peels off her lacy red panties and gets on top of him. And it’s not until she’s rolling over, slipping those panties back on, that Jiyong remembers: Seungri.
He dresses as quickly as she does, checking his phone immediately afterwards, and hates himself.
Jiyong?
Why aren’t you answering the door?
Are you not home yet?
Seungri doesn’t let himself in anymore, not after the first and last time he walked in on something like this. The first and last texts are spaced apart by ten minutes. Jiyong hopes Seungri has given up and left.
He walks the actress to the door and kisses her up against it for a full thirty seconds before he swings it open. Seungri is leaning against the wall outside, one foot up against it, typing out another text. The way his eyes light up when the door opens only makes it a hundred times worse when it fades as the actress walks out, her black Miu Miu pumps clicking all the way down the hall.
Jiyong doesn’t apologise. He wouldn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what wouldn’t make this worse. Instead he kisses Seungri, pulling back with an apologetic half-smile. His lips are still reddened from the actress's lipstick. Seungri doesn’t smile back.
And maybe if Jiyong doesn’t apologise, maybe if he never shows any remorse or regret, Seungri will finally decide he’s had enough. Maybe he’ll go away and leave Jiyong alone. Maybe he’ll remove himself from Jiyong’s life, because for some reason, Jiyong can’t take care of that himself. But instead, Seungri gives him that same look of understanding, the one he gave Jiyong months ago. Like he knows Jiyong well enough to know what that smile means, to get what Jiyong might've meant to say. Like maybe Jiyong did apologise after all.
Or maybe he’s just willing to settle for this.
Jiyong understands. He’s willing to settle for this too.
Until, suddenly, he’s not.
Tonight, Jiyong lets Seungri come over. He wants the four AM that’s out his own windows, with the brighter lights and the luxury high-rise buildings and the floor-to-ceiling glass. He wants some sense of control, some way to reign in the fact that he sees four AM out Seungri’s windows more often than his own these days. He takes Seungri more slowly tonight, more gently, spending the time to explore every centimeter of Seungri’s body, acquainting himself with all the spots that make Seungri shiver and whine and clutch at Jiyong’s hair with trembling hands. And he lets Seungri do the same, lets Seungri run his hands and mouth all over Jiyong’s bare skin, lets himself be exposed and vulnerable for once. Lets Seungri lead. It feels familiar and comfortable, somehow, but new; it feels like coming home to a place he’s never been. And Jiyong thinks, he could get used to this.
He wants to get used to this.
This is what makes his skin crawl once Seungri kisses him and falls asleep, makes his stomach churn and his veins burn like they want to escape the muscles and bones they run over, letting his pounding heart stop beating.
He can’t stop feeling it, Seungri all over him. Seungri imprinted on his body, phantom touches ghosting over it, leaving residual traces of a warmth not entirely from the heat of his skin -
No.
Jiyong can’t breathe.
Arms around his waist -
Fingers gripping his shoulder -
Lips on his mouth -
No.
He needs it to stop.
Jiyong throws the covers off, moving around his room in a frenzy. He stuffs a change of clothes and some toiletries into a bag, sweeping his work off the desk into it as almost an afterthought. He can sleep in his office, shower in the hair studio, text Hanbin to bring him coffee when he comes in. He’s used to that anyway. He spends half his life like that. By now, his office feels more like home than his apartment. It seems almost plausible that Jiyong could stay there forever, avoid the bed that’s now tainted with the memories of Seungri in it, avoid the fact that the four AM view out his window isn’t that different than Seungri’s after all.
He takes one look back at Seungri laying there alone in his bed, his face peaceful where it’s half-buried in Jiyong’s pillow, his naked torso exposed to the moonlight outside. Seungri is so, so beautiful, and Jiyong feels something he can’t place. Or maybe doesn’t want to. He slings his bag over his shoulder and heads out into the heavy August night air before he can give into the urge to take another look back.
Jiyong thinks he might love Seungri. Really, really love Seungri.
And Jiyong doesn’t like to love.
