i'm gonna lose my mind, so no-one can remind me
Title: Shelter
Pairing: Jiyong/Seungri
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He misses each train and sits back down, knowing his shoes are too big, his suitcase empty but large enough to fit one person.
Notes: AU: The one where the boys are in a rock band! Has it been done before? I bet it has.
Remember there was a time when I didn't write AUs? Yeeeah.
God, I'm usually very wham-bam-thank you-ma'am with fics, I don't spend months working on them because I get bored of myself and just give up. But this thing I've been working on since July. JULY. Don't even know why I bothered but aaanyway, I think it's done now. It is not in chronological order -wouldn't be mine if it was- but I hope it's not too hard to figure out when everything happened.
Dedicated in its entirety to Cakes, along with my soul and my eternal gratitude.
Shelter.
…don’t you think it’s time we left already?
Seungri laughs at the worried face. Aw hyung, hyung, it’s fine. Hyung. I love you, hyung.
Seunghyun frowns, palms at his face, pulls his hair and his ears and Seungri whines, careful, will you? Ouch.
How drunk are you, Seunghyun asks. Could you make it home on your own?
Don’t I always make it home? Seungri giggles. Don’t I always. I’ll make you breakfast, hyung.
The side of the bathtub is cruel on his neck, and his tongue feels dry and swollen. But he doesn’t feel any pain, just a lazy sort of hazy sort of satisfaction at the lack of it, the lack of pain, like given two more days to live, but he really thinks he could throw up now.
Seunghyun frowns and sits back on his heels, and Seungri tells him he’s not responsible for anyone, sometimes you look so lost, hyung. I’ll walk home when I get up. The first thing I do once I remember how to stand is coming home, making you breakfast. I swear, I swear.
He’s not here, maknae.
Oh? Seungri rolls his head on the marble and his throat clicks when he swallows.
He left, he’s not coming back, don’t wait for him.
Seungri laughs at how melodramatic that sounds, here on the bathroom floor. Something he’d hear in one of those dreams where he grows old waiting for the train back to Gwangju, his fancy shoes too big for his feet and his suitcase to heavy to lift but still completely empty.
I’m not waiting for him, he says. I’m not.
I’m not waiting for him, I’m going home.
*
Jiyong is off on one of his monologues again, and it’s too early in the morning for that. Seungri yawns and stretches, It’s an interview but fine, whatever, if I’m bored I’m bored. Jiyong’s talking about love, something about prisms and about hell being other people, we perceive love as we perceive ourselves reflected by others, expectations are humiliations and Seungri’s had enough of pretty rhymes and of things he doesn’t understand.
He pops his knuckles. The interviewer looks at him, she’s young and impressionable, Seungri’s young and impressionable, he sympathizes. She’s older than him but her eyes still glitter when she looks at Jiyong and Seungri thinks, get in line, sister.
Seungri-ah, she asks, would you like to add something?
Jiyong grins real fucking wide, like an open dare. Seungri wishes there was some hostility there, this time, but usually there’s just pure amusement and let’s see what you can do, and lil’ V gets baited, every time.
Would you like to say something?
Seungri would like to make a difference. He would like to fire up this live broadcast by saying, I wish Jiyong hyung would stop sucking face with sluts in the hallway. I wish didn’t kiss me only to feed me second-hand smoke. I wish he’d back me up against this table right now.
Seungri dreams of a train station and a suitcase large enough to fit a person. A tiny one, but still a person. When he gets asked about his dreams, by Youngbae mostly, he says I dream that I’m waiting for a train back home and it never comes. He’s said it so many times he’s believed it himself.
Seungri smiles, closing his eyes. “I’d like to say…” he hums.
Come on maknae, Jiyong prods. Come on, surprise me.
But the truth is, trains come and go. Too many trains, he’s lost count. The letters on each sign read Gwangju but when Seungri tries to get up, he trips on his large shoes, and if he manages to take them off, he realizes he can’t lift his suitcase. He misses each train and sits back down, knowing his shoes are too big, his suitcase empty, but large enough to fit a person.
Seungri breaks out in a live rendition of Frank Sinatra’s LOVE, and the entire room laughs. Politely. Not forced, but exaggerated. Seungri could be funny if he wanted, but it takes courage to do that and he’s scared to his bones.
L, is for the way you look at me.
Seungri stares down at his converse when he’s done, brand new and fitting perfectly, and wonders, God, what are you waiting for, will you wait forever.
Walking back to the car, Jiyong’s hand slips in his and Seungri feels like he’s gripping the handle of a huge leather suitcase.
*
Daesung is not pretty, but he has a great voice. Seungri finds himself sometimes desperate for his affection, fucking starved, because it’s so scarcely given. One drunken evening he rubs the top of his head against Daesung’s knee and purrs, hey hyung, hey, do you like me? Just a little? Please like me hyung, just enough, just a little.
Daesung says, I love you maknae, and holds his arms to his chest, but Seungri would have preferred a hand in his hair instead of words, a hug, something tangible that he can catalogue.
Seungri needs to be loved, but when he tells Jiyong, the answer’s you’re too old for this and you’ve got me. Jiyong leans in for a kiss across the kitchen table and Seungri wants to tell him this isn’t love, it’s disembowelment, but it’s hard to tell the truth when you’re mouth’s occupied.
*
Seungri’s first kiss was with Jiyong. It’s group secret and an old scab, the others laugh when they pick at it but Seungri just feels gutshot.
You were a creepy fucker, Seunghyun says. I swear to God you were.
Yes, Seungri remembers. Being ten and stupid with admiration, Seungri remembers. Being ten and all scraped up knees and bandages, timid attempts at swearwords and prank-pulling. He remembers Jiyong’s crooked teeth when he smiled and Seungri remembers that particular smile that made him ask.
Jiyong had laughed, and it hadn’t hurt, not instantly.
The pain had started at his toes later on, while he was walking home, crept its way up his bony legs and all up his spine, grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed.
