worse than cigarettes
Pairing: gd/top
Rating: r
Summary: post-disbandment. ar. sister fic to this, but can be read alone. (angst warning)
2006 words~
After all these years, Jiyong just figured he would’ve gotten over all those damn habits by now. He thought he would’ve stopped waking up at noon and falling asleep just as the sun started to rise. He thought he would’ve quit hearing those snippets of melodies, those strings of lyrics swimming through his head, because-face it-they were never going to see the light of day.
He thought he would have lost interest in pink and hair dyes and tattoos, but his collection of magenta shirts and shoes, his blue-stained pillows, and his full sleeves say otherwise. And he still smokes, if anything, more than ever. But that’s not a surprise.
What is, on the other hand, is him.
Jiyong eyes the lump of soft sleeping just inches from him, draped in his warm cotton sheets and curled up like a little kid. Seunghyun. His breathing is deep and pronounced, sort of lulling and safe. And Jiyong is cursing up a storm in his head-fuck you, you motherfucking prick asshole, you shitfaced dick-because he’s warm and familiar and Jiyong is spooning him before he can even stop himself. Jiyong drapes an arm over his waist, fingers feeling at the hot skin where Seunghyun’s shirt rides up and sweatpants ride down. He nuzzles into the sleeping man’s neck, teeth grazing against his shoulder, biting slightly harder each time to see which would be the one to stir him.
And it's the sixth bite that gets Seunghyun to shift in his sleep, an audible annoyed groan coming from his side. But Jiyong just flushes closer, smiles into his back. You stupid fucker.
After all these years, Jiyong thought he’d be over Seunghyun by now.
And when he finally manages to fall asleep, it’s deep. So deep, he doesn’t notice the sun has started to rise, doesn’t feel the bed shift when Seunghyun wakes up and leaves. When he opens his eyes again, it’s already 1pm and he half expects to see Seunghyun still lying there beside him.
He’s not though. Again, not really a surprise.
--------------
Jiyong can be a closed book when he wants to be, and right now the locks have just clicked in place and the keys have oh-so conveniently disappeared.
“It’s been a while,” he mumbles when Seunghyun finds him outside his front door. Jiyong is leaning against the frame, half a cigarette between his lips, a soft smile on his face, as if it’s perfectly normal for him to be there in the middle of the night.
But Seunghyun is clearly not amused. His brows are furrowed and there’s a scowl on his face, a look Jiyong’s all too acquainted with. “What do you want?” he mumbles, and Jiyong can smell the wine on his lips. He almost wants to slap him, because who the fuck opens their door when they’re drunk. Seunghyun, that’s who. But instead he kisses him, soft and surely, his fingers ghosting along the older man’s jaw.
“It’s almost like you’ve been avoiding me,” Jiyong breathes when he pulls away.
“I have.”
And it hurts. As small and as insignificant as it should be, it still hurts. But Jiyong manages a smile, walks past Seunghyun to take a seat on the couch, the leather whining under him as he crosses his legs and twists a ring on his finger. “Why?” he finally croaks out when Seunghyun shuts the door and walks towards him.
He already knows why, but seeing the grimace on the older man’s face is still somehow satisfying. Seunghyun furrows his brows as he thinks of the right words to say, hesitant and cautious. Because even after everything Jiyong has done, Seunghyun still has the consideration to worry about those kinds of things. And all Jiyong can do is sit there quietly and smile, his teeth biting sharply on the inside of his cheek, willing the tears that wanted to come out to fuck off. He was supposed to be over him by now. He was supposed to have moved on already, gotten married, had kids, the whole nine yards. But here he was, in the middle of the night, knocking on his door, hoping he’d answer, but fucking clueless on what would happen after he did. He doesn’t even remember why exactly he came; he just wanted to be here, to be close to him-
“I can’t do this anymore,” Seunghyun says as he takes a seat across the room from him. Keeping his distance, Jiyong notes.
Jiyong simply shrugs his shoulders, his eyes jittering across the room trying to find something to focus on that wasn’t Seunghyun. “I don’t know what you mean…”
“Bullshit, you know exactly what I mean. I just…I can’t do us anymore.”
Jiyong finds a particularly nice spot on the floor and stares at it.
“I’m tired of being your fuck buddy… your friend. You tire me out Ji. I’m exhausted because of you and I don’t know what to do anymore. Just go home, Ji. Go get some sleep.”
And he feels so silly and embarrassed, like a little kid being scolded by his mother, like his pride is being cut to pieces. And that alone is enough to make Jiyong say something he doesn’t mean.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Don’t try to flatter yourself. There was never even an us.” A sneer on his lips even though he wants nothing more than to burst into tears.
He glances up and meets Seunghyun’s gaze, can see the hurt in his eyes, can see him bite the corner of his lip the way he does when he’s trying to hold back. Why? Yell at me, hit me. Do something! Jiyong knows he more than deserves it, but Seunghyun doesn’t budge, doesn’t give anything more to take and Jiyong isn’t that selfish.
