Round 21: Heart like a canvas
Title: heart like a canvas
Team: AU
Rating: R
Fandom: Big Bang
Pairing: G-Dragon/TOP
Summary: just because a relationship isn't demonstrative doesn't mean it isn't there. or: gd and top figure things out the long way.
Author's Note: american entertainment industry au. title from marty mcconnell's "frida kahlo to marty mcconnell." warnings for swearing and sexual themes. 4,483 words.
Prompt Used: LED Apple - Let The Wind Blow (lyrics)
They don't so much break up as they fall away from each other slowly, the kind of gentle drifting apart that doesn't dawn on Jiyong until he realizes that despite living in the same apartment, they haven't actually seen each other for at least two months-and even then, his first priority's more about the dogs being taken care of and the kimchi in the fridge not molding and less about locating his boyfriend.
By then, it's really too late in the game to do anything about it. Work's busier than ever. The only time they're in LA these days is to pack a suitcase for the next trip-Jiyong flying all over the place to work on a flurry of freelance photoshoots and Seunghyun playing festival gigs around the country all summer. Things aren't much better when they're both in the city: Seunghyun's invariably sleeping off forty-eight hours of back-to-back set-beer-garden-set routines, or Jiyong's locked in the darkroom, trying to develop film from some Japanese analog SLR he'd picked up in Tokyo.
"So I think," Jiyong says carefully on their last date (harried dinner at the Indian take-out place on Sunset Boulevard, before he has to jet-set to Holland for a nature documentary the next morning), "we're both too busy to maintain this relationship."
Seunghyun pauses in the middle of cramming a samosa down his throat and sends him a discerning look. His hair's dyed turquoise for Warped, straggling fringe hanging in his face. It makes his skin look extra pale. "You want to take a break."
Jiyong scrunches his nose at the bit of potato that lands in his lap. Seunghyun picks it up and tucks it back in his mouth. "That's a way of putting it."
"Okay," Seunghyun says, and Jiyong blinks back his surprise. He'd expected to have to push for it more. Instead, he gets Seunghyun inhaling the rest of his food and the two of them splitting the bill. Going Dutch. The irony, Jiyong thinks, surveying the broad expanse of Seunghyun's back as they walk out, isn't lost on him in the least.
Sandara calls him when he's checking in at LAX the next morning. "You broke up?" she squawks shrilly, without preamble. "You're going to throw four years out the window just like that?"
"It's too early for your theatrics," Jiyong moans into the receiver. "Stop shouting."
She sighs. "Sometimes I feel like I'm more invested in the state of everyone's relationships than the people actually involved."
"It's what you get for treating everything like a fucking Lifetime movie." Jiyong switches his phone to the other ear and pulls his passport out for the irritated airline associate. "Speaking of which, how's the writing room?"
"Fine, keeping it together, these bozos we hired for the new season don't know what the fuck they're doing, same old," Dara rattles off. "Chaerin's dealing with last minute rewrites right now." Jiyong can hear her swivel chair squeaking through the line. Must've spent the whole night going over episode scripts. "I know what you're doing. Don't try to change the subject."
Jiyong lugs his suitcases onto the scale with a low grunt. "We're giving each other some space. That's all. I'm, you know, fine with it. He's got tour shit to deal with and I-" The associate sends him a withering glare as she shoves his boarding pass over the counter. Jiyong beams back with his most winning smile before hurrying off toward security. "I didn't think he'd agree so quickly but maybe he's been thinking about it, too-"
"Don't be stupid," Sandara interrupts with disdain. "You know he's never been able to refuse you anything. Not even this."
Something pangs briefly in Jiyong's chest. Dara, of course, would know. They'd all met-her, the two of them, Youngbae and Chaerin and Seungho and Bom and everyone else he still keeps in touch with-at USC, and spent four-odd years hanging around the city for college. Jiyong remembers Chaerin and Dara pouring over hastily-penned screenplays, Bom running craft services for every single one of their dumb undergraduate productions, Seunghyun fiddling with the sound design in the studio, overlaying everything with ambient music. Seunghyun with a Marlboro turning into ash between his fingers, staying up late with Jiyong as he cut and edited their shaky footage. Seunghyun curled up on the couch typing a paper out with two fingers, watching Jiyong storyboard every shot before they even thought about which cameras to use. Late night runs for samgyupsal and soju in K-Town, their wooden chopsticks clacking together when they reached for the same piece of meat. They'd been friends, first, for a long time, before they became more.
Funny. This is the most Jiyong's thought about him in months, and they technically aren't even dating anymore. Dara would probably say something sickening about it being a sign.
He shakes his head and scrapes a hand over his face, hefts his bag over his shoulder. "Hey, noona," he says, walking toward the checkpoint. "I gotta go." He hangs up before she can get another word in edgewise and spends the entire flight watching the way the sunlight hits the wing of the plane and scatters down into the clouds.
For a while, Jiyong bounces from hotel room to hotel room, lives off Marriott Hotel breakfast buffet catering and lukewarm coffee that tastes like someone pissed in it. He's in the Netherlands for three weeks for NatGeo's documentary and then he's off to Singapore to cover a royal wedding. He scrapes the bottom of his last suitcase in July, after three days in Sydney en route to New South Wales, where he's supposed to be working the main camera for a summer blockbuster film about robots with feelings. The last article of clothing he hasn't already worn is one he must've accidentally scooped off the floor of their bedroom half-asleep and shoved inside, one of those funky print blazers Seunghyun likes wearing so much. It's a little too big on Jiyong, the sleeves dragging against his second knuckles. When he shrugs it on, it smells just like him, like cigarettes and sandalwood.
