City song and other things making sense
Pairing: Jiyong / Seunghyun (Big Bang)
Rating: Gen
Genre: AU, fantastic
City song and other things making sense
Every morning Jiyong sees him, and every morning he wonders.
Who’s that guy? Why is he here? At which point in his life did he mess up enough to find himself on the streets with virtually nothing?
He looks at him, always in different stages of misery and decay, and tries to see behind all of it because he thinks he’s the only one who does try.
And then the subway moves away from Seoul Station, and Jiyong thinks mostly of sketches and cameras and making the ends meet, and he stores the hobo dude in a corner of his mind.
Once, he talks to him. He doesn’t think it really matters, because the guy will probably forget about him the second he leaves, what with the alcohol in his brain and the sea of faces passing by every day.
“Hello,” Jiyong says. “Err. What’s your name?”
“Hello, stranger,” the other replies, and it’s a surprise because, is that sarcasm? The guy doesn’t even slur the words, just looks straight at Jiyong like somehow Jiyong’s in his turf and he has to bow down to the king of the underground or something.
So Jiyong doesn’t answer because Jiyong can’t come up with something intelligent to say right now.
“Is this some kind of art project?” the other man continues. “Because homeless or not, I won’t hesitate to punch your face if my picture ends up all over some kind of creepy ‘cadavre exquis’, hear me?”
“Oh, no,” Jiyong replies fast, “no, no, really!” He’s rather creeped out by the single fact the dude seems to know about art, and his French pronunciation was better than at least the people in Jiyong’s art class.
And then there’s the smirk, and the comeback: “What? Not hot enough for you?”
Jiyong is flabbergasted. “Are you… hitting on me?”
Hobo Casanova is a first, he’s gotta admit.
“I’m Seunghyun,” the guy says in lieu of an answer. “And it’s nice meeting you.”
The train approaches, there’s a beep, and Jiyong flees before he can say anything stupider.
On the next day he positively feels like shit and almost considers taking the bus, but then again he prefers death by humiliation rather than death by four changes, thanks very much, so he actually has to face three minutes of embarrassment before the train comes. He endures Seunghyun’s stare on him - he can feel it - the whole time.
“…so,” he says when he gets down from the train in the evening, going home. “I’m Jiyong. And I’m sorry. I was a jerk.”
Seunghyun doesn’t even look the slightest bit reproachful. Instead, he grins and Jiyong sees there’s a hole in his crooked smile, some kind of bad boy edge that reminds him of high-school days.
“So, uh,” he continues, fisting the straps of his backpack, “I was thinking - if you’d like. Do you want- a drink? A beer or something, soju, you know, you chose, anything is fine with me.”
He’s rambling, he realizes, and Seunghyun knows, and knows he knows, and keeps watching him with this infuriating small smile.
“I’m not studying sociology!” Jiyong cries. “This is not a trap!”
“I never said anything,” Seunghyun replies calmly. “Okay, let’s go.”
Seunghyun tells him nothing at all but lets him talk, and talk, and talk, and soon Jiyong’s the one with three empty bottles in front of him and he’s babbling about his life, his parents, his (few) exes, his friends and his general fail at studies.
Sometimes Seunghyun chuckles, eyeing him with a tingle in the eye that makes Jiyong want to do all sorts of unreasonable things, and takes the tiniest sip out of his bottle.
“You don’t drink much,” Jiyong notices.
“Why?” Seunghyun counters. “You thought all homeless people were dirty drunk dudes reeking of piss? I sleep at a shelter, I’ll have you know.”
“That’s fine,” Jiyong replies, more than a little tipsy. “That’s damn fine. Cool.”
Seunghyun says nothing so Jiyong shuts up and drinks more.
It’s way past Cinderella hour when the owner of the shoju stand kicks them out, and Jiyong tumbles inelegantly over his own shoelaces, so Seunghyun steadies him while waving for a taxi.
“I’ll see you around,” he says after dropping Jiyong unceremoniously on the seat.
“What? You’re not- I thought you were-”
Seunghyun smiles slow and cautious, for once. “G’night.”
With a motherfucking hangover from hell, Jiyong arrives at Seoul Station the next morning, fully expecting a sarcastic smirk and whiplash remark on his puffy eyes and greenish skin, but instead there’s just an abandoned blanket and an empty packet of Alka-Seltzer.