He didn’t sleep that night and next morning, next morning he walked up to Jiyong with a headache and his first ever set of dark circles, poked him in the chest and said it again, kiss me.
Jiyong punched him then, and two years later, age twelve and fourteen they played truth or dare and Jiyong picked dare. He shouldn’t have.
It lasted about three seconds and Jiyong’s lips tasted faintly of soda pop. The crowd booed and cheered and some pretended to gag, and it would be another two years before Seungri forgot the way Jiyong -Jiyong- had gasped when their mouths lost contact.
*
Seungri knows he has a superpower, he just hasn’t figured it out yet. Fire still burns and bubbles his skin and he can’t breathe underwater. He can’t move objects with his eyes and sometimes not even with his hands- he’s seventeen, alright? He’s still growing.
And he can’t walk through walls, he’s tried.
When he tells Jiyong -he tells Jiyong everything, don’t you get it- Jiyong huffs his breath of irritation and presses Seungri’s bass pick into his palm like he wants it to leave an indentation there. “Just learn how to play your fucking instrument, maknae.”
Seungri would have been hurt, he gets hurt easily, but there’s something in the way Jiyong’s eyes linger on his face for a second that feels like a slow caress.
Hyung, he says, and Jiyong blinks rapidly.
Jiyong walks out of the room, dragging his feet and smelling of displeasure, making a show of it, but Seungri just gapes at the door, burring with a newfound certainty. I could make you wink out of existence. He looks down at his hands and the red triangular pick, I could snap my fingers and you’d explode.
He thinks about running to the kitchen and pushing Jiyong against the wall.
He pictures gray ash running through his fingers.
What a pointless power. He’ll never use it.
*
He feels alone. Very often. On stage, he feels separated, even though Seunghyun will play back to back with him, and Jiyong will stick his tongue down his throat in between choruses, even though Youngbae will share his water bottle. The rest are forces of nature, and he’s talked about this with Youngbae -yes, yes, Seungri is a talker. Words fill voids. Whatever.
(Hyung, you’re earth because you’re the one closest to the ground. Hey hey, kidding, don’t push. Daesung hyung sweats so much, so he’s water, and TOP hyung is fire- what, come on, haven’t you seen him when he’s angry? Jiyong is wind. Well, because it’s the only one left.
Me? I’m Seungri.)
Youngbae had smiled with his eyes and said, that’s right, maknae. We’re elements but you’re victory. Youngbae’s tried, but his pronunciation remains forever terrible.
Seungri had smiled his brightest and hugged him clumsily.
Seungri isn’t stupid.
Youngbae is the earth because he keeps them grounded, keeps them all glued together in one place. Daesung is water because he can be anything, can take all shapes, all sizes, can fit around them like a glove and they’d die without him. Seunghyun is fire because he keeps them warm and Jiyong is the wind because he rushes through and leaves nothing in his wake, but they owe him every breath they take.
Seungri is just a word. An abstract sense that shifts and changes. An entry in the dictionary, a diner nametag.
*
The bloodmail stopped scaring him around the fourth time he opened an envelope and a rusty razor clinked on the floor. I love you, I’d die for you, I love you, look what I did for you, bloodstained sinks and broken glass, flowers drawn in red.
Dramatic, ridiculous, masochistic, stupid.
Youngbae still shudders and Jiyong won’t look at the pictures. Seunghyun covers them with newspapers and murmurs didn’t sign up for this shit. Seungri can stare at them for minutes at a time- he’s not cool enough for morbid fascination but perhaps he’s human enough to understand.
He keeps them, all of them, wrapped in an old t-shirt, under his bed.
*
One day Seungri fell in a pool.
One day Seungri fell in love and broke all of his bones.
Dramatic, ridiculous, masochistic, stupid.
Predictable.
It’s like a disease, black and greedy, and Seungri would rather chew off his limbs than let it spread over him- but that’s not entirely the truth. Seungri is fond of hyperboles and romantic novels where one lover inevitably dies in the end, somewhere deep inside he encourages self-abuse.
It’s pretty bad.
Because he was in fascination long before being in love, and now he’s all out. He’s out of blindness and clichés, used them up by the age of fourteen, and how he’s running on reality. If he loves Jiyong it’s because Jiyong yells at him, steals his food, calls him names, expects too much. It is because Jiyong left him in a gas station two months ago without an explanation, Sinatra singing in the background. Seungri fell in love with Jiyong’s clavicles and bitten nails, his baseless anger, his intoxicated lyrics, his porcelain veneers. Seungri fell in love with everything plastic and fake in Jiyong, with everything blood-warm and fragile, every disgusting little detail and stupid habit.
Seungri thinks about all the girls promising suicide to a glitter rockstar that treads over smashed guitars and Seungri hates them for a second, envies their ignorance because really, who would die for just a kid that can’t wake up in the morning.
*
Seungri’s strongest trait is his survival instinct.
Seungri survived the bullying by turning himself into a joke. He survived highschool by making himself invisible to others and invincible in his head. He survived math tests by cheating, he survived his father’s sudden fits of rage by learning when to shut his mouth. He survived his boring life by escaping it, he survived the bone-crunching uncertainty by working so hard his fingers bled.
Love has nothing on highschool, or on math.
Seungri can do this.
Somebody famous once said -he thinks it was John Lennon, or Michael Jackson, but it might just have been Jiyong- if love is rough to you, be rough with love. Kick love for kicking and crush it to the ground.
Seungri can do this.
*
Seungri defends himself by attacking and he attacks by taking all of Jiyong’s cigarettes and flushing them down the toilet. The plan is simple, but foolproof. It’s in the small things Jiyong likes. The things he’s used to and the stuff he needs to get through the day, everything he barely notices. His smokes, his phone, his second pillow. That special brand of painkillers because the rest don’t work anymore, warm water and pumpkin juice. A functioning alarm clock, his favorite mug. Those cheap flashy earrings, that outfit pressed on time. His notebooks somewhere he can find them. That girl’s phone number from last night. His razor blade slightly dull so he won’t cut his pretty face when he’s not awake or sober enough to pay attention.