They're filming in the forest the first week of August-a heartbreaking chase scene through the wet canopy-when the director's assistant starts giggling in between takes. A pair of koalas hang right in the middle of the shot when they watch the playback on the monitor. "Fix it," the director snaps, and someone calls someone else calls the relevant people to get rid of the animals without scaring them.
Jiyong snaps a surreptitious picture on his phone before the wildlife control people come, has the email composed and ready to send out before he remembers the only person who'd care is also the only person he shouldn't be talking to right now.
He deletes the draft and types out a throwaway text instead, something about marsupial appreciation. He deletes that, too, and slides his phone back into his pocket. Seunghyun never responds to texts, anyway-takes to modern technology about as well as he does to Youngbae's pointed suggestions that he quit smoking-so there's really no point.
Jiyong ends up sending it by snail mail, makes the thing into a semi-presentable postcard that he prints out on thick stock paper. He has no idea how long it takes for something to get from Australia to Los Angeles, or if Seunghyun will even be around to check the mail, but it's something.
He's in the air for most of his birthday, a ten-hour flight from Sydney to Shanghai. The slew of congratulatory texts and Facebook messages floods in when the plane lands and he turns his phone back on: come visit more often, you idiot from Dami, and hbd, cum back to seoul and do a shoot for w korea sometime from Hyuksoo, and ur so old hyung ^^ treat u to dinner when u get back? or mb u should treat me keke from Seungri.
Do you know when you'll be home? Gaho misses you. types Youngbae, which probably means Come collect your dogs, asshole, three's a crowd and you two should never have gotten them if you knew you would never be around.
Jiyong's first thought is a dry suck it up, and his second is that it's strange Seunghyun hasn't been by to see them. He doesn't even know where the hell Seunghyun is-Chicago, maybe, for the aftermath of Lollapalooza, or already on the way to Nevada for Burning Man-which was the whole issue, wasn't it?
talk to the missus abt it he shoots back. Youngbae sends him an annoyed frowning emoticon but stops pushing. The last minutes of the 18th tick by in China, and then he's twenty-six for real, another year older. Radio silence from Seunghyun. Jiyong'd expected as much. He'd never been the greatest at remembering dates.
Shanghai's muggy and humid all month. Jiyong spends most of his time doing editing work indoors, with the odd magazine shoot during the day and nights spent out on the Bund, when it's marginally cooler. He mails a miniature figurine of the Oriental Pearl Tower to Los Angeles the day after he visits.
There's a tiny sushi place falling off one of the curbs in the international consulate district. He gets eel and tuna rolls in two pretty little boxes. It should be good, but the sting of wasabi just reminds him of sharing fifty-one plates of sashimi in Osaka with Seunghyun when they'd gone on a tour of Asia the summer after graduation. Some of the others had been there with them, but they were the only ones who'd been willing to sneak out of the hotel to get sushi their last night in Japan.
He'd fumbled back into the cold lobby with an arm tossed carelessly over Seunghyun's shoulder, half-drunk off cheap sake and laughing so hard he thought he might throw up. He hadn't, though-far from it. Before he could slip back into his room Seunghyun'd pressed him up against the wall and slanted his mouth over Jiyong's, tongue warm and a little spicy from the wine and the food. And it'd been good. Really, really fucking good.
He falls asleep still thinking about it, and in the morning he wakes up with the worst food poisoning he's had in years. He retches into the toilet bowl before ordering Gatorade through room service and reaching for his phone.
Youngbae picks up on the third ring. "I'm so fucking sick," Jiyong says, laughing thickly around the bile in his throat.
"Why are you calling me?" Youngbae returns. "Do you know what time it is here?"
Jiyong does the math in his head. "Not even midnight, you old man."
"Some of us work nine to five."
"Who would've known you'd shape up after that terrible faux hip-hop dreadlock phase in college?"
"Low blow," Youngbae says, but he's chuckling over the line, and Jiyong feels his stomach unclench a little.
"How're the dogs?" he asks.
Youngbae pauses meaningfully. Then: "That's not what you really want to know."
"No," he agrees, too tired to argue, "but indulge me."
"Gaho's fine. Next door neighbor has a fluffy labradoodle that he loves to chase around."
"Attaboy."
"Charlie's good, too." Another pause. "Seunghyun dropped in last week for a quick visit."
"Oh," Jiyong says. He sits up on the hotel bed. His head swims. "Was he on his way somewhere else?"
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Youngbae snorts when Jiyong doesn't immediately respond. "You guys are both idiots. It's not like you have to give each other the cold shoulder just because you aren't romantically involved anymore."
"Easy for you to say," Jiyong croaks. Room service knocks on the door and he takes the offered six-pack of Gatorade, uncaps an orange bottle and takes a swig. "How long's it been since you got some, Youngbae?"
"So ungrateful," Youngbae sniffs. "Remind me never to give you advice again."
"All of it unsolicited," he points out. "Anyway, he's probably just busy. I'm busy, too. And I'm fine."
"Of course you are," Youngbae says doubtfully. "Listen, though-when will you be back?"
"Not sure," Jiyong hedges. "I have to wrap up things here, and then Hyuksoo wants me to swim the channel to Seoul."
"Oh? What for?"
"Freelance shit."
Youngbae hums. "Say hello to him for me."
"Sure." Jiyong chugs the rest of the Gatorade and tosses the empty bottle into the trash. "I'm gonna take some medicine and sleep this shit off. Uh, good talk."