He looks around to nothing, peers towards the corner of the old retired soldiers who beg because their pension is just not enough - Seunghyun told him that. But Seunghyun isn’t here today and Jiyong wonders if something happened last night that made him mad. Or just if something happened, really. He goes to class with a weird feeling at the pit of his stomach.
When Jiyong takes the metro in the other direction, towards home, Seunghyun isn’t here either and the weird feeling is definitely a rock now, heavy and painful. With a rapid check to his watch he decides he can wait five little minutes - who knows.
“Hey, kid! Hey, you, kid!”
He’s a wrinkled old guy, missing a leg and an eye.
“Are you talking to… me?”
“No, to the popstar behind you. Of course I’m talking to you, idiot!”
He beckons Jiyong to him with a crooked, yellow finger.
“What’s your name?”
“Jiyong.”
“You ever been to the army, Jiyong?”
“No - not yet. Why?”
The old guy tsks in annoyance. “Respect your elders, kid. I’m the one talking. So. You’re a friend of Seunghyun’s?”
“Seu- yes. Why, do you- Sorry.”
Jiyong gets a long stare that roughly means ‘I can’t believe morons like that are even allowed to exist’.
“I have no idea what he sees in you,” the old man says thoughtfully. He shuts Jiyong’s cry of indignation with a glare. “Anyway, the thing is - if you really, truly want to see him again, you have to walk until where the subway turns. Do you think you can do that?”
Jiyong blinks. And blinks again:
“This does not make any sense whatsoever.”
He gets a blank look. This is going to be a long discussion.
After five heated minutes of mutual incomprehension, Jiyong finally gathers he has to somehow walk - walk! - in the subway tunnel until he finds Seunghyun. Yes, it’s absolutely absurd. No, the old man doesn’t offer any coherent explanation. (“Just do it”, he keeps repeating.)
“How am I supposed to get down there?” Jiyong asks (practical questions - they’re good, that, he can understand).
“We’ll help,” the old guy replies, pointing with his thumb to his friends, busy pretending they’re not listening.
One of them simulates a heart attack, which only horrifies Jiyong a tiny bit, and then he gets pushed towards an automatic door, with the rough injunction to ‘run, you idiot!’.
Jiyong almost thinks he’s been played before he realizes something is off. The other passengers in the train seem to be falling asleep, one by one, and the ajumma is drooling all over the high school student’s jacket. Then the train comes to a lurching stop and the familiar, sugar-sweet female voice emerges from the speakers:
“This stop is Underworld. You may exit on the left.”
Jiyong checks, just to see if she’s right, and sure enough, the left-side doors open. This is high-tech batshit craziness.
He grabs his backpack and climbs off the wagon, which is surprisingly high from the ground; Jiyong rips his pants and falls on his open palms. Once he’s out of the way, the door of the metro closes again and the train leaves. It feels terribly lonely, standing there in the dim neon light, gravel under his feet and the faintest smell of dirt. Jiyong gets his cellphone out of his pocket and decidedly starts walking, following the rails and muttering the melody of a song under his breath. He’s forgotten the lyrics.
It seems to Jiyong like he’s been walking for hours, but his feet don’t hurt and he doesn’t feel tired; lassitude, though, is poking at his nerves. Like he doesn’t know where he’s going, no idea what to do: he’s expecting something to happen but he can’t tell where it’ll come from.
“Ho!” he shouts and his voice rings, bounces on the round walls of the tunnel. Everything is mullet-grey and the sound comes back empty and dull. Jiyong shivers unconsciously. He tries to think of what music would come out like in a place like this and the subsequent dizzying anxiety rush is the same he gets whenever he thinks of death or oblivion or the infinite for a bit too long.
The lack of acoustics is a weight on his mind. Jiyong hates that. In his mind he paints murals on those walls, vivid fresh paint and crazy style, imagines an uplifting beat, pictures the face of people walking by and laughing, and breathing becomes easier.
At a crossroads Jiyong doesn’t know which path to choose. They’re both identical and none seems to lead anywhere; Jiyong thinks of Seunghyun and of the way he’s too tall for his own good, the way his shoulders are too large and too stiff, the way he seems to be too tight in his old clothes.
