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maayacolabackup“Hi,” Seungri says, and Jiyong looks up from his computer to stare at the man in the doorway.
Seungri looks lean, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wearing a tight gray t-shirt that shows off muscles Jiyong’s never seen him with before.
“Hi,” Jiyong says back, and it’s just the two of them, alone, for the first time in two years. The last time they were alone together, Seungri had bit his own lip hard enough to bleed and Jiyong had still wanted to lick it off.
“You look…” Seungri trails off, and his hair is growing back, Jiyong can see, from the standard military buzz-cut. “Different.”
“I haven’t slept in a week. I probably look like roadkill.” Jiyong purses his lips, and fights the urge to bite his nails. He could really use a cigarette, but Jiyong doesn’t allow himself to smoke when he might have to record, because it fogs up his voice and tightens his vocal chords. He’s heard it works differently for others, but Jiyong knows his own body.
Right now, he’s nervous. It’s not something Jiyong feels all that often, but Seungri, his maknae, is standing in front of him for the first time in two fucking years and Jiyong has no idea what to say.
“I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Seungri says, and his speaking voice is the same, still too high and still stopping and starting as he lingers too long on consonants. Jiyong had missed it. “But you do look tired.”
“I need you,” Jiyong says, and then he realizes how it sounds. He twists his wedding ring around on his finger, and Seungri’s eyes gravitate down. His mouth tightens as he looks at the ring, and he swallows. Jiyong watches him. “For my song.”
“Teddy told me,” Seungri says, and he clenches his jaw. Jiyong can see the muscle tighten there, and he wants to smooth that tenseness away with his thumb, slow and steady until Seungri melts into his side and tells him everything that’s ever bothered him and bristles as Jiyong laughs at him. Years ago, he could have.
Now, all he can do is drink in Seungri’s presence, let it soak into him and refresh him. Jiyong suddenly feels wide-awake. “Only your voice can do this,” Jiyong says.
“Let me see the song, hyung,” Seungri says, and he barely remembers to add the honorific, because some things never change. “What’s the mood?”
Jiyong hands him the sheet, and Seungri moves closer, walking over to Jiyong, and he takes it, careful not to let their hands touch. Jiyong can feel the heat of him now.
“It’s sad,” Seungri says, after a few minutes. “I feel like I just watched Titanic.”
“Is that a compliment?” Jiyong asks lightly, but he’s watching Seungri. He can’t stop watching Seungri. The skin on his nose is burned, Jiyong notices. There are freckles on his forearms. His lips are dry. He isn’t wearing earrings. He’s still beautiful.
He looks up and catches Jiyong’s gaze, and offers Jiyong a half smile. “It’s good,” Seungri says. “But you already knew that.”
Jiyong’s heart is beating too fast, like he’s running a race. Jiyong doesn’t really like to run, and it’s just one song, and Jiyong isn’t afraid.
“You went into the military.”
“It seemed as good a time as any,” Seungri says. “Now it’s done.”
“It was sudden,” Jiyong says, and Seungri looks at him, his thick eyebrows set in a serious line. The bags under his eyes are dark. He isn’t wearing any make-up. Jiyong wonders if he wore sunglasses to come in.
“You mean like you wanting to get married?”
“Yes,” Jiyong says, and his tongue feels thick and heavy. Jiyong needs to take a shower, and his hair is tied up halfway in a knot on the top of his head, and maybe it’s just that no sleep is catching up with him.
“Let me listen to the song,” Seungri says, and Jiyong plays it for him.
Seungri’s face is unreadable. That’s new, because Seungri’s face has always been an open book for Jiyong. But Jiyong can’t read anything in his expression, and he yearns to move closer, to slip his fingers into the hair at the nape of Seungri’s neck and drag an expression out of him.
He wants to touch, but even though Seungri is standing next to Jiyong’s chair, it feels like he’s a million miles away.
“Why my voice?” Seungri asks, when the song finishes, and Jiyong massages his temples with his fingertips, taking a deep breath.
“I think I wrote this song for your voice,” Jiyong says quietly. I think I wrote this song for you.
“You think?” Seungri sounds so calm.
“Yes,” Jiyong replies, and Seungri nods.
“So how do you want me to sing it?”
“You know what?” Jiyong pulls the rubber band from his hair, and reties his hair. “Why don’t you just try it?”
“You’d trust me with that?” Seungri laughs, but it’s a bit fake, like Jiyong’s just told an entire audience about Seungri’s ‘baseball’ watching habits and Seungri has to pretend it’s all right. “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
Jiyong thinks he’s supposed to laugh, too. Seungri’s pretending that this isn’t awkward and terrible, and Jiyong is supposed to play along. Seungri has, in the past couple of years, finally learned how to play the game.
Jiyong made up the game, but in the past couple of years, Jiyong’s forgotten all the rules. “Maknae,” Jiyong says. “Go sing.”
“Yes,” Seungri says, and he takes the lyrics with him, walking into the glass booth, and moving the microphone up so it’s at his height. “Where is your help?”
“Hopefully sleeping,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s laugh gets caught on his test recording. “We’ve had a rough week.”
“And yet you’re still here. Alone. You always did try and do everything by yourself.”
“It’s my job,” Jiyong says.
“It just makes other people feel useless,” Seungri replies. “Or confused. None of us can read your mind.” Seungri adjusts his headphones. “We just assume everything is okay until you snap.”