Seungri takes everything and throws it out the window. Some of it literally.
It takes one week for Jiyong to start cracking. Slowly but surely. Jiyong is not attentive enough to find the culprit or the origin of his frustration, he just knows the frustration is there and he takes it -naturally- as the universe’s attack upon his person.
Everything is against me, maknae, he sighs one night with his head on Seungri’s lap, and the shadows under his eyes seem painted on. Surely he is ugly now, Seungri thinks, idly stroking Jiyong’s tired face with his fingertips. Surely I can’t love someone who is ugly.
Why the fuck do you think we keep you here, maknae? Jiyong screams, the next night. Are we doing charity work? His hands are shaking, one day ago he laced his fingers through Seungri’s under the dull glow of the television, three days ago Seungri threw out the last of his sleeping pills.
Get the fuck out, Seungri. Don’t wanna look at you.
Seungri sobs quietly in a bus station, but the old lady next to him doesn’t seem to notice. In the bus, he rests his head against the glass window and thinks, surely he is cruel now. I cannot love someone who is cruel.
He bites his tongue and gets off at the next stop.
*
A week later, Jiyong and his shaking hands break up with another three-day girlfriend over the phone. You are scum, the most disgusting fucking- the phone clicks, but Seungri can guess. Jiyong seems calm, until he grabs a glass pitcher full of cranberry juice -Jiyong hates cranberry juice- and throws it to the kitchen wall. He keeps staring at the red stain for a while afterwards, the broken glass like a shark’s ready mouth, peeking lethal and glistening through the tiles.
Can’t remember where I left my smokes, Jiyong murmurs, and leaves the room.
They’re under the couch, along with his second I-pod and a pack of gum.
Youngbae moves to get up, and Seunghyun says don’t, hand extended in midair. Youngbae goes anyway, and eventually, Seunghyun follows.
Seungri kneels on the floor and picks up the glass shards, one by one. At some point his hand slips and he cuts deep into his palm, clear shot of pain. Purer red drips in the diluted puddle, making the scene of the crime seem a bit more realistic.
In the bathroom, Seungri lets the water run and drags his palm across his cheekbones, down his nose, over his lips, leaving vivid trails of red. He stares at his reflection with pride, thinks of war paint and taking scalps, and then he throws up in the bathtub.
He stems the bleeding and returns Jiyong’s cigarettes and sleeping pills, but not his I-pod.
He clears up the rest of the mess in the kitchen and strikes cranberry juice off the grocery list, writes pumpkin juice instead.
*
At 4 AM Jiyong makes himself a cup of coffee. He sits next to Seungri on the kitchen table, hands steady around the mug.
“Where’d you get that?” he asks quietly. Daesung is sleeping on the living room floor. Jiyong’s pointing at the cut.
“Shaving,” Seungri says and flexes his fingers. It hurts.
“Oh.”
Jiyong takes Seungri’s hand and places a soft, lingering kiss on the red line.
When he goes to leave, Seungri grabs him by the wrist and pulls him down.
Jiyong’s mouth tastes like ash and Seungri won’t say I’m sorry. He won’t say you’re beautiful, and you’re kind and I can’t let you win this, he doesn’t say you have no idea where I’d take the knife to next for you to do that again.
He does say, think I saw your I-pod under the green couch?
*
They have a contract. It’s a flimsy thing, a let’s see what you can do, no-one’s risking their necks over them, but Jiyong was built for these challenges and his eyes are burning holes into his notebooks.
They have a house; the rent is cheap and the neighborhood’s bad but the roaches are slow and it’s always fun to hear Daesung screeching in the middle of the night, kill it! kill it!
They have a thing. A stupid little thing, they started it a month ago in a small town surrounded by golden trees and train tracks and Seungri won’t say he’s in love because he’s been in love for a while now and it’s not news.
Seungri goes about his day stupid and cross-eyed, smiling at their refrigerator and helping old ladies cross the street, a cliché to end all clichés, just like the words Jiyong had tattooed on his arms when he was sixteen, even though he can’t read latin.
Jiyong likes to sit on Seungri’s lap like it’s a chair and he likes petting the back of his neck while he eats. He likes calling Seungri illiterate because he remembered Seungri dropped out of school to go touring with them, but he reads him passages out of serious books when he feels like it. He asks for Seungri’s opinion and Seungri always has one, and though he might laugh at him, Seungri knows that it’s the reason he keeps asking.
Jiyong leaves three notebook pages with his horrible handwriting under Seungri’s pillow and it’s not a loveletter like Seungri’s stupid stumbling pulse had thought. It’s titled “VI’s Solo” and Seungri has to slap himself awake to read. He starts laughing at the first verse and then he just can’t stop, not even when Seunghyun curses out loud from his tiny room with the rumbling washing machine.
There’s a sliver of light creeping through a keyhole and Seungri opens the door to where Jiyong is waiting with his glasses on and his hair tied up in a ridiculous bun. He won’t turn around but that’s alright, Seungri leans against the door and laughs a little more under his breath and over his heartbeat and he says, “it’s terrible.”
That makes Jiyong swing around in his chair. “Is it.”
Seungri nods, feeling unhinged. In a good way. In a great way. “Awful. Strong Baby? Like a sleazy pop song. A girl band’s debut track.”
Jiyong laces his fingers over his chest. The lamp is on the desk behind him and Seungri can’t see his face, but he doesn’t worry he got this wrong. Not too much. He can feel them, faintly, the two of them, what they can be. It will be unbreakable, if they do it right. It will be monumental.
“Hell of a way to proposition someone, though,” he says quietly, smiling.
“Crack crack crack,” Jiyong grins.
*
“Hyung?”
Youngbae smells inexplicably of cookie dough and cinnamon. He says right here, leaning against the doorframe. His sweats are sitting low on his hips. He sounds exhausted. He doesn’t ask.