Jiyong takes a deep breath and takes the left path. It’s entirely on instinct, but it’s more than nothing.
The chill comes shortly after he realizes he can’t see the crossroads anymore if he turns back. It starts by a slight shiver and then Jiyong has to wrap his arms around himself, stumbling now and then, and his fingers dig into goosebumped flesh.
He thinks he can hear a faint, bone-chilling whisper coming from the tunnel that keeps stretching behind his footsteps, and to dissipate the icy feeling Jiyong clears his throat and recites anything that comes to mind, metro stations and paragraphs from his textbook.
Talking (to himself) about his classes has him thinking about the project he’s working on with Youngbae and soon Jiyong is heatedly arguing with YB (imaginary YB) about the colors in the background of their video clip.
“I just think ultramarine would look better,” Jiyong says out-loud.
(“You hate blue,” YB points out in his head. “Why now?”)
Jiyong wrings his hands together. YB (fake YB) is right, it’s unusual for him - usually he prefers vibrant colors and a lively touch, but here, there, he just-
“I just,” Jiyong starts, “I have no idea why. It’s just, in that case, I feel blue would fit better. Like, there’s a sense of sadness to our whole project, you know? And I know we’re not supposed to fall into easy color symbolism, but for the vid? Ultramarine? Come on, Youngbae, you know it’s gonna rock…” So maybe Jiyong is whining but he really feels justified here. Blue would give their video a whole new sense of subtle emotivism, something indefinite he can’t quite pinpoint. He doesn’t know where this new receptivity to melancholia comes from, but Jiyong feels like there’s like a flower blossoming in his ribcage and threatening to sneak out.
Then he trips and the illusion is broken.
The arm that helps him up is solid and attached to the body of a frowning Seunghyun.
“That was threatening to happen,” he scolds Jiyong. “Mumbling to yourself like some sort of psycho and not looking at your feet.”
“Sorry,” Jiyong chews out.
Seunghyun rubs a wounded, bloodied hand over tired eyes:
“What are you doing here anyway?” he asks.
Jiyong scratches his elbow and starts picking at a scab left there.
“I don’t know either,” he says. “I was just- told.”
“Hey,” Seunghyun snaps. “Stop grumbling, I can’t here a damn word you’re saying.” His hand has left a brownish mark over his forehead. Jiyong feels suddenly exhausted, and scared, and a bit disheartened all at once:
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he drops. “I spent hours walking to get you, and you’re there, and then what?” He pauses. “I wanna go home.”
Seunghyun looks vaguely apologetic and reaches for Jiyong’s forearm, then changes his mind and lets him hand fall at his side.
“I’ll take you home,” he says. “Follow me and we’ll-” Seunghyun suddenly stops talking and pales a bit under the dirt covering his face. His hand grips Jiyong’s too tight and he pulls him to one of the alcoves dug in the tunnel.
“Don’t make any noises,” he urges him.
Jiyong nods once and presses himself close. He can feel it too now. The same chill as earlier, only stronger and strangely weakening. His free hand curls on Seunghyun’s chest; there’s a hint of a heartbeat under his fingertips and Seunghyun is very still. Both of them are staring at each other like transfixed, only Jiyong knows it’s because the something is coming and instinctively, senses the only way to escape it is by being so lost in each other they’ll offer no grip to the outer world.
It makes no noise and no-one else could see it but Jiyong and Seunghyun know the exact time the thing passes by them. It’s not that the light decreases or the walls start to crack. It’s just- the colors seem to lose in saturation and the sounds get sharper, cruder, like they’re suddenly breathing in a snorkel. Jiyong feels his eyes widen and the hair on the back of his neck rise. In front of him, Seunghyun gnaws at his chapped lip and leans imperceptibly closer. His hand slips up Jiyong’s shoulder to his neck and the touch is comforting like a warm blanket, so much Jiyong’s eyelids flutter closed. It’s easier to ignore the thing then, and soon the only sensations getting to him are the sound and the warmth of Seunghyun breathing close to him, his fingers digging in his skin.
It does warm things to Jiyong’s stomach and the tingles are irrepressible, wrenching a light laugh out of him.