"You should really talk to Seunghyun," Youngbae insists.
Jiyong rolls his eyes. He stops when his head starts spinning again. "What did I say about unsolicited advice?" He snaps his phone shut and lies down, fingers rubbing at his five o'clock shadow.
The truth is it isn't Youngbae's fault that he feels the need to try and fix things. Intellectually, Jiyong understands he's put everyone in their mutual friend circle in a bit of a tough spot, even if all the fallout's been relatively amicable. It's just that-the longer they go without speaking, the more awkward it feels to initiate anything, and Jiyong's never been very good at getting over himself. If Seunghyun wanted to talk, he thinks, he'd call.
Jiyong finally swings back stateside at the end of September after Seoul, spends several weeks city hopping on the eastern seaboard and giving guest lectures at film schools about Alfred Hitchcock's camerawork in Psycho. He visits Dami in New York City right before the cold snap in October, stays long enough to see sit in on some of Teddy's classes at NYU and also guilt-trip her into making him something home-cooked. After months of greasy fast food, her kimchi jjigae tastes like literal heaven.
Outside, on her apartment balcony at sundown his last night there, he shakes a cigarette out of the old, squashed pack he finds in one of the pockets of his MCM bag and sucks the tip of it into his mouth. The lighter he fishes out was a gag gift from Seunghyun, a middle finger butane torch he'd found in a specialty shop and given to Jiyong on his twenty-first birthday.
"You only bought this for me so you could borrow it yourself," he'd accused, eyebrows cocked high.
Seunghyun'd grinned at him, raising his hands in supplication. "Caught me."
Jiyong lights the Marlboro and coughs at the first drag. Smoking's usually the kind of thing he does when other people are around to pass the cigarette off to, a social exercise-but it feels right to toss the lighter from hand to hand and watch the smoke from the other end curl lazily in the air, floating up to blot the Manhattan skyline out just a little bit more.
Dami slips through the screen door and joins him at the railing around midnight. She refuses the cigarette, wrinkling her nose, but leans into his side anyway, chin propped up on her hands to stare at the moon. It's starting to get chilly at night, and she's got a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Jiyong picks at the loose threads littering the hem.
"Are you happy?" she asks abruptly, sending him a sideways glance. "You don't look happy."
"I'm fine." Which isn't, of course, the same thing. "I'm getting there," he amends, and it sounds thin and reedy even to him.
He does drop by the apartment in LA for one night before he has to fly back to Seoul again. It still smells like all the things a home should smell like: detergent, Febreze, a fine layer of dust gathered on the TV, the faint snap of stale dog food in the laundry room.
The bedroom looks exactly the way he left it. He dumps his wrinkled clothing out onto the carpet and fills it with stacks of winter wear, beanies and camel coats and long underwear. Seunghyun's side of the closet is its usual riotous mess. Against his better judgment, Jiyong snatches a couple of Seunghyun's violently colored hoodies off the floor and drops them into the Simpsons-print suitcase.
He falls asleep several hours before his flight, nose pressed into a pillow. If he breathes deep enough, he can pretend he smells Seunghyun's shampoo in the soft fabric. That night, he has a dream about the first time they'd tried having sex, Seunghyun's lips on his neck, teeth scraping down his chest. Jiyong was so enthusiastic about it that he'd gotten a charley horse in the middle of the blowjob, and Seunghyun laughed so hard he started crying a little, face turned into the skin of Jiyong's inner thigh as his shoulders shook. Least sexy thing in the world.
Still, he wakes up with a massive boner, one that he can't seem to get rid of until he jacks off in the shower. Embarrassing, especially with Seunghyun's shampoo and conditioner staring him accusingly in the face the entire time.
On his way out the building he passes the mailroom and debates checking for packages. To see if the shit from Australia and China's come in, he reasons, eyeing the keyhole.
In the end, he just leaves, trudging by the receptionist with his luggage in tow, heart pounding hollowly in his chest.
He gets sick again in between jobs in Korea, a bad case of pneumonia the first week of November after two nights out in drizzling rain shooting a Hyundai CF, the wind blowing right through him. He spends a day vegetating in Hyuksoo's guest bedroom before checking into a hospital at his alarmed insistence. "You work too hard," he says, perched cross-legged in a plastic chair when Jiyong wakes up with an IV drip in his arm, breath rough and shallow. "Stop treating yourself like shit."
"You sound like one of Daesung's self-help books," Jiyong grumbles. "Sorry not all of us want to live like ascetics."
"My body is a temple," Hyuksoo says solemnly, and Jiyong nearly hacks up a lung when he laughs.
A couple of hours after his fever breaks he starts scrolling through his online portfolio for something to do. It's in dire need of an update. He uploads a couple of stills from his latest projects before navigating to the gallery archive. There are photos and videos of his friends if he goes back far enough: Dongwook and Hanbyul's wedding, modeling shoots with Bom and Dara from when Chaerin thought she wanted to be a fashion designer, their graduation, Seunghyun at his first bar gig, spring break pictures he'd taken for them every year.
"You go to all these places and you don't even live them unless it's through a lens," Seunghyun told him once, and Jiyong'd retorted with something caustic about how Seunghyun wrote his entire life into his music, the same relationship story over and over again. Jiyong isn't sure if the tight pull in his chest is inexplicable fondness or just the pneumonia, but-fuck. There's something incredibly wrong with him if he's missing their stupid fights, too.
His fingers scrabble over his screen and he thumbs through his contacts till he gets to bingu. Jiyong's saved as uptight asshole in Seunghyun's phone-or he was, if Seunghyun hadn't changed it since.