“You wouldn’t want to read my mind,” Jiyong says, fixedly staring at his computer. “It’s quite scary in there. It’s best if people stay out.”
“Adults can make their own decisions.” Seungri clears his throat, and sings quietly, warming up his voice. “If they have all the facts.”
Jiyong knows that. Jiyong does, does know that, but it’s so hard when he’s spent so long keeping it to himself.
Jiyong is greedy for praise, and admiration. Not for pity, and not for help.
“So why don’t you give the bridge a shot,” Jiyong says. “After the second chorus.”
Seungri does. It’s… raw, and rough, and Jiyong bets this is the first time Seungri has sang, with any sort of seriousness, since he went into the military.
It sounds good. Jiyong likes the way Seungri’s face twists as he sings, like he’s feeling each and every word. When Seungri was younger, he’d told them all he liked singing happy songs, because he wanted to uplift the audience. Jiyong had liked Seungri singing happy songs too, because Seungri hadn’t connected with the emotions in the sadder songs. Seungri hadn’t understood that sad songs can be just as uplifting, because they make people feel like they aren’t alone.
He’d started to get it, with ‘Monster’. The way Seungri had whispered “don’t go” had made Jiyong’s breath catch in his throat. But now, Jiyong can feel the passion in each word, like Seungri knows exactly what Jiyong means with this song. Seungri is all grown up, and he’s broken just like Jiyong’s broken.
It’s gorgeous, but sometimes Jiyong wants a different inflection on the words, or for Seungri to stop and take a breath, and Jiyong is relentless in his demands, pulling a performance out of Seungri that’s even more than he’d expected, and even better than he’d imagined in his head. Seungri looks at him between takes, eyes hiding more than they show.
“Still a perfectionist, I see.” Seungri comes out of the booth and approaches Jiyong, hands finding their way back into his pockets. “Everything just so.” From one pocket, he pulls out a mobile phone. It looks brand new. It’s the brand Daesung is endorsing, and Jiyong wonders if it was present. Jiyong doesn’t know. Jiyong talks to all his band members except Seungri, and none of them talk to him about Seungri. Jiyong has no idea what Seungri’s done in the past two years, except for what he knows from the television and what others have slipped up and told him, and Jiyong had grabbed at those tiny morsels of knowledge and buried them away to be examined later, maybe when they’ll hurt less. He’s still waiting.
Seungri starts typing into his phone, and Jiyong feels irrationally like Seungri’s phone is an enemy, because someone else is stealing a part of Seungri’s attention away from him. Jiyong wants all of Seungri’s focus… He wants those eyes looking at him like he’s everything. He doesn’t want Seungri to look away, even for a moment. Jiyong’s always been greedy.
Jiyong’s always been selfish.
“I haven’t changed,” Jiyong says, even though he’s not sure that’s true.
“I have,” Seungri replies, and he doesn’t look up from his phone. There’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Jiyong’s been meaning to get a fan, because no matter what, this studio is always hot. Jiyong likes to suffer, sort of, but the artists he works with don’t. The old Seungri would have whined. This new Seungri doesn’t even look at Jiyong without the glass between them. “I’m not stupid anymore.”
“You were never stupid.” Jiyong pulls up his hood, because he suddenly feels over-exposed. Jiyong’s never wanted to be transparent with anything but his music.
“Yes, I was,” Seungri says, and his eyes flicker up and catch Jiyong’s for a single moment before they quickly return to the screen. Seungri types so fast. Jiyong wonders if he’s typing a message to some girl Jiyong’s never met. If they exchange selcas. If Seungri’s grown out of his habit of making aegyo faces that make him look half his age and writing I like being bitten in the subject lines.
Seungri’s eyes flicker up again, and he bites his lip when Jiyong tries to hold his gaze. It’s the first sign of discomfort Jiyong’s seen in Seungri this whole time, and the fingers around his heart loosen their grip just a little.
Seungri’s just got better masks than Jiyong does, now. Jiyong will just have to pay more attention if he wants to know what’s going on behind the loud laughs and smiles.
Jiyong’s good at paying attention to Seungri. At least, he used to be. Maybe he can be again. “Not stupid,” Jiyong says.
“Or maybe,” Seungri says, so quietly that Jiyong can barely make out the words, “I’ve just learned not to hope so much.”
“And here I thought all your dreams came true,” Jiyong says, lightly, and he ignores the tremble in his voice. “Famous Lee Seunghyun. Seungri of BIGBANG. You were listed as one of them most eligible bachelors in Korea last month in one of the tabloids.”
“Two behind TOP-hyung, and five behind Daesung,” Seungri says. “I didn’t know you read those things.”
“Only when the band is mentioned,” Jiyong says, but he’d seen Seungri’s face on the cover, along with pictures of Seungri leaving military service. Youngbae had gone to get him. It had been a strange echo of when Seungri had been cut from the band, all those years ago, and Youngbae had been the only one to see him off.
Jiyong has made so many mistakes.
“Still, living the dream, aren’t you?”
Seungri snorts, this tiny derisive sound that’s almost as hurtful as a slap, because before, Seungri never would have made that sound at Jiyong. “Hyung, if you think my dreams were ever that simple, maybe you’re the one who is stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair. It’s messy. Jiyong wonders if there’s a hat in his bag. Seungri looks un-manicured, and it’s refreshing. It reminds Jiyong of how he was, how they both were, when they were still kids. Ten years and change ago. Seungri still looks so very young. His eyes though—his eyes are old.