(nightmare?)
“Hyung could you check my feet?”
Youngbae’s shadow is too small to chase away the sound of whistles, but perhaps his laugh will do.
“You’re not wearing any shoes maknae.”
“I know but could you check.”
Youngbae pulls at his big toe so hard it cracks. Seungri cackles, relieved, relieved, so fucking scared.
“Satisfied?”
Youngbae looms over his bed. Little Youngbae-hyung, who smells like milk and butter and never asks but is always right here. Seungri wraps a hand around his wrist to ground himself.
He makes Youngbae look under the bed for a suitcase.
*
Seungri sleeps with his face hidden in the crook of his arm. Sometimes it’s with Jiyong’s elbow digging into his side, but most of the time he sleeps alone.
Seungri dreams a lot, and it’s not always about trains and stations. In his dreams the rest are almost always there, and he sees that as some sort of token of his love for them, how he can’t picture himself separately, not even in sleep.
Jiyong doesn’t see it that way. He read once that the people in your dreams are nothing but projections of yourself, so he tells Seungri, what a boring little wasteland your subconscious must be, Seungri-infested.
Seungri doesn’t get insulted, not when Jiyong’s speaking into his mattress with pillow creases all over the left side of his face. He just says I know why you can’t sleep at night.
Jiyong’s laugh is a surprised, sleepy thing. He doesn’t expect mutiny before his second coffee.
Oh, do you.
Seungri flips onto his stomach. He drags his thumb across the lines over Jiyong’s cheek and smiles at him, half-awake, as unguarded as he’ll ever let himself be, with a dragon in his bed.
Yeah. I wouldn’t like to live in a place where everyone’s you either.
*
Seungri still sleeps with his face hidden in the crook of his arm, but it took him two months to reclaim the entire mattress for himself, even though there was no-one there to fight for it.
He still dreams of that train back home but some things scare him much more now. Jiyong once said that everyone in your nightmares is a projection of yourself and the thought alone is terrifying, but Seungri holds on to it viciously. He can take any amount of self-abuse, it is so odd to think others have hurt him.
He takes it one step further sometimes, in the studio or in the kitchen, he closes his eyes and imagines that nothing is solid, just a dream within a dream within a dream and everyone around this table is a projection of little Seungri, and if he were brave enough he would open his eyes to see his own face staring back at him through Seunghyun’s thick frames.
It’s a comforting thought. He half-believes in it. He finds himself on park benches on Persian carpets in bathroom stalls and can’t remember how he got there. Seunghyun’s projection of himself says it’s the pills, you’re too fucking young for that shit, but Seungri can’t remember any pills, can’t remember how he got inside the water fountain, can’t retrace his steps.
Anyone else would be terrified, but it’s all good with him, it’s just fine, it’s peachy.
All this blue sea is real only because he believes it to be. The water in the fountain’s only cold because he chose to make it so, and if he got himself here there must be a door and a lock that he can pick, he can get out the way he got in. He’s just not strong enough to get out the water on his own just yet, he still needs the illusion of Seunghyun’s freezing fingers, but one day he won’t.
Seungri goes to sleep in his wet clothes, and dreams of waking up.
*
Some things scare him much more now, and some things don’t scare him at all anymore. Youngbae seems surprised when he yells back at their manager and Seungri feels almost sorry for him, wants to tell him it’s ok, you’re not real, I made you up but we’ll be waking up soon, I just need to break enough mirrors to curse us back to reality.
He heard Seunghyun calling it “growing up” one night. Seunghyun must be the manifestation of that part of his brain that keeps making excuses for every time he fucks up during interviews, crowing Frank Sinatra’s LOVE.
He writes a song about a girl he’s never met. He titles it “VI’s solo”. He picks up half his ideas from sitcoms. The rest are just clichés Jiyong’s already overused, but he doesn’t hate the song because it’s his. He falls asleep over the music sheets in the studio, and dreams about Jiyong and himself dying on a hotel bed. A rare tropical disease, flesh peeled away, bodies covered in angry red wounds, sticking to the sheets. Jiyong’s elbow drilling a hole through his sternum.
Jiyong’s pulling at his face when he wakes up, clumsy, wiping away what might be drool or tears or sweat, and Seungri blinks at him, frightened. Some things scare him more now, like waking up.
In the lowlight, Jiyong seems real. Real enough to say that’s disgusting, maknae, when Seungri clutches at him with a whine, presses his nose to his shirt. Real enough to visibly second-guess the arm he slings around Seungri’s shoulders, real enough to wait it out until Seungri’s breath stops hitching and then say, youcouldsleepinmybedtonight.
Seungri presses in closer and laughs into Jiyong’s stomach, a little hysterical at the solid resistance of muscle and skin.
He could have never made this one up, what was he thinking. All those jutting bones and all that heartbreak, this mess of a boy that’s too afraid to touch but never too afraid to bite. He’s not talented enough to pull off something like this, he could never cut himself this beautifully. He encourages self-abuse but all his wounds are graceless, vulgar, and the song he wrote was a sitcom rip-off.
Come sleep in my bed tonight, Jiyong enunciates.
Jiyong’s shirt feels moist under Seungri’s palm, when he pushes away.
He says no and shocks even himself, but he’s past caring now. He presses his mouth to Jiyong’s, getting up. Not a kiss, just goodnight, because Seungri can take any amount of self-abuse but perhaps it’s time Jiyong got some blood on him.
Youngbae’s feet are warm when Seungri climbs into his bed, and he only stops pretending to be asleep when Seungri says I’ll apologize to manager-sshi, first thing in the morning.
*
Seungri falls off a stage and breaks his ankle.
Jiyong rides with him in the ambulance. He doesn’t hold his hand and he won’t speak to anyone but the medics, he keeps his eyes out the window and his thumb between his teeth. Seungri doesn’t have to ask to know he’s mad, and he’s in too much pain to think about why Jiyong is there, with his thumb between his teeth instead of back at the concert, whispering into the mic.