He gets out of the hospital on Seunghyun's birthday, and goes to the touristy district of Itaewon to pick up a generic postcard of the city at night. happy 27th from the motherland, he scribbles onto the back. Postage costs a dollar and ten cents.
The house is empty when he returns at the beginning of December. He fires a text off to Youngbae (bring the dogs tmr, gonna be staying for a while) before passing out across the duvet in clothes he's been wearing for at least a week.
Gaho's delighted to see him. He's gotten fatter. "You're overfeeding my dog," he tells Youngbae, who makes a face and hands him Charlie's leash. "Cool it, bro."
"Beggars can't be choosers," he returns, but ends up staying around to help Jiyong unpack and clean the house anyway, because Youngbae has always been that friend.
Later that night, Jiyong goes out for groceries before the Trader Joe's closes and restocks the fridge with actual food: milk and eggs and the creamy Toscano that Seunghyun likes (and Jiyong likes by association). Afterwards, he curls up on the couch in front of the TV and pops chocolate-covered espresso beans until he dozes off to the low rumble of late-night telemarketers peddling their wares.
Seunghyun reappears in the morning, and at first Jiyong thinks he might be seeing things. But-no, those are Seunghyun's beat-up Chucks in the doorway. His favorite garish jacket hangs over the chair in the dining room, a sight for sore eyes, and for the first time in almost half a year Jiyong can smell the sandalwood cologne Seunghyun always uses saturating the air.
There's someone moving around in the kitchen. Jiyong sits up. The blanket that wasn't there the night before slides off his shoulders. He's rubbing the crick from his neck when Seunghyun shuffles out with a plate piled high with gooey eggs. He sees Jiyong and smiles a little sheepishly and Jiyong's throat clenches as he drinks him in: the familiar cut of his jaw, the column of his neck, the scar over his left eye, the way his lashes cast shadows across his cheekbones. His hair's auburn, now. It looks good on him-but then, annoyingly, most things tend to. Jiyong's palms itch.
"Welcome back," Seunghyun says, putting the food down on the table, and Jiyong swallows hard at the sound of his voice. His stomach gives a little swoop. "I've been staying at Hyeyoon's for a couple of days. Youngbae told me you got in two days ago."
Jiyong unfolds himself from the couch and stands, swaying on his feet. Seunghyun's gaze sweeps over him, going dark with intent as the silence stretches on. "Oh," Jiyong says at last, the corner of his mouth turning down. "Good. Not that you were living with her, I mean-I just thought maybe I'd dreamed you here." He wrings his hands helplessly for a moment-and then Seunghyun's crossing the distance between them in three easy strides and pressing the long line of his body against Jiyong's, tongue sliding between his lips.
Jiyong's mouth is sour with the aftertaste of last night's dark chocolate but Seunghyun doesn't seem to care. His teeth scrape against Jiyong's bottom lip and Jiyong whines, already half-hard in his pants.
He pulls back reluctantly, bringing his hand up to block Seunghyun's face when he tries to inch forward. "Wait, wait," he pants, fingers brushing down Seunghyun's sweater. "I have to apologize." Seunghyun opens his mouth to interject and Jiyong shakes his head so vehemently that he shuts it again, skin between his brows pinching. "Look, I'm-I thought. I thought there was something wrong with us because-I don't know where you are half the time, and it's a good month when we get to see each other more than twice, and I didn't even feel bad about it." He scrubs a hand over his face. "I didn't feel bad about it until I decided we needed a break."
"I know." Seunghyun's thumbs rub smooth circles into Jiyong's hipbones.
"But maybe," he plows on, eyes sliding shut, "maybe we don't have to see each other all the fucking time to make it work. Maybe me not feeling bad about not knowing where you were meant that I was okay with it and not that I didn't feel anything for you at all. Because I do, you know? I feel a lot of things."
"I know, Jiyong," he repeats, and he's laughing when Jiyong opens his eyes again. "Missed you, too."
Jiyong blinks, surveying his face. "You aren't mad?"
Seunghyun shrugs. "Sure, I'm mad. Or I was. But I don't let that kind of thing consume me like you do."
Jiyong's mouth twitches.
"You always get stuck on things that don't even matter. I'm used to it."
"What a sweet talker."
"You want sweet?" Seunghyun asks, cocking his head. "I missed you. I missed your stupid international texts at three in the morning and watching you fiddle with your cameras on the floor of the living room for hours. Even missed your passive aggressive criticism. I was playing a set at Paradiso days after you left and all I could think about was the road trip we took up there the summer after junior year, putting miles on Daesung's old Mazda. I stayed at Hyeyoon's because it felt weird being here and not knowing if you'd be back." He exhales, smiling a little. "Maybe all the time you spend away makes the times I do see you even better."
Jiyong rears back at that last bit and mimes gagging. "So fucking cheesy. You're sure you write lyrics for a living?"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he quips, fingers digging into Jiyong's hips. "Sextus Propertius, bitch. Shit is classic." He pauses, and a slow grin spreads over his face. "Can we go back to kissing, now? That was good."
"One track mind, huh," Jiyong says drily, but he doesn't protest when Seunghyun bumps their noses together on the way back down.
They meander downstairs in the afternoon and lug the last five months of mail from the front desk back to the apartment. "I didn't forget your birthday, by the way," Seunghyun says. "I didn't think you'd want to hear from me so soon, or I would've called." Jiyong raises his eyebrows. Seunghyun plucks a package out of the stack and hands it to him. "From Chicago," he grunts, and when Jiyong opens it there's a tiny camera lighter nestled in the bubble wrap. "Saw it at Lollapalooza and thought of you."