“Don’t talk to your leader like that, maknae.”
“You’re not my leader right now,” Seungri says, with a tiny smile. “We’re just artists on the same label. And I’m doing you a favor.”
It hurts more than Jiyong would like to admit.
He pretends it doesn’t.
“I’m always your leader,” Jiyong says, and he reaches out, barely touching his fingers to Seungri’s arm, and Seungri shivers. “No matter what, I’m always going to be your leader.”
Seungri laughs, and it’s hollow. “I guess that’s true,” Seungri says, and he walks back into the recording booth. Jiyong watches as Seungri rubs at his wrist, like he’s looking for something that should be there but isn’t. He doesn’t look at Jiyong for the rest of the session, even when Jiyong speaks to him, and Jiyong clenches his back teeth together and doesn’t bite his nails.
Jiyong is incredibly fond of Seungri’s voice. As he listens to it over and over, mixing it carefully with his own, he can only marvel at its sweetness.
Seungri’s voice is so pure. It has a way of haunting Jiyong when he’s alone; when he’s thinking about lyrics, and when he’s composing a melody.
In the end, the sound of Seungri’s voice sinks into his bones and stays there, chilling him so much he writes around it.
People think he doesn’t like Seungri’s voice. The truth is, Jiyong likes it so much it’s unbearable, and he doesn’t want to listen to it over and over and over again; to keep listening until he can’t even close his eyes for fear he’ll hear it again.
Seungri’s voice is perfect in its own way, though, dulcet like frozen flavor-ice in the early summer, refreshing and delightful in all the places that Jiyong’s is hard. Jiyong’s voice used to have a little bit of that softness, too, but he’d finally managed to rip it away with alcohol and cigarettes.
He’d made Seungri record the chorus seventy times, and each take is a different kind of wonderful. He plays it back, adding his own voice in, and Jiyong can almost forget the way Seungri had left the studio without saying goodbye.
“I knew he was a better choice than me,” Chaerin says, when she drops by, and Jiyong scowls at the I told you so implicit in her tone. “Is this what you imagined, oppa?” He eyes look a bit glossy. “It’s a really touching song.”
“More than I imagined,” Jiyong says, and he runs his tongue over his teeth. “More than I imagined.”
“What’s it about, though?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong twirls a piece of hair around his finger.
“Have you ever been in love, maknae?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri shakes his head no, eyes overeager as he leans his head on Jiyong’s shoulder. Jiyong is humming the melody to himself, and Seungri is playing the chords on Jiyong’s thigh as if Jiyong were a piano.
“Never,” Seungri says, and Jiyong likes that more than he should. Seungri’s shirt is too big, and Jiyong’s eyes linger on the stripe of exposed shoulder that taunts him as Seungri exhales against his neck. It’s worse than when Seungri doesn’t wear a shirt at all, because it makes Jiyong want to slowly peel it off of him. “Someday I’ll fall in love.” Seungri sounds wistful.
“Sometimes,” Jiyong says, dragging his eyes back to his notebook. “Love can make you do terrible things. Make you become a terrible person.”
“I thought love made you better?” Seungri says. “Made everything brighter, or something like that.”
“Love makes you look at the most frightening parts of yourself,” Jiyong says. “Loving someone can make you hurt them more than you ever anticipate. More than you can ever believe. You can’t help it.”
“It sounds scary, when you put it like that.”
“It is scary. And consuming.” Jiyong sighs, and leans his head on Seungri’s. Seungri’s hair tickles at his cheek and lips. “For me, the person I love becomes like air. And when they aren’t around, I can’t breathe. So I cling to them, trying to keep them close because without them I suffocate.”
“And that’s what the song is about?”
“You can try to forget, and try to erase, because it’s what’s best for both of you, but it lingers,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s fingers pause, and he presses his nose into Jiyong’s neck. “I’m so sorry, but I love you," he says, in English.
Seungri sighs, and Jiyong wants.
da geojitmal
Jiyong and Teddy send Yang Hyun Suk a finished album at six am on August 4th, and Jiyong forces himself through three more hours of final design checks, two choreography run-throughs, and a costume fitting before he returns to his empty house and falls face down on his bed without taking his clothes off.
He expects to fall asleep immediately, but he doesn’t, and Gaho, who he’d picked up from Dami’s house on his way home, has trotted into his room and climbed up on the bed next to him, licking at Jiyong’s face as Jiyong lets the stress of the past week ease out of him.
Now that he’s done, he can’t turn off his thoughts. Seungri comes racing back to the forefront of his mind, and Jiyong tries to tuck away every detail, from the way Seungri’s nails had been filed square to the way some bits of hair at the nape of his neck had grown uneven.
Jiyong tries to stop himself from obsessing, but it’s all unfurling and stretching out in his head, and Seungri is the only thing there is, and Jiyong is helpless to fight it.
Jiyong wants control it, because Jiyong likes being in control more than anything else, but he can’t.
Jiyong scrunches his eyes closed, and Gaho whines for attention, and Jiyong absently pets him, Gaho’s wrinkled skin distracting him enough to fall into slumber.
He’ll dream of Seungri, probably, because Seungri has always been something Jiyong couldn’t make go away.
Jiyong tried not to think about Seungri, sometimes, back when they were all still together all the time, and how he’d have liked to take Seungri apart piece by piece with his hands and mouth, watching Seungri moan beneath him, letting Jiyong take and take and take, same as always.