A uncomfortable silence stretches and all Jiyong can think about is sleeping and the bed and Seunghyun’s arm wrapped around his waist and his breath tickling his ear and the bit of drool that sometimes crept from the corner of his lips whenever he slept with his mouth too open.
“You should leave.”
Seunghyun says as he walks to the door, opening it wide and waiting. His face unreadable as he stares past Jiyong, at the window, as if what’s just outside the glass panel is so fascinating that he can’t bother to tear his eyes away for even a second.
“Okay. Well, it was good seeing you again.”
Jiyong mumbles, taking excruciatingly slow steps, giving Seunghyun a chance to change his stance. But he doesn’t. And Jiyong has to mentally promise himself to wait, wait until he leaves and gets back in his car before he can even think about crying.
He reaches the door and steps over the threshold, into the hallway and out of Seunghyun’s home.
“Goodbye Ji.”
And Jiyong can’t really help himself with the tears because he can’t remember the last time Seunghyun said goodbye to him. It had always been ‘goodnight’ or ‘see you’ or ‘later’ or just nothing at all because the prospect of them meeting up again sometime soon was just always inevitable. But…goodbye?
Seunghyun quickly shuts the door before he has a chance to see Jiyong’s red teary eyes. He hears the locks snap into place with two soft clicks and Jiyong thinks the same thing of his heart.
He should have been married by now, should have had a daughter and a baby boy and maybe another one on the way. He should have been living in the suburbs and moved onto another profession instead of slinking around the entertainment industry. That was the plan. A simple, easy, manageable plan anyone could follow.
Yet here he was, still standing, still waiting, still hesitant, outside his (ex?)best friend/(ex?)lover/(ex?)whatever’s front door like a teenage boy hooked on his first love. (There was more truth in that metaphor than Jiyong liked to admit.)
“You shouldn’t open your door in the middle of the night when you’re drunk, fucking asshole.” Jiyong yells before he leaves, pretty sure that Seunghyun doesn't even hear him.
--------------
Fucking girls are easy. They're willing and pliant and spread legs and hooded lids before Jiyong even has the chance to pull out the condom. He never has to work for it, ever. Fame and celebrity status kind of do that to you. All Jiyong has to do is buy them a drink, whisper sweet things into their ear, tell them they're beautiful and lovely even though he can barely see their face in this scarcely lit club floor.
Girls are easy to handle. They smell good and have soft hair and smile even though Jiyong has a death grip on their locks and shoves their face to his leaking cock. They aim to please, and please they do.
Except Jiyong doesn't want that. He wants rough edges and tension and strain and pleasure so hard that it hurts. He wants it the way Seunghyun fucks him into the wall, so hard his shoulders bruise, so hard that he's sore on the back of his head and between his thighs. He wants the way Seunghyun wipes his bangs out of his face, cleans the sweat dripping with the back of his hand, kisses his eyes when the pain gets too much and he can't hold back the tears. He wants Seunghyun and his teetering between aggression and consideration. He wants Seunghyun and the way his breath catches and the way he wimpers when Jiyong does it just right.
He wants Seunghyun. That's all.
But instead he wakes with a hangover and next to another girl he doesn't know. She's pretty in the afternoon sunlight that falls through his window. Her skin is olive and her hair is a mahogny and she has freckles on her nose and her lashes are oh-so long. But all Jiyong is thinking about is the bit of drool coming from the corner of her opened lips. He affectionately wipes it for her before he can stop himself. Thankfully she doesn't wake up.
--------------
A couple weeks later and Seunghyun is taking his calls again. He works in a 20 minute chat updating on YG and the girl group Seunghyun's been working with and how Youngbae has another kid on the way and how Daesung has only a couple months left of his service. It's antagonizing to put on a normal face but Jiyong breezes through it with ease, mumbling hums and appropriate replies. But then Seunghyun comes out of the blue and asks a stupidly simple question.
"How've you been, Ji?"
"...huh..." And just that manages to knock Jiyong off his so skillfully maintained track. "I-I've been good," he says a couple seconds slow.
"That's good."
And an awkward silence stretches and Jiyong feels like all his work with the small talk has just gone down the drain.
"And you?" Jiyong realizes he should probably ask as well, but just a couple moments too late.
Seunghyun's laughter crackles a bit through the phone line and sends a familiar pull to Jiyong's chest.
"Shit man, you're the leader. You're supposed to be better at handling social situations than this," he breathes and Jiyong wishes he were there to see the way his shoulders shake when he laughs. "I'm good, I'm alright."
Jiyong wants to tell him he's not a leader anymore, that there's no Big Bang anymore, that's there's no obligation for them to still talk and be close and hang out like they do, and he wants to tell Seunghyun that this should mean something. He wants to tell him he has been an pathetic utter idiot of a bastard and that he's sorry, for this, for that night a couple weeks ago, for everything. He wants to tell him that he loves him, kind of always has, but he's scared, really fucking scared. He wants to tell him all these things and so much more.
But he doesn't. Damn creature of habit.
"Ah, that's good," he says instead.