His eyes burst open and he only sees Seunghyun looking at him. Like Jiyong is his missing puzzle piece.
They walk to the next station hand in hand and now and then Jiyong will try to slip his fingers out of Seunghyun’s grasp just so he can feel himself being pulled back next to him. They don’t have to talk for Jiyong to know this is special, more special than he expected, and not everyone gets to do this with Seunghyun - he gets it, okay? He’s an art student, he’s supposed to be sensitive and shit.
And shit.
Seunghyun helps him climb back up at Namyeong station. In the crude neon lights he looks worse than before; his hand has left bloody trails on Jiyong’s jacket.
“What happened to you?” Jiyong asks. His own voice sounds hoarse.
Seunghyun shrugs. “Nothing. Good night.”
“Wait!” Jiyong exclaims. He’s going? “You’re going?”
Seunghyun stares at him carefully: “…yeah?”
“You need- medicine, Band-Aids, whatever. You can’t just go back!”
Seunghyun shifts uneasily under Jiyong’s outraged eyes: “It’s too late to sleep at a shelter.”
Jiyong clucks his tongue: “You can sleep at my place.”
Seunghyun looks dubitative and hesitant and- shy, Jiyong realizes with a small thrill. The idiot is shy.
“Come on,” Jiyong insists, and only maybe a little bit whining.
“…okay,” Seunghyun drops. “Okay, one night.”
“Sure,” Jiyong says carelessly.
He helps him up the platform. After all, their metro is coming.
The zeppelin has been turning and turning, again and again over their heads and Jiyong is lying on his back on the wooden floor of their living room, watching the widening gyre of the dirigible. Seunghyun smokes, his back against the wall, and what he’s looking at is the tiny quirks of Jiyong’s eyelids, the twitches at the corner of his mouth.
In this world Seunghyun is a bit lonely and he’s in love with a skinny, multicolored-haired boy.
Oxygen and smoke fill his throat and Seunghyun hums slowly under his breath.
A/N: W.B. Yeats: "The Second Coming"; Haruki Murakami: 世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド (The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland); Isao Yukisada: Go; Big Bang: "Tonight"
Rating: Gen
Genre: AU, fantastic
City song and other things making sense
Every morning Jiyong sees him, and every morning he wonders.
Who’s that guy? Why is he here? At which point in his life did he mess up enough to find himself on the streets with virtually nothing?
He looks at him, always in different stages of misery and decay, and tries to see behind all of it because he thinks he’s the only one who does try.
And then the subway moves away from Seoul Station, and Jiyong thinks mostly of sketches and cameras and making the ends meet, and he stores the hobo dude in a corner of his mind.
Once, he talks to him. He doesn’t think it really matters, because the guy will probably forget about him the second he leaves, what with the alcohol in his brain and the sea of faces passing by every day.
“Hello,” Jiyong says. “Err. What’s your name?”
“Hello, stranger,” the other replies, and it’s a surprise because, is that sarcasm? The guy doesn’t even slur the words, just looks straight at Jiyong like somehow Jiyong’s in his turf and he has to bow down to the king of the underground or something.
So Jiyong doesn’t answer because Jiyong can’t come up with something intelligent to say right now.
“Is this some kind of art project?” the other man continues. “Because homeless or not, I won’t hesitate to punch your face if my picture ends up all over some kind of creepy ‘cadavre exquis’, hear me?”
“Oh, no,” Jiyong replies fast, “no, no, really!” He’s rather creeped out by the single fact the dude seems to know about art, and his French pronunciation was better than at least the people in Jiyong’s art class.
And then there’s the smirk, and the comeback: “What? Not hot enough for you?”
Jiyong is flabbergasted. “Are you… hitting on me?”
Hobo Casanova is a first, he’s gotta admit.
“I’m Seunghyun,” the guy says in lieu of an answer. “And it’s nice meeting you.”
The train approaches, there’s a beep, and Jiyong flees before he can say anything stupider.
On the next day he positively feels like shit and almost considers taking the bus, but then again he prefers death by humiliation rather than death by four changes, thanks very much, so he actually has to face three minutes of embarrassment before the train comes. He endures Seunghyun’s stare on him - he can feel it - the whole time.