Jiyong tried not to think about it, because the only thing stronger than Jiyong’s selfishness is Jiyong’s music, and Seungri was a part of that music that Jiyong had come to rely on, a soft, angelic tenor that Jiyong was still grappling with, still taking up the challenge of how to use. Still figuring it out.
Just like he was still figuring out how exist with Seungri without trying to tear him up and tear him open and watch him bleed, because Seungri would be so pretty like that. Jiyong penned lyrics about it, and let Seungri sit on his lap and tell him stories with an indulgent smile on his face, pretending he wasn’t thinking about tying Seungri’s hands together and—
Jiyong had his coping methods, and it was fine as long as no one knew about them. Jiyong had liked his playboy reputation, because it had been better than other reputations he could have earned back then.
Jiyong had been reckless. Once, he had been too reckless.
The man had been tall, soft features and softer lips, and Jiyong had loved the way he had to lean up to kiss him, and the way his hands had slid into Jiyong’s back pockets. He’d met the guy at a club, and Jiyong had known, then and there, that he wanted to take him home—or to a love hotel, really, but it’s all the same, in the long run, because Jiyong doesn’t really have a home, what with the way he’s constantly traveling and staying late in the studio. Jiyong wanted to take that tall, handsome stranger home and fuck him, and forget, for a time, about all the things he couldn’t have.
Jiyong had felt safe enough, and perhaps that was the alcohol clouding his brain, because the club was filled with YG Family and people that Jiyong respects. Still, Jiyong felt relatively invincible with the taller man’s tongue slicking along the back of his teeth. It wasn’t even the main bathroom—there was another, closer one to where most people were partying, and the man, fuck if Jiyong can remember his name, was one of Se7en’s friends, or maybe one of Jaejoong’s, maybe both, all firm thighs and large hands. Maybe Jiyong was a little drunk, a little too secure; no one from his band was at the party, and the other, older YG artists all had their own secrets to worry about. And Jiyong really didn’t think anyone would walk in there. Less convenient, more likely to be used for exactly what Jiyong was using it for.
Jiyong heard the door open just as he’d worked his hand into the man’s pants. The man moved to cover Jiyong, obscuring his face from whomever was standing at the door. “Oh, sorry,” said a familiar voice, and Jiyong’s heart had dropped into his stomach. “I didn’t think anyone would be using this bathro-“
The voice cut off, and Jiyong had closed his eyes. With anyone else, the man in front of him would have been enough to hide his identity. But not with Seungri, because Seungri knows Jiyong’s wardrobe as well as he knows his own.
“Hyung?” Seungri had asked, in a voice that crackled, sounding dry and disbelieving. “Hyung, what…?”
Jiyong had sighed, and his throat had felt tight, beating like a hammer in his chest and he’d stepped out of the other man’s shadow, revealing himself to Seungri in the dim bathroom light. “Maknae,” he’d said, and Seungri shook his head, eyes the widest Jiyong had ever seen them. His face had been pale, and he’d sucked his lower lip into his mouth. “Outside, maknae,” Jiyong had said, and he flickered his eyes apologetically at the man, who nodded empathetically as Jiyong slipped away. Jiyong walked past Seungri, out back into the party. The music was loud, out there, and Jiyong remembers that he could barely hear it over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. Jiyong had felt sick, like he wanted to throw up, because this was something he maybe never wanted his band to know. Wanted Seungri to know, especially.
He weaved through the people dancing on the floor, and he instinctively knew Seungri was following him. Past the dance floor, on the deserted third floor balcony, the cool air had rushed into his lungs, and it calmed him a bit, but then Seungri had come to stand beside him at the railing, three or four feet away. Jiyong’s heart had clenched, because before, Seungri would have been so close Jiyong would have been able to nudge Seungri with his arm. It felt like an ocean between them.
“Your lipstick is smudged,” Seungri had said, and his voice had sounded choked and strange, and Jiyong’s hand had flown up to his mouth to check. “You really were kissing him,” Seungri had said then, and he had wrapped his arms around himself. Jiyong had wanted to hug him, but he knew it wasn’t… that that wouldn’t solve anything.
“Yes,” Jiyong said. “I was.”
“You like guys?” Seungri asked, eyes trained on the ground. “Does… Do the others know? Is it just me you’ve been lying to?” He spit the last part out, and he was shaking, a bit, and Jiyong swallowed heavily.
“Yes,” Jiyong replied. “I like guys. And no, the others don’t know.” Jiyong had run a hand through his hair, just starting to grow out. The bangs were long enough that they tickled his eyebrows, and the patch of skin between them. Just long enough to be irritating. Jiyong sighed again, and they rustled. The early spring air was cold. “I haven’t been lying to you-“
“I was at another party,” Seungri interrupted. “I heard you might be here. I thought I might surprise you. Didn’t know you’d be busy,” Seungri said, and he had laughed a little, but the sound was weird, so weird. Everything was weird, Jiyong had thought.
“Maknae, I…” Jiyong stopped, and studied Seungri’s face in the flashing club lights. Seungri’s mouth was turned into a frown, and his eyes looked dull. “It’s not something that needs to affect the band. I like girls too, just, sometimes…”
“I don’t know why you didn’t tell any of us,” Seungri said. “Why you didn’t tell me. We live together!”