[ Jiyong laughs.
Sorry, everyone, our maknae had a bit of a tumble.
or
Jiyong adjusts his microphone near his bottom lip, scratches his temple with his middle finger, the one with the huge gemstone resting against the knuckle, sliding a little to the left.
Well, guys, guess my plan didn’t go all that well, it’s just his ankle.
or maybe
Jiyong breathes out, uses his tee to wipe off the sweat from his forehead.
Seungri is really hurting right now.]
Ha. Seungri smiles dozily at the ghost lights swimming above his head as an alien voice counts down from five.
He feels the need to apologize, for the inconvenience, for the broken bone, for shouting.
Sorry everyone my plan didn’t go all that well it’s really just Seungri.
...two…one.
And we’re off! he laughs. Captain! I pick door number three.
*
In the OR, Seungri’s heart stops for exactly two minutes. They zap him back to life, with their little metal plates full of electricity and borrowed pulses.
He doesn’t feel a thing.
He doesn’t hear Jiyong howling in the hallway.
(Jiyong can’t wait for the end of a sentence before he puts his fucking fist through a wall.)
*
Beautiful people are counting on their LCD flatscreen, in a language Seungri doesn’t know too well. Numbers always confused him, like days of the week and telling time. Monday is day of the moon in most languages, but then sometimes it’s not.
Seungri’s socked feet are on Youngbae’s knees, Youngbae is singing along, moving his head from side to side like a little boy, drumming his fingers against Seungri’s ankle, though there are no drums in the song.
How do you measure a life, Daesung leaves a drive-by question, fresh out of the shower in his stupid pink bathrobe, his stupid fluffy slippers he won’t let Seungri borrow.
Seungri is catching words. Jiyong on the phone with another girlfriend, (in daylights?) Seunghyun shutting the door behind him, cool guy in a leather jacket going to walk the town. (in sunsets?) Where do you think he’s going, Youngbae asks, and they both know he’s going to the game arcade with his collar turned up and his black shades on. (in midnights?)
It’s late, but it’s not midnight. The sun set hours ago and there are hours to go til daylight.
In cups of coffee then. It suits them. What else could it be? There are hotel rooms and flats and pages upon pages of lyrics, there are promises and IV drips and broken hearts and broken tumblers, but all that is temporary.
There is a trail to follow in coffee cups, a constant line that follows them across the country. There’s a ceramic one, rinsed clean and forgotten next to a motel sink, storing their toothbrushes. Three sacrificed to the god of the road in their old van, staining the seats. One forgotten at a bus stop, next to a half-eaten bagel. There’s the one somebody bought Jiyong when he was pacing outside the operating room that did nothing for his nerves, there’s the one Seunghyun will buy at the arcade, and forget it til it’s too cold to drink. There’s the unsweetened cups they’ll drink tomorrow morning, courtesy of Kang Daesung. Pre-show coffee and post-show coffee, during-the-show coffee, bad airplane coffee, burnt diner coffee, overpriced Starbucks coffee with skimmed milk and sweeteners. There’s the two steaming cups they shared between them in a rest stop when they were broke and freezing and there’s the one Jiyong is setting at the table in front of them, the one that’s gonna keep him up all night, perhaps writing masterpieces, perhaps fuck you’s with tiny faces in the “o”s.
*
Seungri hunts for all the little welcome chocolates under the pillows and provides his own background music while he’s at it, cheap pop stuck in his head since the ride in.
These are mine, maknae, aish. Daesung plops down on his freshly-unmade bed and sighs, but it’s just for show. He might like the almond praline with the crimson wrapping, but he doesn’t really mind.
Seungri drops down next to him, toes off his shoes and twists around to make himself comfortable. Daesung scoots over. His eyes are shut and this is his bed and his pillow and his socks Seungri’s wearing.
Ne, hyung, give me your hand.
Daesung’s fingers are slender but strong, beautiful simple hands, cooperative. Seungri studies the lines on his palm for a while, the clean crescents of his nails, then slips the silver ring from his index finger easily and lets it drop on the covers, sheets and comforters and crimson wrapper welcome chocolates. Daesung doesn’t say don’t, doesn’t say I want that back when you’re done.
Seungri thinks he could ask for a kidney or an eye and Daesung wouldn’t even suggest anesthesia.
He wonders if Daesung thinks he’s just made of spare parts, waiting and waiting for someone to get on with the deconstruction.
Daesung yelps when Seungri drops all his treasures on his stomach, where his T-shirt’s ridden up. Seungri says goodbye to almond praline and dark chocolate strawberry, caramel and fudge, and blows a raspberry on Daesung’s belly.
Daesung thrashes like he’s being electrocuted, laughs in hiccups and begs and pokes Seungri in the eye with his elbow.
When Youngbae walks in, he finds them both on the bed, one of Daesung’s hands over Seungri’s left eye, the other gripping the back of his head, some sort of awkward half-hug , I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry, and Seungri’s beaming, tears down one side of his face and he’s laughing, don’t worry, don’t worry, hyung, that’s why I’ve got two.
*
There are hotels and there are motels, there are welcome chocolates and there are smelly brown stains on the carpet, there is a tidal wave that won’t sit still on Mays and Octobers, but Seungri doesn’t mind, constant good luck is a trap, is unfamiliar territory, would throw him off his game, and if we’re controversial we have to be notorious.
(Seungri needs to be on his toes all the time, that’s the only way he can look taller.)
Seungri’s hair grows longer and he curls it with a curling iron in the mornings. Seungri loses weight and his arms swim in the sleeves of his striped shirts. He gets addicted to coca-cola and TicTacs and HoHos, twin syllables and hyphens and Seungri likes it better when they’re broke.
Seungri buys his chocolates from vending machines when the tide is low and eats them in vans and parking lots, sticky fingers and buttery lips and only Seunghyun ever asks for a piece or two. Seungri doesn’t need the sugar and the fat but he makes him fight for it, makes him pinch and bite for it, get his brand new shoes on the glovebox and twist around, because he loves the attention, when you’re the eldest in your family you never get to be a pest.