“…so,” he says when he gets down from the train in the evening, going home. “I’m Jiyong. And I’m sorry. I was a jerk.”
Seunghyun doesn’t even look the slightest bit reproachful. Instead, he grins and Jiyong sees there’s a hole in his crooked smile, some kind of bad boy edge that reminds him of high-school days.
“So, uh,” he continues, fisting the straps of his backpack, “I was thinking - if you’d like. Do you want- a drink? A beer or something, soju, you know, you chose, anything is fine with me.”
He’s rambling, he realizes, and Seunghyun knows, and knows he knows, and keeps watching him with this infuriating small smile.
“I’m not studying sociology!” Jiyong cries. “This is not a trap!”
“I never said anything,” Seunghyun replies calmly. “Okay, let’s go.”
Seunghyun tells him nothing at all but lets him talk, and talk, and talk, and soon Jiyong’s the one with three empty bottles in front of him and he’s babbling about his life, his parents, his (few) exes, his friends and his general fail at studies.
Sometimes Seunghyun chuckles, eyeing him with a tingle in the eye that makes Jiyong want to do all sorts of unreasonable things, and takes the tiniest sip out of his bottle.
“You don’t drink much,” Jiyong notices.
“Why?” Seunghyun counters. “You thought all homeless people were dirty drunk dudes reeking of piss? I sleep at a shelter, I’ll have you know.”
“That’s fine,” Jiyong replies, more than a little tipsy. “That’s damn fine. Cool.”
Seunghyun says nothing so Jiyong shuts up and drinks more.
It’s way past Cinderella hour when the owner of the shoju stand kicks them out, and Jiyong tumbles inelegantly over his own shoelaces, so Seunghyun steadies him while waving for a taxi.
“I’ll see you around,” he says after dropping Jiyong unceremoniously on the seat.
“What? You’re not- I thought you were-”
Seunghyun smiles slow and cautious, for once. “G’night.”
With a motherfucking hangover from hell, Jiyong arrives at Seoul Station the next morning, fully expecting a sarcastic smirk and whiplash remark on his puffy eyes and greenish skin, but instead there’s just an abandoned blanket and an empty packet of Alka-Seltzer.
He looks around to nothing, peers towards the corner of the old retired soldiers who beg because their pension is just not enough - Seunghyun told him that. But Seunghyun isn’t here today and Jiyong wonders if something happened last night that made him mad. Or just if something happened, really. He goes to class with a weird feeling at the pit of his stomach.
When Jiyong takes the metro in the other direction, towards home, Seunghyun isn’t here either and the weird feeling is definitely a rock now, heavy and painful. With a rapid check to his watch he decides he can wait five little minutes - who knows.
“Hey, kid! Hey, you, kid!”
He’s a wrinkled old guy, missing a leg and an eye.
“Are you talking to… me?”
“No, to the popstar behind you. Of course I’m talking to you, idiot!”
He beckons Jiyong to him with a crooked, yellow finger.
“What’s your name?”
“Jiyong.”
“You ever been to the army, Jiyong?”
“No - not yet. Why?”
The old guy tsks in annoyance. “Respect your elders, kid. I’m the one talking. So. You’re a friend of Seunghyun’s?”
“Seu- yes. Why, do you- Sorry.”
Jiyong gets a long stare that roughly means ‘I can’t believe morons like that are even allowed to exist’.
“I have no idea what he sees in you,” the old man says thoughtfully. He shuts Jiyong’s cry of indignation with a glare. “Anyway, the thing is - if you really, truly want to see him again, you have to walk until where the subway turns. Do you think you can do that?”
Jiyong blinks. And blinks again:
“This does not make any sense whatsoever.”
He gets a blank look. This is going to be a long discussion.
After five heated minutes of mutual incomprehension, Jiyong finally gathers he has to somehow walk - walk! - in the subway tunnel until he finds Seunghyun. Yes, it’s absolutely absurd. No, the old man doesn’t offer any coherent explanation. (“Just do it”, he keeps repeating.)
“How am I supposed to get down there?” Jiyong asks (practical questions - they’re good, that, he can understand).
“We’ll help,” the old guy replies, pointing with his thumb to his friends, busy pretending they’re not listening.