Jiyong bristled. “What’s that got to do with anything?” Jiyong said. “It’s not like I was going to molest you in your sleep. It doesn’t matter for us!” The lie was thick on his tongue. Jiyong can remember how much conviction he’d tried to imbue in the words. How much he wanted Seungri to believe that.
Jiyong had always been an excellent liar.
“You don’t get it,” Seungri said, and suddenly he looked… angry, or maybe scared. It was too dark for Jiyong to really see, with only the faint flicker of blue strobe lights leaking out onto the balcony. It had been enough light to see Seungri’s hunched frame, and the way he shivered a bit from the chill. Jiyong reached out, to grab Seungri’s arm like always, or to tug on his jacket, or to do something to stop him from walking away from him, but Seungri flinched away. “Of course it matters,” Seungri had said, and Jiyong had heard the scratch in Seungri’s ever honest voice. “I’d never considered that you might-“
“I won’t,” Jiyong had said fervently, and Seungri’s eyelashes had fluttered as he blinked. “The band is music. Music is more important than everything.”
“Everything?” Seungri asked, and Jiyong’s palms were sweating, and Jiyong recalls the way Seungri’s mouth had seemed as ripe as a summer peach in the darkness. Jiyong wanted, so badly, to claim it.
Seungri, Jiyong had known, wasn’t for Jiyong to take.
“Yes,” Jiyong had said, and he fumbled around in his pocket for a fag, and Seungri had stayed, pulling out the lighter he carried even though he’d never smoked and hated the smell of cigarettes, and lit Jiyong’s.
Seungri had looked innocent behind the smoke, pale and pensive, and Jiyong had wanted to lean forward and ruin him.
They never spoke of it again, but Jiyong can remember with perfect clarity the way Seungri had flushed in the morning, when they’d woken up in their living room on the couch, having fallen asleep there last night while drinking and concentrating far too hard on saying nothing to each other. Seungri had looked away, turning his head down when Jiyong had tried to catch his gaze and prove to them both that nothing had changed.
“What?” Jiyong had said, and his voice had been rough with sleep, but he hadn’t moved away. Seungri, whose head still rested on Jiyong’s belly, had exhaled, and Jiyong could feel the heat of his breath through the thin silk of his shirt.
“I want to be most important to you,” Seungri said, and his voice was small, and Jiyong had strained to hear it. The words had hit him like a crashing wave of cold ocean water, though, leaving Jiyong feeling completely awake. Jiyong had let one hand stretch down and find Seungri’s hair, casually carding through it as his thoughts circled around and around in his head, a cat chasing its tail.
“Music is most important to me,” Jiyong had said, and Seungri had nuzzled his nose into Jiyong’s stomach. It had tickled. Later, Jiyong’s shirt would smell like Seungri’s shampoo.
“I’ve always known that,” Seungri replied. “But sometimes I wish.”
Jiyong had bitten on his lower lip hard enough to make it bleed, and the blood tasted metallic in his mouth.
Jiyong had always been an excellent liar.
While Seungri is in the military, Jiyong writes him a seventeen-page letter.
It’s more of a poem than a letter, and it’s just Jiyong’s stream of thought as he recalls, crystal clear, Seungri’s parted lips and the taste of his skin.
It’s seventeen pages of Jiyong’s every thought, wish, selfish desire that he’s bottled up and swallowed down because he has to, and seventeen pages for all the things he hadn’t managed to keep inside of himself; the things that had spilled out and through his fingers and all over everything Jiyong touched, but mostly over Seungri, who Jiyong has never been able to let go.
It’s seventeen pages of almost-song-lyrics, of chart-topping words that will never see a chart, and of things Jiyong will never be able to say aloud because Jiyong can sing about his tortured soul until his throat is raw but he’s never told his mother he loves her to her face.
It’s seventeen pages that Jiyong folds up and jams into an envelope and never sends, shoving them deep into a drawer where his wife will never see it, and pretends writing it all down was enough.
“Jiyong,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong blearily opens his eyes and realizes he’s holding his phone against his ear. Responsible, even in his sleep. “Open the door, I’m outside.”
“Coming,” Jiyong mumbles into the phone, and his body feels like it weighs a thousand pounds, and he’s sunk so deep into his bed he’s sure he’ll never be able to get up.
“Today, Jiyong. I’m not hanging up, because if I do, you’ll go back to sleep, and I’ve already been waiting ten minutes.”
“Most people call before they come over,” Jiyong says grumpily. “I have earned the right to sleep the sleep of the dead.”
“If I had called before I came over, there’d be no guilt to make you roll out of bed.”
“Fuck you,” Jiyong says, and he rolls out of bed. He hits the floor with a thump, and hopes nothing is broken. He opens his eyes again and gets a face-full of Gaho, who looks like he badly needs to go out. “Okay, I get it. I’m moving, I’m moving.”
Jiyong is pretty sure he smells terrible, and he’s still wearing the clothes he fell asleep in, but he makes it in record time to the front door. He opens it, and Youngbae is sitting on the porch, typing into his mobile phone with one earbud in. Gaho slips between Jiyong’s legs and runs outside to pee, and Youngbae laughs as he’s almost bowled over.
“Look, I even saved you a clean-up.”
“I’m tired,” Jiyong whines, and Youngbae laughs a little louder.
“Let’s go inside.” He holds up a bag of take-out. “I brought us a rookie-dinner.”
Youngbae walks past Jiyong into the house, and Gaho follows him in. Jiyong locks the door.