Shut up, Jiyong will say around the toothbrush he stole from Youngbae, tired and breathy even though they only did three songs, booing makes Seungri’s eyes itch but Jiyong bleeds through his mouth afterwards and he has to brush the red away, and Seungri would like to clarify, notify, pacify, notoriety is our word of all the pretty-sounding ones and you only get catalogued in online encyclopedias after you’re dead, but he doesn’t know how to make simple truths sound soothing, the way Youngbae shaving in the bathroom always calms his pulse between nightmares.
Jiyong is irritable and twitchy in the front seat he shares with Daesung, the diner booth he shares with Seunghyun, the single bed he shares with the maknae. Jiyong can’t write this month and he hates sharing and he hates crumbs all over the covers.
Jiyong is restless and he’s bored and Seungri calls him princess, princess does the popcorn dig into your back while you sleep, does it bruise your pretty buttocks, princess- and surprisingly Jiyong laughs and his eyes clear up a little at each intake of breath and the sky splits in half outside the window, because, you know. Because.
And Seungri’s transported, he imagines his hair winding in soft thick curls under his ears and not in those tight spirals that bounce over his forehead, and he imagines Jiyong threading fingers through them, holding on.
Seungri touches Jiyong’s elbow as he vomits cheap beer and peanuts and strings of half-written lines out of his system. Jiyong digs that elbow into Seungri’s stomach and coughs, back the fuck off.
Jiyong scuffs the gravel with his boot and gestures wildly, the wind picks up his hair off his brow and his words off his bottom lip and Seungri leans back against the hood of the van, pretending to be above all abdominal pain. The clouds are gray against a backdrop of filthy orange and Jiyong says he needs to get a fucking dog because dogs will fucking jump in the fucking water after you.
Seungri leaves a wrist over his eyes and listens to the wind, says you don’t need a dog, you need to treat your friends better.
I treat you to the best of my abilities, Jiyong’s mouth is twisted but he’s not really arguing, not really paying attention to this here here here, even though it’s important, it could be lifechanging (if he wanted) it could be monumental (if he pushed) because Seungri’s here with a bruise between his lungs and Jiyong must know there are worse things he’s willing to be than a pet puppy.
Seungri swallows down the bruise, the offer and the handing-over and he says, that would mean a hell of a lot more if we were talking about writing songs, wouldn’t it.
*
It’s a small backwater town, and they have places to be, but Jiyong puts his foot down -red Adidas with etched black skulls- and says getting a vibe here, we’re staying.
So they’re staying.
The rest don’t mind, and there’s a bar. The hooded lights make Seunghyun’s fingers look eerie on his guitar strings, make Seungri wonder if they’d leave white glowing marks all over his face if he let Seunghyun to touch him, rough him up. Daesung sings in the church choir and slumps in the barstools, can’t hold his liquor or himself upright. Youngbae sulks, mouthing at his glass of water,forgives and forgets and repeats, and the days go on.
Those days Seungri forgets to speak, takes to shaking his head about everything. He takes to following Jiyong around. There are train tracks and water fountains and abandoned brick houses to be broken into, and Jiyong says there’s something here, getting a vibe, he can’t stay still. Seungri doesn’t get it at first, what are they looking for, Jiyong seems to be sniffing the air, searching for breadcrumbs, but what is there to be found out here, all great love stories jump from skyscrapers, get trampled in the avenues, there’s no song hiding in the dried-out bushes of dusty roads.
Seungri says, let’s chase the cars, let’s yell at the trains and Jiyong doesn’t follow, but he watches and laughs and Seungri rolls on the grass until his elbow patches are stained green.
The bungalow’s rooftop is laid with tar, and Jiyong lies on his back. Seungri on his side with a lollipop in his mouth, cherry, stickyglossysweet, sick of the chocolate for a day or two. Jiyong is humming with his eyes closed and the wind is dead, everything set to a simmering stop, October here is red and warm. There are papers under his folded arms, around his body, under the soles of his shoes -rainbow Converse, neon yellow laces- mapping out his shape, and when he gets up it will be like a crime scene, the outline of a dead body next to Seungri, and they will bring him in for questioning, drag him by his paintbrush ponytail, why were you sleeping next to the dead, maknae, do you want to catch a cold.
Jiyong tried writing about lies and days and goodbyes, but his own words annoy him, make him stab the notebooks so hard. If Seungri weren’t a dog, he’d tell him not to worry, they don’t need him to do this, they don’t keep him around because he’s useful, they could just sing syllables in repetition, shoop-shoop-shoop or la-la-la and they wouldn’t mind, he’s the only one chasing after something that isn’t cars or vodka shots. But Seungri’s a dog, a pug, so he just rolls over and nudges his head against Jiyong’s shoulder and licks his jaw, stickyred trail down to his chin and Jiyong yelps, jumps, and the wind picks up.
The outline of Jiyong’s dead body is broken, gaping holes blown through and Seungri rummages all that he can salvage, fifteen pages of doodles and FUCK YOUs close to his chest.
Jiyong runs after the white sheets, but he misses his step- he cries out and Seungri doesn’t see him fall, he doesn’t see him at all. He just hears a splash and then it’s instinct, ringing bells, he runs and jumps, a balletic move, really, Seungri can dance, arms outstretched mid-air and only briefly does he wonder what he’s doing, why does the pull of gravity feel so natural.
He comes up gasping and blind, his back hurts form the impact, this isn’t a skyscraper, he splutters and for a second Jiyong’s staring at him incredulously, like he’s a new species and he’s running tests inside his head, Jiyong’s hair is wet and matted upon his forehead and it’s so ridiculous that Seungri smiles with his canines, this isn’t a skyscraper, you’re a hundred-foot fall.