One of them simulates a heart attack, which only horrifies Jiyong a tiny bit, and then he gets pushed towards an automatic door, with the rough injunction to ‘run, you idiot!’.
Jiyong almost thinks he’s been played before he realizes something is off. The other passengers in the train seem to be falling asleep, one by one, and the ajumma is drooling all over the high school student’s jacket. Then the train comes to a lurching stop and the familiar, sugar-sweet female voice emerges from the speakers:
“This stop is Underworld. You may exit on the left.”
Jiyong checks, just to see if she’s right, and sure enough, the left-side doors open. This is high-tech batshit craziness.
He grabs his backpack and climbs off the wagon, which is surprisingly high from the ground; Jiyong rips his pants and falls on his open palms. Once he’s out of the way, the door of the metro closes again and the train leaves. It feels terribly lonely, standing there in the dim neon light, gravel under his feet and the faintest smell of dirt. Jiyong gets his cellphone out of his pocket and decidedly starts walking, following the rails and muttering the melody of a song under his breath. He’s forgotten the lyrics.
It seems to Jiyong like he’s been walking for hours, but his feet don’t hurt and he doesn’t feel tired; lassitude, though, is poking at his nerves. Like he doesn’t know where he’s going, no idea what to do: he’s expecting something to happen but he can’t tell where it’ll come from.
“Ho!” he shouts and his voice rings, bounces on the round walls of the tunnel. Everything is mullet-grey and the sound comes back empty and dull. Jiyong shivers unconsciously. He tries to think of what music would come out like in a place like this and the subsequent dizzying anxiety rush is the same he gets whenever he thinks of death or oblivion or the infinite for a bit too long.
The lack of acoustics is a weight on his mind. Jiyong hates that. In his mind he paints murals on those walls, vivid fresh paint and crazy style, imagines an uplifting beat, pictures the face of people walking by and laughing, and breathing becomes easier.
At a crossroads Jiyong doesn’t know which path to choose. They’re both identical and none seems to lead anywhere; Jiyong thinks of Seunghyun and of the way he’s too tall for his own good, the way his shoulders are too large and too stiff, the way he seems to be too tight in his old clothes.
Jiyong takes a deep breath and takes the left path. It’s entirely on instinct, but it’s more than nothing.
The chill comes shortly after he realizes he can’t see the crossroads anymore if he turns back. It starts by a slight shiver and then Jiyong has to wrap his arms around himself, stumbling now and then, and his fingers dig into goosebumped flesh.
He thinks he can hear a faint, bone-chilling whisper coming from the tunnel that keeps stretching behind his footsteps, and to dissipate the icy feeling Jiyong clears his throat and recites anything that comes to mind, metro stations and paragraphs from his textbook.
Talking (to himself) about his classes has him thinking about the project he’s working on with Youngbae and soon Jiyong is heatedly arguing with YB (imaginary YB) about the colors in the background of their video clip.
“I just think ultramarine would look better,” Jiyong says out-loud.
(“You hate blue,” YB points out in his head. “Why now?”)
Jiyong wrings his hands together. YB (fake YB) is right, it’s unusual for him - usually he prefers vibrant colors and a lively touch, but here, there, he just-
“I just,” Jiyong starts, “I have no idea why. It’s just, in that case, I feel blue would fit better. Like, there’s a sense of sadness to our whole project, you know? And I know we’re not supposed to fall into easy color symbolism, but for the vid? Ultramarine? Come on, Youngbae, you know it’s gonna rock…” So maybe Jiyong is whining but he really feels justified here. Blue would give their video a whole new sense of subtle emotivism, something indefinite he can’t quite pinpoint. He doesn’t know where this new receptivity to melancholia comes from, but Jiyong feels like there’s like a flower blossoming in his ribcage and threatening to sneak out.
Then he trips and the illusion is broken.
The arm that helps him up is solid and attached to the body of a frowning Seunghyun.
“That was threatening to happen,” he scolds Jiyong. “Mumbling to yourself like some sort of psycho and not looking at your feet.”
“Sorry,” Jiyong chews out.
Seunghyun rubs a wounded, bloodied hand over tired eyes:
“What are you doing here anyway?” he asks.