“At first I thought it was weird when you bought a house,” Youngbae says. “And it’s an hour outside of Seoul.”
“It’s so quiet,” Jiyong says. “Nothing else in my life is quiet.”
“I did say ‘at first’,” Youngbae replies, and he sets the food on Jiyong’s empty living room floor, and scouts around behind the sofa for the floor cushions. Jiyong just watches him, still trying to work himself out of his sleepy stupor. “Where’s the lady of the house?”
“Japan,” Jiyong says. “She…”
Youngbae looks up at Jiyong when Jiyong trails off, and pulls his sunglasses down to reveal his eyes. “What?”
“She probably won’t be coming back.”
Youngbae sits down on the couch. “What the heck, Jiyong?”
“Well, I mean, I’m sure she’ll be back, to get her things, and to nag me about throwing out that month-old take-out in the fridge, and to work out the divorce proceedings, but in a very metaphorical way, she won’t be back.”
“Oh,” Youngbae says. “I… don’t know what to say.” Youngbae swallows, and takes his jacket off.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Jiyong says, and he walks past the couch, over to where he keeps an elliptical so that he can exercise and watch TV at the same time, and pulls the cushions out. “I moved the cushions.”
“Is that why your solo album is all break-up songs?” Youngbae stands, and moves to the center of the floor, unpacking the take-out. There’s all sorts of stuff, but most importantly, there’s jjajangmyeon, the black sauce noodles Jiyong’s fond of. How fitting, Jiyong thinks, that Youngbae brought break-up noodles for dinner.
“No,” Jiyong answers, throwing two cushions on the floor and sitting on the red one because it’s closer.
“Okay,” Youngbae says, and he hands Jiyong a pair of wooden chopsticks. “Do you need to talk about it?”
“Not really,” Jiyong says. “It’s not like my heart is broken.”
“It’s not? Usually when you end things with the person you love, it hurts.” Youngbae blinks. “At least, it would hurt if my girlfriend and I broke up.”
“We aren’t in love.” Jiyong picks up a big bite of black-sauce noodles, and he doesn’t care if they get on his shirt. There’s no one here to impress, just Youngbae, who Jiyong’s known for the better part of his life, and has seen him in far worse states than this.
“This may be a silly question,” Youngbae says, scratching at his neck. He hasn’t even broken his chopsticks apart yet, and he’s staring at Jiyong like Jiyong has suddenly grown a second head. “But why did you guys get married, if you weren’t in love?”
“Both of us had demons we thought we could use each other to chase away.” Jiyong says it around his food, and Youngbae looks like he’s torn between chiding Jiyong about his manners and asking more questions. “Her demons, I think, turned into something else that she wanted to keep, after all.”
They eat in silence. Youngbae starts to talk, several times, but he seems almost disturbed by Jiyong’s calm. Finally, when he opens a foil roll of kimbap, the seaweed rolls filled with tuna, Youngbae speaks again. “How was the recording?”
“What are you asking, specifically?”
“Teddy says you recorded with Seungri.”
“Ah,” Jiyong says, and now his calm is disappearing. Maybe Jiyong is just now waking up, and realizing how heavy their conversation topics have been; how heavy they are. “Did you come over here with take-out as a tactic to make me spill all my secrets?”
“Yes,” Youngbae says. “Is it working? It was Bom-noona’s advice. Psy-hyung said I should get you drunk, but you just get more tightlipped when you're drunk, and I’m not a drinker, so you’d know that was ploy.”
“So you’ve been planning your ambush.”
Youngbae grins, and Jiyong can never really stay angry at Youngbae when he grins like that. “For the past fifteen hours or so. You’ve been asleep awhile.”
“Seungri has changed.” Jiyong licks his lips, and finds black sauce there, delicious and sweet.
“He has,” Youngbae says, and then he hesitates. “He changed before he went into the military.”
Jiyong stares down at the kimbap, then takes one and shoves it into his mouth. He doesn’t look at Youngbae. He chews and chews, and then swallows, buying time.
Now he looks up at Youngbae, who is staring at him steadily. “There are,” Jiyong says carefully, “a lot of heartbreak songs on my album.”
Youngbae’s eyebrows rise slowly, and he tilts his head to the side to study Jiyong, and it reminds Jiyong of Boss. Jiyong watches as he connects the pieces, his eyes widening. “Jiyong…”
“I’ve always been selfish,” Jiyong says. “And greedy. And over all these years, the only thing that’s changed is how much effort it takes to hold it back.”
Youngbae opens another roll of kimbap. “Eat,” Youngbae says gruffly. “Just… eat.”
“When I saw him again,” Jiyong says, because now that he’s started he can’t seem to stop, “all I could think about was how much I wanted to lock him away so no one else could look at him. Isn’t that crazy?”
“A little,” Youngbae says. “But you’ve always been crazy.”
Youngbae sighs. Jiyong tries to breathe.
“Seungri sounded great on the song. Chaerin was smug.”
“It’s a beautiful song,” Youngbae offers, and Jiyong smiles grimly as Youngbae wriggles his toes in his socks. Jiyong’s got the same pair—they’re BOY LONDON and they’d both sort of quarreled over it at the time but Jiyong actually could care less these days. His might even have holes in the toes, now.
“It’s a hopeless song,” Jiyong says, and Youngbae shakes his head.
“I don’t think so,” Youngbae says, and Jiyong eats.