Jiyong finds the postcards and the package from Shanghai amidst all the bank statements and phone bills and thrusts them in Seunghyun's lap. The glass figurine of the Oriental Pearl Tower didn't survive the trip overseas, but Seunghyun looks pleased as punch anyway.
"Nothing a little superglue won't fix." He rummages around for another package, tosses it in Jiyong's lap. "Picked this one up at Burning Man," he explains, when Jiyong comes up with a fire extinguisher lighter. Typical. "We should go together next year, if you're around."
Jiyong drapes a hand over his eyes and laughs, flicking the thumbwheel. The flame burns hot against his fingers.
"What?"
"Nothing," he says. He shakes his head and lets the fire go out, sucks his thumb between his lips to cool the aching skin. "I'm-relieved? We're really stupid."
"Nah," says Seunghyun with a careless toss of his head. "I prefer to think we're just a little more thorough than most." He grins. Jiyong rolls his eyes. When Seunghyun leans over to kiss him, he lifts his mouth to meet it.
Poll Round 21: Heart like a canvas
Team: AU
Rating: R
Fandom: Big Bang
Pairing: G-Dragon/TOP
Summary: just because a relationship isn't demonstrative doesn't mean it isn't there. or: gd and top figure things out the long way.
Author's Note: american entertainment industry au. title from marty mcconnell's "frida kahlo to marty mcconnell." warnings for swearing and sexual themes. 4,483 words.
Prompt Used: LED Apple - Let The Wind Blow (lyrics)
They don't so much break up as they fall away from each other slowly, the kind of gentle drifting apart that doesn't dawn on Jiyong until he realizes that despite living in the same apartment, they haven't actually seen each other for at least two months-and even then, his first priority's more about the dogs being taken care of and the kimchi in the fridge not molding and less about locating his boyfriend.
By then, it's really too late in the game to do anything about it. Work's busier than ever. The only time they're in LA these days is to pack a suitcase for the next trip-Jiyong flying all over the place to work on a flurry of freelance photoshoots and Seunghyun playing festival gigs around the country all summer. Things aren't much better when they're both in the city: Seunghyun's invariably sleeping off forty-eight hours of back-to-back set-beer-garden-set routines, or Jiyong's locked in the darkroom, trying to develop film from some Japanese analog SLR he'd picked up in Tokyo.
"So I think," Jiyong says carefully on their last date (harried dinner at the Indian take-out place on Sunset Boulevard, before he has to jet-set to Holland for a nature documentary the next morning), "we're both too busy to maintain this relationship."
Seunghyun pauses in the middle of cramming a samosa down his throat and sends him a discerning look. His hair's dyed turquoise for Warped, straggling fringe hanging in his face. It makes his skin look extra pale. "You want to take a break."
Jiyong scrunches his nose at the bit of potato that lands in his lap. Seunghyun picks it up and tucks it back in his mouth. "That's a way of putting it."
"Okay," Seunghyun says, and Jiyong blinks back his surprise. He'd expected to have to push for it more. Instead, he gets Seunghyun inhaling the rest of his food and the two of them splitting the bill. Going Dutch. The irony, Jiyong thinks, surveying the broad expanse of Seunghyun's back as they walk out, isn't lost on him in the least.
Sandara calls him when he's checking in at LAX the next morning. "You broke up?" she squawks shrilly, without preamble. "You're going to throw four years out the window just like that?"
"It's too early for your theatrics," Jiyong moans into the receiver. "Stop shouting."
She sighs. "Sometimes I feel like I'm more invested in the state of everyone's relationships than the people actually involved."
"It's what you get for treating everything like a fucking Lifetime movie." Jiyong switches his phone to the other ear and pulls his passport out for the irritated airline associate. "Speaking of which, how's the writing room?"
"Fine, keeping it together, these bozos we hired for the new season don't know what the fuck they're doing, same old," Dara rattles off. "Chaerin's dealing with last minute rewrites right now." Jiyong can hear her swivel chair squeaking through the line. Must've spent the whole night going over episode scripts. "I know what you're doing. Don't try to change the subject."
Jiyong lugs his suitcases onto the scale with a low grunt. "We're giving each other some space. That's all. I'm, you know, fine with it. He's got tour shit to deal with and I-" The associate sends him a withering glare as she shoves his boarding pass over the counter. Jiyong beams back with his most winning smile before hurrying off toward security. "I didn't think he'd agree so quickly but maybe he's been thinking about it, too-"
"Don't be stupid," Sandara interrupts with disdain. "You know he's never been able to refuse you anything. Not even this."
Something pangs briefly in Jiyong's chest. Dara, of course, would know. They'd all met-her, the two of them, Youngbae and Chaerin and Seungho and Bom and everyone else he still keeps in touch with-at USC, and spent four-odd years hanging around the city for college. Jiyong remembers Chaerin and Dara pouring over hastily-penned screenplays, Bom running craft services for every single one of their dumb undergraduate productions, Seunghyun fiddling with the sound design in the studio, overlaying everything with ambient music. Seunghyun with a Marlboro turning into ash between his fingers, staying up late with Jiyong as he cut and edited their shaky footage. Seunghyun curled up on the couch typing a paper out with two fingers, watching Jiyong storyboard every shot before they even thought about which cameras to use. Late night runs for samgyupsal and soju in K-Town, their wooden chopsticks clacking together when they reached for the same piece of meat. They'd been friends, first, for a long time, before they became more.