And this is Jiyong laughing, head thrown back, these are Jiyong’s skinny arms that bend both ways, these are his stupid rainbow Converse kicking Seungri’s shins. These are twenty pages worth of doodles and FUCK YOUs swimming around them, blue ink bleeding into the chlorinated water, cold chlorinated water, October in a backwater town and this is Jiyong laughing like it’s all worth it, this is Jiyong’s mouth, large nipping teeth, bitten fingers, this is Jiyong’s amusement pushed into Seungri’s lungs like helium.
Jiyong’s pulse is fast and his mouth tastes strange but it’s because of the cherry lollipop.
You crazy dog, Jiyong breathes, runs his fingers through Seungri’s straight black hair, pushes it back, but can’t hold on, they slip right through. You crazy fucking dog, and his lips drag across the plains of Seungri’s cheekbones, his straight nose.
Seungri bites down on Jiyong’s mouth and Jiyong hisses, snaps away, moves back in, catastrophic, a grenade in hand and the world be damned, the world had it coming, little Seungri.
Let’s do it again, he growls, eyes bright, a timebomb.
I said, let’s do it again.
Seungri barks.
*
November doesn’t surprise Seungri. Growing colder is the natural order of things.
Seungri doesn’t mind change, as long as he’s prepared for it, and Jiyong would say that’s cheating.
They sign the papers on November 21st and they have a party next to a heated pool. Jiyong smiles for the camera, his arm around Seunghyun’s waist.
Jiyong says, Nothing will change, and whispers, Don’t go home, with Seungri’s hands on his thighs, his intentions innocent and his foot out the door. Seungri doesn’t mind change but he doesn’t understand contradiction and Jiyong says it again, and Seungri was a dog, is a dog, so he stays, kneels down and listens to the booming music with his temple against Jiyong’s knee.
(Jiyong will say it again, and again, and again, over the next few months, until they trickle to a stop, and Seungri will come to think of it like covering Yesterday. A hopeless pointless repetition in bathrooms and backrooms and front seats, in hotel suites and train stations, different tones and voices and meaning perhaps sometimes, but Seungri can’t for the life of him figure out why anyone would cover the Beatles.)
Seungri can’t tell when Jiyong is cheating and he doesn’t know that Sinatra’s version of Yesterday will one day make him cry in a gas station.
*
“We grew up with books about insects.”
False.
An elbow locks around his head. We grew up with headlocks and carwashes. True.
“Different kinds of books though.”
It’s spite.
This earns him a glance, an eyebrow, and Jiyong’s fingers strumming against his ribcage, air guitar. Once, back in better days, Jiyong had pressed his fingers against Seungri’s and taught him the basic riff in Stairway to Heaven, and Seungri had acted like he didn’t know it already.
We grew up on scraps and priceless advice.
Seungri stares at the interviewer with Jiyong’s arm around his neck and smiles at all the things proximity can’t fix.
Jiyong is bracing himself for pain. Seungri likes defying expectations. It’s the most fun he gets these days.
He turns it into a compliment, extends a hand and lays it lightly on the girl’s knee, “he read Lord Of The Flies and I read about killer spiders.” She grins, impressed, is that so.
No it’s not, False, but. But what, he doesn’t really know. There’s some comfort in lies only they can see through. Some balm, a connection. Whatever. He’s too young to know why he does things. Plus his heart is broken, so there’s that.
“Did you like it?”
Jiyong finished Lord Of The Flies a week ago, Seungri knows. He might be a dick, but he’s not careless.
“Jiyong-ah?”
Jiyong looks up like he forgot it was his turn to speak, which is not unlike him. After the first hype, interviews started boring him. “Yes,” he says. “It’s a scary book, but the truth is frightening sometimes. I had mixed feelings. I sort of wanted to throw up when it was over.”
Seungri nods, blinks, wow, couldn’t have put it better himself.
*
In the car, Jiyong’s eyes are liquid and he asks, you really must hate me, don’t you.
Seungri falls into character, splutters over his latte, what the fuck are you talking about.
He offers his plastic cup and Jiyong takes it.
“For fucks’s sake, we’ve told worse lies, Jiyong. It made you look smart.”
It’s not the coffee, but the name without the honorific that puts Jiyong at ease. Perhaps the concealed insult.
It’s a long ride back home. Jiyong starts off upright but he was never good with distance and exhaustion and soon enough he puts his head on Seungri’s lap, gently, like he doesn’t mean to disturb, like he’s not sure if he’s welcome.
When Seungri puts his palm at the base of his throat Jiyong asks again about hate and gets a negative answer. He closes his eyes and Seungri leans his head against the window, counting silver cars as they pass them by. The city is a like a beast that has swallowed a flashlight, belly glowing while it sleeps. The buildings are lit up like Christmas trees. Seungri wonders how many people might be sleepwalking in the streets right now and measures the possibility of a truck crashing into them at the next light and killing them on the spot.
Seungri would like that. He’d be okay with that.
When the light turns green and nothing happens there’s a sinking feeling in his gut, and he shuts his eyes against it.
Somewhere in the world there must be lyrics that can fit this feeling, this simple surrender to come-what-may. Jiyong would know. But Jiyong is breathing deep and frowning in his sleep with the streetlights playing across his face.
Jiyong wouldn’t want to die here. Their white van wouldn’t be enough for him. Seungri understands.
And Seungri doesn’t want to be forgiving, but he is. He wants to wake Jiyong up and apologize for the lie, he wants to tell the truth, frightening as it is, say, I don’t hate you. But you did a number on my plans, you really did.
They could have had a great love story in this beast of a city, strong enough to conquer the roar of the motorway. They could have done a freefall from their new apartment on the thirtieth floor and come out unscathed. They had it in them. Seungri had seen it once.
*
It’s a thin span of time that unravels, days, 254 days that Seungri will barely remember later on because at some point Seungri will drink an entire bottle of whiskey and convince himself that he can convince himself, that it’s something he does.