Jiyong is drunk again tonight. These days, he's drunk a lot. He fucks Seungri harder than he ever has before, words slipping out of his mouth too fast and messy for him to stop them. “I love you so much, Seungri. So much. Only you, Seungri. Only you.”
He does. He loves Seungri so fucking much, and somewhere along the line, that love became stronger than his pride. His fingers keep finding Seungri’s number in his phone at these horrible hours of the morning, then finding Seungri’s body far too willing to let them do whatever they want. And he always thinks, maybe one more time will be enough. Maybe if he fucks Seungri one more time, that will be all it takes to get himself back under control. Maybe that will finally satisfy the need he has for Seungri’s skin against his. For Seungri’s eyes fixed only on him. For Seungri’s voice saying his name.
It never does.
Jiyong has no control left.
"Do you love me?" he asks, as Seungri digs his nails into Jiyong's shoulders and lets out ragged gasps of pleasure. "You love me, don't you?"
"I do," Seungri moans, trembling under Jiyong. "I love you."
"And you're mine, aren't you?" Seungri's nails are scraping down Jiyong's naked back, leaving stinging scratches in the skin. Jiyong fucks him harder. "Aren't you mine?"
"I'm yours."
Seungri comes with Jiyong's name in his mouth. Jiyong wouldn't have it any other way. Afterwards he wraps himself around Seungri, trying to hold all of Seungri as close as he can, and presses kisses wherever he can reach. “I love you,” he says, over and over, as everything begins to fade out around him. “I love you.”
There aren’t tears glistening in Seungri’s eyes when Jiyong kisses him on the mouth, whispering against his lips, you will always be mine. No, it’s just a trick of the light.
When Jiyong wakes up at half-past five, he’s sober. Seungri’s skin is sweat-sticky where it presses into his, and he feels sick. This time, he knows it's no use blaming the alcohol. Excuses are worthless past the point of no return. He needs to be as far away from Seungri as he can get. He throws on his clothes and stumbles out into the humid morning, hating the way the moisture in the muggy end-of-summer air doesn’t make it any easier to breathe.
It’s early September. New York Fashion Week is coming up, but Jiyong knows seven days won’t be enough. Eleven-thousand kilometers won’t be enough. He leaves a message for Hyunsuk from the back of a taxi, asking him to send Jiyong to as many Fashion Weeks as he possibly can, as far from Korea as he can get.
It’s not only Seungri who looks more tired now.
In the end, Jiyong goes to eight Fashion Weeks. He flies from America to Europe to Australia to Europe again and then back to Asia, ignoring Seungri’s long-distance texts on four different continents.
Can I see you soon? his phone asks in New York City, and Jiyong almost gets hit by a speeding taxi when he glances down briefly to dismiss the notification.
Can you come over tonight? it asks in London, and Jiyong flicks the button to silence it with a little more force than necessary as the lights dim for the start of the Vivienne Westwood Red Label show.
Are you ignoring me? it asks in Sydney.
Are you okay? it asks in Milan.
I’m worried, it adds in Paris.
Please call me, it begs in Budapest.
Just let me know if you’re okay, it says in Tokyo.
Please, it repeats in Beijing.
Jiyong? it pleads as he steps off the plane in Seoul. Jiyong throws it in his bag and wishes it wouldn’t be so terribly inconvenient to change his number.
It doesn’t say anything else after that.
Back in Seoul, Jiyong loses himself in the rush of re-entering his usual schedule after a month and a half away. He takes on extra projects, making up for lost time, and works himself to the bone to keep up with the deadlines. Hanbin is sent to hospital halfway through November after collapsing from exhaustion on the floor of Jiyong’s office at three o’clock in the morning, and Jiyong specifically requests that a replacement not be found. He almost relishes the last minute crises that arise; a five-hour delay in the flight carrying a Céline dress from Paris to Seoul for a photoshoot, an unfixable coffee stain on the hem of light grey Kimseoryong trousers that are meant to be on an actor in fifteen minutes, a brutally hungover model who can’t get out of bed and has to be replaced three hours before her editorial shoot, all her clothes hastily hemmed and taken in around the waist for her replacement. They give him something to think about, something to occupy him so fully that he doesn’t have any mental energy left to wonder if his phone is going to light up with another message from Seungri ever again.