Funny. This is the most Jiyong's thought about him in months, and they technically aren't even dating anymore. Dara would probably say something sickening about it being a sign.
He shakes his head and scrapes a hand over his face, hefts his bag over his shoulder. "Hey, noona," he says, walking toward the checkpoint. "I gotta go." He hangs up before she can get another word in edgewise and spends the entire flight watching the way the sunlight hits the wing of the plane and scatters down into the clouds.
For a while, Jiyong bounces from hotel room to hotel room, lives off Marriott Hotel breakfast buffet catering and lukewarm coffee that tastes like someone pissed in it. He's in the Netherlands for three weeks for NatGeo's documentary and then he's off to Singapore to cover a royal wedding. He scrapes the bottom of his last suitcase in July, after three days in Sydney en route to New South Wales, where he's supposed to be working the main camera for a summer blockbuster film about robots with feelings. The last article of clothing he hasn't already worn is one he must've accidentally scooped off the floor of their bedroom half-asleep and shoved inside, one of those funky print blazers Seunghyun likes wearing so much. It's a little too big on Jiyong, the sleeves dragging against his second knuckles. When he shrugs it on, it smells just like him, like cigarettes and sandalwood.
They're filming in the forest the first week of August-a heartbreaking chase scene through the wet canopy-when the director's assistant starts giggling in between takes. A pair of koalas hang right in the middle of the shot when they watch the playback on the monitor. "Fix it," the director snaps, and someone calls someone else calls the relevant people to get rid of the animals without scaring them.
Jiyong snaps a surreptitious picture on his phone before the wildlife control people come, has the email composed and ready to send out before he remembers the only person who'd care is also the only person he shouldn't be talking to right now.
He deletes the draft and types out a throwaway text instead, something about marsupial appreciation. He deletes that, too, and slides his phone back into his pocket. Seunghyun never responds to texts, anyway-takes to modern technology about as well as he does to Youngbae's pointed suggestions that he quit smoking-so there's really no point.
Jiyong ends up sending it by snail mail, makes the thing into a semi-presentable postcard that he prints out on thick stock paper. He has no idea how long it takes for something to get from Australia to Los Angeles, or if Seunghyun will even be around to check the mail, but it's something.
He's in the air for most of his birthday, a ten-hour flight from Sydney to Shanghai. The slew of congratulatory texts and Facebook messages floods in when the plane lands and he turns his phone back on: come visit more often, you idiot from Dami, and hbd, cum back to seoul and do a shoot for w korea sometime from Hyuksoo, and ur so old hyung ^^ treat u to dinner when u get back? or mb u should treat me keke from Seungri.
Do you know when you'll be home? Gaho misses you. types Youngbae, which probably means Come collect your dogs, asshole, three's a crowd and you two should never have gotten them if you knew you would never be around.
Jiyong's first thought is a dry suck it up, and his second is that it's strange Seunghyun hasn't been by to see them. He doesn't even know where the hell Seunghyun is-Chicago, maybe, for the aftermath of Lollapalooza, or already on the way to Nevada for Burning Man-which was the whole issue, wasn't it?
talk to the missus abt it he shoots back. Youngbae sends him an annoyed frowning emoticon but stops pushing. The last minutes of the 18th tick by in China, and then he's twenty-six for real, another year older. Radio silence from Seunghyun. Jiyong'd expected as much. He'd never been the greatest at remembering dates.
Shanghai's muggy and humid all month. Jiyong spends most of his time doing editing work indoors, with the odd magazine shoot during the day and nights spent out on the Bund, when it's marginally cooler. He mails a miniature figurine of the Oriental Pearl Tower to Los Angeles the day after he visits.
There's a tiny sushi place falling off one of the curbs in the international consulate district. He gets eel and tuna rolls in two pretty little boxes. It should be good, but the sting of wasabi just reminds him of sharing fifty-one plates of sashimi in Osaka with Seunghyun when they'd gone on a tour of Asia the summer after graduation. Some of the others had been there with them, but they were the only ones who'd been willing to sneak out of the hotel to get sushi their last night in Japan.
He'd fumbled back into the cold lobby with an arm tossed carelessly over Seunghyun's shoulder, half-drunk off cheap sake and laughing so hard he thought he might throw up. He hadn't, though-far from it. Before he could slip back into his room Seunghyun'd pressed him up against the wall and slanted his mouth over Jiyong's, tongue warm and a little spicy from the wine and the food. And it'd been good. Really, really fucking good.
He falls asleep still thinking about it, and in the morning he wakes up with the worst food poisoning he's had in years. He retches into the toilet bowl before ordering Gatorade through room service and reaching for his phone.
Youngbae picks up on the third ring. "I'm so fucking sick," Jiyong says, laughing thickly around the bile in his throat.
"Why are you calling me?" Youngbae returns. "Do you know what time it is here?"
Jiyong does the math in his head. "Not even midnight, you old man."
"Some of us work nine to five."
"Who would've known you'd shape up after that terrible faux hip-hop dreadlock phase in college?"
"Low blow," Youngbae says, but he's chuckling over the line, and Jiyong feels his stomach unclench a little.
"How're the dogs?" he asks.
Youngbae pauses meaningfully. Then: "That's not what you really want to know."
"No," he agrees, too tired to argue, "but indulge me."
"Gaho's fine. Next door neighbor has a fluffy labradoodle that he loves to chase around."
"Attaboy."
"Charlie's good, too." Another pause. "Seunghyun dropped in last week for a quick visit."