Jiyong scratches his elbow and starts picking at a scab left there.
“I don’t know either,” he says. “I was just- told.”
“Hey,” Seunghyun snaps. “Stop grumbling, I can’t here a damn word you’re saying.” His hand has left a brownish mark over his forehead. Jiyong feels suddenly exhausted, and scared, and a bit disheartened all at once:
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he drops. “I spent hours walking to get you, and you’re there, and then what?” He pauses. “I wanna go home.”
Seunghyun looks vaguely apologetic and reaches for Jiyong’s forearm, then changes his mind and lets him hand fall at his side.
“I’ll take you home,” he says. “Follow me and we’ll-” Seunghyun suddenly stops talking and pales a bit under the dirt covering his face. His hand grips Jiyong’s too tight and he pulls him to one of the alcoves dug in the tunnel.
“Don’t make any noises,” he urges him.
Jiyong nods once and presses himself close. He can feel it too now. The same chill as earlier, only stronger and strangely weakening. His free hand curls on Seunghyun’s chest; there’s a hint of a heartbeat under his fingertips and Seunghyun is very still. Both of them are staring at each other like transfixed, only Jiyong knows it’s because the something is coming and instinctively, senses the only way to escape it is by being so lost in each other they’ll offer no grip to the outer world.
It makes no noise and no-one else could see it but Jiyong and Seunghyun know the exact time the thing passes by them. It’s not that the light decreases or the walls start to crack. It’s just- the colors seem to lose in saturation and the sounds get sharper, cruder, like they’re suddenly breathing in a snorkel. Jiyong feels his eyes widen and the hair on the back of his neck rise. In front of him, Seunghyun gnaws at his chapped lip and leans imperceptibly closer. His hand slips up Jiyong’s shoulder to his neck and the touch is comforting like a warm blanket, so much Jiyong’s eyelids flutter closed. It’s easier to ignore the thing then, and soon the only sensations getting to him are the sound and the warmth of Seunghyun breathing close to him, his fingers digging in his skin.
It does warm things to Jiyong’s stomach and the tingles are irrepressible, wrenching a light laugh out of him.
His eyes burst open and he only sees Seunghyun looking at him. Like Jiyong is his missing puzzle piece.
They walk to the next station hand in hand and now and then Jiyong will try to slip his fingers out of Seunghyun’s grasp just so he can feel himself being pulled back next to him. They don’t have to talk for Jiyong to know this is special, more special than he expected, and not everyone gets to do this with Seunghyun - he gets it, okay? He’s an art student, he’s supposed to be sensitive and shit.
And shit.
Seunghyun helps him climb back up at Namyeong station. In the crude neon lights he looks worse than before; his hand has left bloody trails on Jiyong’s jacket.
“What happened to you?” Jiyong asks. His own voice sounds hoarse.
Seunghyun shrugs. “Nothing. Good night.”
“Wait!” Jiyong exclaims. He’s going? “You’re going?”
Seunghyun stares at him carefully: “…yeah?”
“You need- medicine, Band-Aids, whatever. You can’t just go back!”
Seunghyun shifts uneasily under Jiyong’s outraged eyes: “It’s too late to sleep at a shelter.”
Jiyong clucks his tongue: “You can sleep at my place.”
Seunghyun looks dubitative and hesitant and- shy, Jiyong realizes with a small thrill. The idiot is shy.
“Come on,” Jiyong insists, and only maybe a little bit whining.
“…okay,” Seunghyun drops. “Okay, one night.”
“Sure,” Jiyong says carelessly.
He helps him up the platform. After all, their metro is coming.
The zeppelin has been turning and turning, again and again over their heads and Jiyong is lying on his back on the wooden floor of their living room, watching the widening gyre of the dirigible. Seunghyun smokes, his back against the wall, and what he’s looking at is the tiny quirks of Jiyong’s eyelids, the twitches at the corner of his mouth.
In this world Seunghyun is a bit lonely and he’s in love with a skinny, multicolored-haired boy.
Oxygen and smoke fill his throat and Seunghyun hums slowly under his breath.
A/N: W.B. Yeats: "The Second Coming"; Haruki Murakami: 世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド (The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland); Isao Yukisada: Go; Big Bang: "Tonight"