He tells himself he hopes it doesn’t. That this is what he’s wanted for so long. He doesn’t know if he can forget Seungri, and so he pushes Seungri out of his mind, leaving no space to care anymore.
He doesn’t leave space to realise they’ve fallen back into the cycle. He never broke it after all.
Two months, sixty-five thousand kilometers and seven texts after that five-thirty awakening, Jiyong breaks and types out two words:
Come over.
It’s funny what two months can do, Jiyong thinks. For the first time in the year they’ve been doing this, it’s Seungri who gets up to leave when they’re done.
“No, Seungri. Don’t go.”
It sounds half-hearted. Jiyong doesn’t mean it to, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t have any energy left. He’s put everything into trying to escape Seungri, and now, finally, he’s the one begging Seungri to stay.
Maybe the word isn’t funny. Maybe it’s ironic.
For the first time, Seungri ignores him.
Maybe the word is justified.
“Don’t go,” Jiyong repeats. He gets up off the bed - this time, he’s the one laying there helpless and begging - and crosses the room to grab Seungri’s hands, keeping him from taking his bag off Jiyong’s desk. “Don’t go.”
Maybe the word is well-deserved.
Seungri struggles, and Jiyong is shocked, but he’s not really surprised. It was only a matter of time. They both hit their respective breaking points a long time ago. Seungri’s voice is harsh, a tone he’s never used against Jiyong before, no matter what Jiyong has done. “And why not?”
Because I love you, Jiyong wants to say. Because I love you and I need you to stay with me. But old habits die hard. Jiyong has always liked hurting more than playing, and playing more than loving - he’s never liked to love. So he musters the last of his strength, all his resolve to make Seungri stay, all his desperation, and shapes it into something sharp and pointed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it seem like a choice,” he hisses, and sinks his fingernails into the callused skin of Seungri’s hands. “You’re not allowed to leave.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
When wild animals are backed into a corner, Jiyong knows, they lash out. When they panic, they fight. And Jiyong is panicked. He lets go of Seungri's hands and pushes him back from the door, baring his teeth. “You’re mine, Seungri. You’re mine, and I say you can’t leave.”
“Well, I’m sorry for making it seem like that means anything to me anymore.”
Jiyong reels, unable to process it, when Seungri shoves him away. He stands there dumbly as Seungri grabs his bag; it knocks all of Jiyong’s papers off the desk, scattering a December magazine and a January photoshoot mock-up and pencil sketches of Dior-clad models in golden cages all over the floor. Seungri steps over them on his way out of the bedroom. Months ago, when Jiyong needed Seungri to fight, Seungri did nothing. And now that Jiyong needs him more than anything, Seungri is pushing him away.
“I don’t believe you.” The snarled and twisted things buried deep inside Jiyong burst to the surface, protruding from his skin in a tangle of razor wire, ready to cut whatever they touch. He follows Seungri to the front door, grabbing his wrist and yanking Seungri back around to face him. “You hang off my every word. I know you, Seungri.”
The look in Seungri’s eyes tells him maybe he doesn’t know Seungri anymore. It’s funny what two months can do.
“I know that when I say I love you, you think that actually means something to me.”
It does.
“When I say I’m sorry, you think it’s for hurting you, when it’s really because you’re so pathetic.”
Jiyong is pathetic.
“When I say it’s only you, you think that’s a good thing, when what I mean is only you are idiotic enough to stick around this long.”
Because Jiyong tried so hard to get rid of him. Because Seungri deserves so much better.
“I am everything to you, Seungri.”
It’s justified, Jiyong thinks, how this time it’s Seungri who’s already halfway out the door.
“Maybe,” says Seungri. “But since that doesn’t mean anything to you, then I guess you won’t care if I leave. And I know you won’t care if I don’t come back.”
Jiyong turns away. He can’t watch the door close behind Seungri.
Because Seungri is everything to him.