"Oh," Jiyong says. He sits up on the hotel bed. His head swims. "Was he on his way somewhere else?"
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Youngbae snorts when Jiyong doesn't immediately respond. "You guys are both idiots. It's not like you have to give each other the cold shoulder just because you aren't romantically involved anymore."
"Easy for you to say," Jiyong croaks. Room service knocks on the door and he takes the offered six-pack of Gatorade, uncaps an orange bottle and takes a swig. "How long's it been since you got some, Youngbae?"
"So ungrateful," Youngbae sniffs. "Remind me never to give you advice again."
"All of it unsolicited," he points out. "Anyway, he's probably just busy. I'm busy, too. And I'm fine."
"Of course you are," Youngbae says doubtfully. "Listen, though-when will you be back?"
"Not sure," Jiyong hedges. "I have to wrap up things here, and then Hyuksoo wants me to swim the channel to Seoul."
"Oh? What for?"
"Freelance shit."
Youngbae hums. "Say hello to him for me."
"Sure." Jiyong chugs the rest of the Gatorade and tosses the empty bottle into the trash. "I'm gonna take some medicine and sleep this shit off. Uh, good talk."
"You should really talk to Seunghyun," Youngbae insists.
Jiyong rolls his eyes. He stops when his head starts spinning again. "What did I say about unsolicited advice?" He snaps his phone shut and lies down, fingers rubbing at his five o'clock shadow.
The truth is it isn't Youngbae's fault that he feels the need to try and fix things. Intellectually, Jiyong understands he's put everyone in their mutual friend circle in a bit of a tough spot, even if all the fallout's been relatively amicable. It's just that-the longer they go without speaking, the more awkward it feels to initiate anything, and Jiyong's never been very good at getting over himself. If Seunghyun wanted to talk, he thinks, he'd call.
Jiyong finally swings back stateside at the end of September after Seoul, spends several weeks city hopping on the eastern seaboard and giving guest lectures at film schools about Alfred Hitchcock's camerawork in Psycho. He visits Dami in New York City right before the cold snap in October, stays long enough to see sit in on some of Teddy's classes at NYU and also guilt-trip her into making him something home-cooked. After months of greasy fast food, her kimchi jjigae tastes like literal heaven.
Outside, on her apartment balcony at sundown his last night there, he shakes a cigarette out of the old, squashed pack he finds in one of the pockets of his MCM bag and sucks the tip of it into his mouth. The lighter he fishes out was a gag gift from Seunghyun, a middle finger butane torch he'd found in a specialty shop and given to Jiyong on his twenty-first birthday.
"You only bought this for me so you could borrow it yourself," he'd accused, eyebrows cocked high.
Seunghyun'd grinned at him, raising his hands in supplication. "Caught me."
Jiyong lights the Marlboro and coughs at the first drag. Smoking's usually the kind of thing he does when other people are around to pass the cigarette off to, a social exercise-but it feels right to toss the lighter from hand to hand and watch the smoke from the other end curl lazily in the air, floating up to blot the Manhattan skyline out just a little bit more.
Dami slips through the screen door and joins him at the railing around midnight. She refuses the cigarette, wrinkling her nose, but leans into his side anyway, chin propped up on her hands to stare at the moon. It's starting to get chilly at night, and she's got a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Jiyong picks at the loose threads littering the hem.
"Are you happy?" she asks abruptly, sending him a sideways glance. "You don't look happy."
"I'm fine." Which isn't, of course, the same thing. "I'm getting there," he amends, and it sounds thin and reedy even to him.
He does drop by the apartment in LA for one night before he has to fly back to Seoul again. It still smells like all the things a home should smell like: detergent, Febreze, a fine layer of dust gathered on the TV, the faint snap of stale dog food in the laundry room.
The bedroom looks exactly the way he left it. He dumps his wrinkled clothing out onto the carpet and fills it with stacks of winter wear, beanies and camel coats and long underwear. Seunghyun's side of the closet is its usual riotous mess. Against his better judgment, Jiyong snatches a couple of Seunghyun's violently colored hoodies off the floor and drops them into the Simpsons-print suitcase.
He falls asleep several hours before his flight, nose pressed into a pillow. If he breathes deep enough, he can pretend he smells Seunghyun's shampoo in the soft fabric. That night, he has a dream about the first time they'd tried having sex, Seunghyun's lips on his neck, teeth scraping down his chest. Jiyong was so enthusiastic about it that he'd gotten a charley horse in the middle of the blowjob, and Seunghyun laughed so hard he started crying a little, face turned into the skin of Jiyong's inner thigh as his shoulders shook. Least sexy thing in the world.
Still, he wakes up with a massive boner, one that he can't seem to get rid of until he jacks off in the shower. Embarrassing, especially with Seunghyun's shampoo and conditioner staring him accusingly in the face the entire time.
On his way out the building he passes the mailroom and debates checking for packages. To see if the shit from Australia and China's come in, he reasons, eyeing the keyhole.
In the end, he just leaves, trudging by the receptionist with his luggage in tow, heart pounding hollowly in his chest.
He gets sick again in between jobs in Korea, a bad case of pneumonia the first week of November after two nights out in drizzling rain shooting a Hyundai CF, the wind blowing right through him. He spends a day vegetating in Hyuksoo's guest bedroom before checking into a hospital at his alarmed insistence. "You work too hard," he says, perched cross-legged in a plastic chair when Jiyong wakes up with an IV drip in his arm, breath rough and shallow. "Stop treating yourself like shit."