There’s a bit of bruising at first, of course there is, a bit of banging off walls, because Jiyong isn’t the kind to take good things as they come. Jiyong wants everyone to love him but can’t trust it when they do. For a while he stares at Seungri like he’s questioning his motives, and it’s insulting, because Seungri has been wearing his motives and various vital parts of his anatomy on his sleeve ever since he knew that the tightness in his chest came with a name.
Jiyong is stubborn and he pushes things to their breaking point but Seungri is impatient and young enough to be careless, so one night, drunk sick on the unfairness -what could I want from you- he clambers on Jiyong’s hotel bed and knees him in the gut and tells him I never even wanted to be in a band, I would just follow you everywhere.
Jiyong stares up at him unblinking, and Seungri wishes he looks dominating and perfect, sculpted out of white marble in this thin moonlight, that his jaw is giving him an air of confidence and tragedy, that he’s good enough a mistake for Jiyong to make. Jiyong’s hands tighten on his shoulders and he says, Alaska, and Seungri says, yes.
*
Jiyong is doing his bowtie in the full-length mirror when he presses a hand to his chest and stumbles back to the bed. He calls -specifically- for Seunghyun. Even uses the honorific.
Seungri walks in with dripping hair and a towel swung around his hips and Jiyong waves him away, just- go.
Seungri runs to the bed and drops to his knees, pushes Jiyong’s face upwards and sees his eyes are wet, doesn’t pay attention to him when he says why can’t you for once fucking listen.
“You’re having a panic attack,” and Jiyong chokes out a laugh, eyebrows shooting up helplessly, well, yeah. Seungri takes his pulse, tells him to breathe, because that’s what they do in the movies. His hands linger on Jiyong’s neck, where is skin is soft and sweaty. It’s a natural thing to do, though he’s not sure it’s allowed.
“We’re going to lose anyway, you know we are.” It doesn’t come out sounding cruel, he hopes. It’s the truth. They are fresh, brand new, they aren’t going to win. There’s no need for their lungs to close up over a shapeless chunk of metal.
Jiyong shakes his head, breathes in through his nose.
“Is it the money?” Seungri asks, because he’s quickly learning to factor in money everywhere. His mind runs like that now, it’s easy and it makes him feel older and smarter and strange.
Jiyong shakes his head almost too vigorously, like a dog shaking out water from its mane and Seugri mimics him, stupidly, spraying droplets on Jiyong’s white shirt. Jiyong doesn’t say anything, but his hands close over his shoulders and his head falls forward, pressing against Seungri’s.
They stay like that a while, breathing on each other.
“Do you think we’re selling out?”
Seungri opens his mouth, screws his eyes shut. He’s not paying attention. He wants to kiss Jiyong, this is his favorite way to kiss Jiyong, drunk on warm breath and proximity until he cannot see straight.
“Do you?”
Does he? He doesn’t know, not when Jiyong’s philtrum I is right here, not when they’re panting and cross-eyed, what does Jiyong expect from him? Yes, yes, there might have been a time when he liked it better when they were broke, when he kicked vending machines for candy and for fun, there was a time when he wouldn’t have been careful unbuttoning Jiyong’s shirt because it costs more than their rent back in the old flat.
It doesn’t matter, not really, they are the same, Seungri never wanted to be in a band, but perhaps this matters to Jiyong because his eyes are unfocused and glazed over when he drops back onto the mattress. Seungri climbs on top of him and pins his hands down, Jiyong struggles briefly, looking hurt and still straining upwards for a kiss, and that’s the first time Seungri wonders if he’s missed something, if there’s a crucial part of what makes Jiyong Jiyong that he has overlooked.
He’s said it once before and he says it again, “I never wanted to be in a band.” Jiyong surges up and kisses him, vicious, much like headbutting, only sexier, only more effective, more dizzying and he snarls against Seungri’s lips, “what the fuck are you still doing here.”
Seungri shakes his head and watches as water drips onto Jiyong’s face, like tears. He’s heard that one before.
Jiyong’s legs wrap around him, and Seungri whispers Alaska to the hollow of his neck.
*
He wakes up with Jiyong in the tub. His back is to Jiyong’s chest, and there’s water around them, Jiyong’s palm holding his chin up. He wants to ask something stupid, like did we drown, like did you give me mouth-to-mouth, did you crack my chest to look at the damage.
Jiyong’s clothes are swimming around them. Seungri shudders. The water is cold. Jiyong breathes out and his chest hollows out at the curve of Seungri’s spine, like he was holding his breath all this time, a gulp of air to feed to Seungri for when he woke up, if he couldn’t do it on his own.
Seungri swallows and it hurts, the familiar burn of acid. He wants to ask if he’s been stupid but he knows he has, and he doesn’t think he can manage a coherent sentence.
One day, Jiyong whispers in his ear, you’re gonna tell me what you were thinking.
He sounds like he’s been screaming after trains for hours, take me with you. Seungri is pretty sure they’ve done that together, but he might have made it up, he does that. He once thought Jiyong had written him a song. He used to dream of train stations.
He puts his mouth to Jiyong’s wet arm and latches on to the skin with his teeth, tastes stale bathwater and ink. He’s feeling famished and disoriented. Vampiric, he wants blood in his mouth. He’s missed it, and that’s a strange thought.
He remembers stumbling inside the glittery dark room and asking a girl with glittery dark eyes, do you know where he’s gone, he’s got clichés on his veins and I need to return his shoes, they are too big for me.
He remembers feeling smart, there’s no sweet life in moderation, Jiyong’s an idiot. He remembers sliding down the wall and clutching at Jiyong’s hair so it would hurt, too fast to live too young to die, baby, he remembers smiling, patting his neck, it’s already in motion, and Jiyong screaming after trains, fast trains, how many did you take.
A/N: No idea what happened there? Yeah me neither. And before you ask -not that you will, I'm just defending myself in advance here- I love Strong Baby. Seungri is butchering Shakespeare somewhere. Everything about this story is inaccurate. I like trains.