They’ve all got matching rings, and matching necklaces, and matching shoes. It doesn’t mean anything, except that they’re twenty-somethings with money to burn and they like to spend it on buying lavish presents for each other just because they can, and similar enough tastes that they like to buy the same things. Jiyong buys his mother a house, his sister a car, and Youngbae a necklace that weighs more than he does, and that’s just the way things are done.
But the bracelet he wears the most is the one he bought for himself and knew, as soon as he clasped it, would look perfect around Seungri’s wrist, with its slightly odd-shaped bone that makes it fit perfectly in a circle of Jiyong’s first finger and thumb.
Jiyong had liked the look on Seungri’s face when he opened it; the way his eyes lit up in delight before he bit it back down to a more tame enthusiasm. “But you’ve already bought this one for yourself,” Seungri said, and he looked hesitantly to where a duplicate hung from Jiyong’s own arm. “That’s again BIGBANG’s rules.”
“We can both have it,” Jiyong said, like he didn’t throw hissy fits about that sort of thing on a daily basis, and when Seungri put his on, Jiyong’s started to feel heavier and heavier. “When I saw it, I knew it would suit you.”
“Then why are you still wearing it?” Seungri asks, smiling like a cat now that he feels on surer ground.
“Because it’s mine,” Jiyong says. “Just like you.”
“Is this your way of staking your claim?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong just smiles, and tries not to imagine Seungri naked on his bed, wearing nothing but that bracelet as Jiyong writes his name across his skin over and over again until Seungri is the color of ink.
Jiyong wonders if Seungri still wears his, but suspects he doesn’t.
Jiyong’s album drops on August 18th, at midnight on his twenty-eightth birthday. He’s not able to look at the chart as it drops, because he’s in a dance studio, practicing the choreography for his comeback on Inkigayo in two days, but he receives seventeen texts congratulating him for charting eight songs in the top ten, which Jiyong thinks is pretty impressive considering he’s up against Jo Kwon’s second solo album, which is selling like crazy. Jiyong is pleased, and grateful, and relieved.
‘Hungry’ is a good song. Jiyong thinks it carries the flavor of the whole album, and it’s the sort of melancholy dance track he’s always been known for. It’s not a love song.
Jiyong finally makes his way home in the early hours of the morning, and when he logs onto his laptop, and checks the charts, his heart stops in his chest.
‘Shut the Door’ is number two on the Melon charts, right after ‘Hungry’, and it’s almost even with his leading single. Jiyong looks at the chart, and he’s not sure which one is going to hit the roof first.
Yang Hyun Suk calls him in the morning. “Come in,” he says. “We’re changing things up.”
Jiyong drives to work and hears his own song on the radio three times. When he walks into the agency building, he immediately finds the elevator and heads up to the top floor, where President Yang is waiting for him.
“You’ll be simultaneously promoting ‘Hungry’ and ‘Shut the Door’,” he says, and Jiyong, even though he’d expected it, feels strangely surprised. “They’ll be a good pairing; a love song and a dance song. You and Seungri will shoot a music video next week for ‘Shut the Door’, and you’ll perform both tracks on Inkigayo this weekend.”
“But-“
“You’ve learned choreography faster,” Yang Hyun Suk says, and Jiyong has, and Seungri has, and it’s like the world is conspiring against him.
Something of his feelings must show in his face, because Yang Hyun Suk softens, just a little. Not much, because he isn’t the sort, but Jiyong’s known him a long time.
“It’s a really good song, Jiyong,” he says, and the praise is enough, Jiyong thinks, to get him through the next two days alive.
Seungri is standing in the middle of the dance studio when Jiyong gets there, talking to Jaewook, who is discussing choreography with a stressed look on his face.
“Oh, Jiyong-ah, you’re here, good.” Jaewook is walking out the opposite door. “I’ll be right back.”
Jiyong walks over to stand next to Seungri and doesn’t look at him. Seungri smells like he’d opened his eyes and came here, with that hint of his natural musk and the laundry detergent he only uses on his sheets clinging to his skin and clothes.
“Sorry you got dragged out of bed,” Jiyong says lowly, and Seungri looks at him, surprised.
“How did you-“
“I know what you look like when you’ve just woken up,” is Jiyong’s response, and Seungri makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat.
“Right,” Seungri says. “I suppose two years isn’t long enough to forget that,” Seungri says, and Jiyong slouches forward a little and think about cigarettes.
“I’ve never forgotten anything about you,” Jiyong admits. “Though I’ve tried.” And whatever Seungri might have said in reply is lost to Jaewook’s return. He’s got two dancers with him, Gahee and Jihye, and both of them look as tired as Jiyong feels. He offers them a slow smile he doesn’t feel, but performance is Jiyong’s specialty. This isn’t his stuffy recording studio anymore.
“We’re going to block something out with two dancers for now, but I think we’ll have four more,” Jaewook says. “But it’s a slow song, so we’ll probably do something similar to what we did with ‘Love Song’.”
“No,” Jiyong says. “It needs something… unexpected.”
“How about a mirror?” Seungri’s voice is unexpected, for some reason, and Jiyong looks at him. The bags under his eyes are pronounced. He has a zit in the corner of his mouth.
“A mirror?” Jiyong ponders the idea. “Like doing everything in opposites?”
“The song is about two people letting go, right? About knowing you’re wrong for someone but wanting to keep them anyway. About being separated by a shut door. So let’s have imagined glass between us, both of us reaching but being unable to cross the distance?”
“That sounds epic,” Jaewook says, and Jiyong crosses his arms.
“That doesn’t sound a little, I don’t know, gay to you?” Jiyong stares at the floor as he speaks, under the pretence of admiring the way his new sneakers look on his feet.
“Oh, silly me,” Seungri says. “Let’s put on lipstick, fishnets and gold dresses, and kiss boys.” Jiyong flinches.
He doesn’t want to remember the way Seunghyun had slid his tongue across Seungri’s lower lip. He didn’t want to remember the way Seungri hadn’t protested too much. Seungri wouldn’t even kiss him on the cheek the year before, but he’d let Seunghyun slip him the tongue. Jiyong had seen red for three days, and Seunghyun had gloated about it when it was just the two of them, because he knew it’d get under Jiyong’s skin, even if he didn’t know exactly why.
“You’re too protective of maknae,” Seunghyun had said, and Jiyong hadn’t wanted to agree with him, because it would mean that Jiyong wasn’t keeping enough inside. That Jiyong needed to work harder to keep it all to himself.
He's brought out of his own memory by Gahee piping up.
“I think it could be really beautiful,” Gahee says. “When I listened to the song this morning, it made me want to cry.”
“I’m sorry,” Seungri says, reflexively, and Gahee shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “It was a good cry. I want to listen again and again.”
“But why?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong turns away, hooking his thumbs through his belt-loops.
“Because it’s something I can connect to,” Gahee says, and Jiyong smiles, just a little.
“I hate that you’re always right,” Seungri says later, as they sit sweaty on the floor. “Even if it takes me years to figure out you were right.”
He looks angry, or frustrated, and Jiyong doesn’t know what to say. “I’m not always right,” Jiyong says, and he thinks about hallways, and Seungri’s collar bones, and the way he’d thought Seungri would stay. “Not at all.”
“About music, I mean,” Seungri clarifies. “Everything you’ve ever told me about music has been true, so far.”
“Music is important,” Jiyong says. “Music can change your life.”
“I always thought you were being melodramatic about everything,” Seungri says. “But I guess not.” Seungri stands, and offers Jiyong his hand. Jiyong satres at I for a moment. There’s a tan line on Seungri’s wrist. “Well?”
Jiyong takes the hand, and as soon as he’s up, Seungri’s moving back quickly like Jiyong’s made of venom.
He’s not far off, Jiyong figures, and he doesn’t take offense. “Let’s get this wrapped up,” Jiyong says, and Seungri nods, and they run through it seven more times, enough to leave Jiyong short of breath, and short on energy.
It’s good, because then he doesn’t have the strength to wonder about why Seungri is watching him so carefully from across the room, singing along to the song as it plays on the stereo system.
Seungri leaves as soon as they’re done, and Jiyong feels lost, drowning in all the feelings he can’t make go away.
“Let me go,” Seungri sings in the chorus, and it’s just as impossible to do as Jiyong’s verses make it seem, because maknae has always been the one Jiyong liked the best; the one Jiyong wanted to keep, and two years of distance haven’t made that urge any fainter.
Jiyong’s art has always imitated Jiyong’s life, and this time isn’t any different.
“The fans think I like Seungri best,” Jiyong says into the camera, smiling like a fox. He likes the way that expression looks on television. He likes the way he looks clever instead of just tired. “But actually, I like Daesung.”
They all laugh, but later, when Jiyong sits down next to Seungri on the couch, Seungri gets up and walks away. Jiyong finally corners him at the end of the night, sitting down on Seungri’s lap and grabbing a fistful of his sweatshirt to drag Seungri closer.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I thought you liked me best,” Seungri says angrily, and Jiyong snorts.
“I like Youngbae best,” he says, and he pushes his hands through Seungri’s fluffy hair. “Youngbae is my best friend.”
“Oh,” Seungri says, and Jiyong clenches his hand, tugging at Seungri’s hair hard enough to hurt, and tilting Seungri’s face up toward him.
“It’s all a game, maknae. Interpersonal relationships are a game, and if you take it all too seriously, you’ll lose.”
“Lose?”
“Yes,” Jiyong says. “And I hate to lose.”
“People have feelings.”
“Not me,” Jiyong says. “I can’t afford to waste my feelings on people. I need them for music.”
Jiyong’s not sure why, but something changes in Seungri’s eyes, like shutters falling in a window. Jiyong doesn’t like that.
“It’s a game,” Seungri repeats slowly. “Okay, I get it.”
“Good,” Jiyong says, and he leans forward until their foreheads are resting together, and Seungri shudders as Jiyong’s breath mingles with his.
Seungri’s hands, resting on Jiyong’s lap, curl into useless fists. “I understand,” Seungri says again, and Jiyong wonders if he really does.
Games are what Jiyong plays with people to get everything he wants.
Games are what Jiyong likes, because games mean that people are always coming to him for the next move, and Jiyong can decide whether they move forward two spaces or go back to start. Games keep Jiyong from feeling to sad when people ultimately leave him… after all, it’s easy to start a new round.
Maybe, too, Jiyong just loves the thrill of a gamble. Of tossing the dice and seeing how things turn out.
But Seungri isn’t a game. When the cameras are off, and Jiyong sneaks into Seungri’s room, sitting on the edge of his bed and watching his eyelashes flutter in slumber, Jiyong feels like it’s all or nothing, and it’s absolutely terrifying.
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