"You sound like one of Daesung's self-help books," Jiyong grumbles. "Sorry not all of us want to live like ascetics."
"My body is a temple," Hyuksoo says solemnly, and Jiyong nearly hacks up a lung when he laughs.
A couple of hours after his fever breaks he starts scrolling through his online portfolio for something to do. It's in dire need of an update. He uploads a couple of stills from his latest projects before navigating to the gallery archive. There are photos and videos of his friends if he goes back far enough: Dongwook and Hanbyul's wedding, modeling shoots with Bom and Dara from when Chaerin thought she wanted to be a fashion designer, their graduation, Seunghyun at his first bar gig, spring break pictures he'd taken for them every year.
"You go to all these places and you don't even live them unless it's through a lens," Seunghyun told him once, and Jiyong'd retorted with something caustic about how Seunghyun wrote his entire life into his music, the same relationship story over and over again. Jiyong isn't sure if the tight pull in his chest is inexplicable fondness or just the pneumonia, but-fuck. There's something incredibly wrong with him if he's missing their stupid fights, too.
His fingers scrabble over his screen and he thumbs through his contacts till he gets to bingu. Jiyong's saved as uptight asshole in Seunghyun's phone-or he was, if Seunghyun hadn't changed it since.
He gets out of the hospital on Seunghyun's birthday, and goes to the touristy district of Itaewon to pick up a generic postcard of the city at night. happy 27th from the motherland, he scribbles onto the back. Postage costs a dollar and ten cents.
The house is empty when he returns at the beginning of December. He fires a text off to Youngbae (bring the dogs tmr, gonna be staying for a while) before passing out across the duvet in clothes he's been wearing for at least a week.
Gaho's delighted to see him. He's gotten fatter. "You're overfeeding my dog," he tells Youngbae, who makes a face and hands him Charlie's leash. "Cool it, bro."
"Beggars can't be choosers," he returns, but ends up staying around to help Jiyong unpack and clean the house anyway, because Youngbae has always been that friend.
Later that night, Jiyong goes out for groceries before the Trader Joe's closes and restocks the fridge with actual food: milk and eggs and the creamy Toscano that Seunghyun likes (and Jiyong likes by association). Afterwards, he curls up on the couch in front of the TV and pops chocolate-covered espresso beans until he dozes off to the low rumble of late-night telemarketers peddling their wares.
Seunghyun reappears in the morning, and at first Jiyong thinks he might be seeing things. But-no, those are Seunghyun's beat-up Chucks in the doorway. His favorite garish jacket hangs over the chair in the dining room, a sight for sore eyes, and for the first time in almost half a year Jiyong can smell the sandalwood cologne Seunghyun always uses saturating the air.
There's someone moving around in the kitchen. Jiyong sits up. The blanket that wasn't there the night before slides off his shoulders. He's rubbing the crick from his neck when Seunghyun shuffles out with a plate piled high with gooey eggs. He sees Jiyong and smiles a little sheepishly and Jiyong's throat clenches as he drinks him in: the familiar cut of his jaw, the column of his neck, the scar over his left eye, the way his lashes cast shadows across his cheekbones. His hair's auburn, now. It looks good on him-but then, annoyingly, most things tend to. Jiyong's palms itch.
"Welcome back," Seunghyun says, putting the food down on the table, and Jiyong swallows hard at the sound of his voice. His stomach gives a little swoop. "I've been staying at Hyeyoon's for a couple of days. Youngbae told me you got in two days ago."
Jiyong unfolds himself from the couch and stands, swaying on his feet. Seunghyun's gaze sweeps over him, going dark with intent as the silence stretches on. "Oh," Jiyong says at last, the corner of his mouth turning down. "Good. Not that you were living with her, I mean-I just thought maybe I'd dreamed you here." He wrings his hands helplessly for a moment-and then Seunghyun's crossing the distance between them in three easy strides and pressing the long line of his body against Jiyong's, tongue sliding between his lips.
Jiyong's mouth is sour with the aftertaste of last night's dark chocolate but Seunghyun doesn't seem to care. His teeth scrape against Jiyong's bottom lip and Jiyong whines, already half-hard in his pants.
He pulls back reluctantly, bringing his hand up to block Seunghyun's face when he tries to inch forward. "Wait, wait," he pants, fingers brushing down Seunghyun's sweater. "I have to apologize." Seunghyun opens his mouth to interject and Jiyong shakes his head so vehemently that he shuts it again, skin between his brows pinching. "Look, I'm-I thought. I thought there was something wrong with us because-I don't know where you are half the time, and it's a good month when we get to see each other more than twice, and I didn't even feel bad about it." He scrubs a hand over his face. "I didn't feel bad about it until I decided we needed a break."
"I know." Seunghyun's thumbs rub smooth circles into Jiyong's hipbones.
"But maybe," he plows on, eyes sliding shut, "maybe we don't have to see each other all the fucking time to make it work. Maybe me not feeling bad about not knowing where you were meant that I was okay with it and not that I didn't feel anything for you at all. Because I do, you know? I feel a lot of things."
"I know, Jiyong," he repeats, and he's laughing when Jiyong opens his eyes again. "Missed you, too."
Jiyong blinks, surveying his face. "You aren't mad?"
Seunghyun shrugs. "Sure, I'm mad. Or I was. But I don't let that kind of thing consume me like you do."
Jiyong's mouth twitches.
"You always get stuck on things that don't even matter. I'm used to it."
"What a sweet talker."
"You want sweet?" Seunghyun asks, cocking his head. "I missed you. I missed your stupid international texts at three in the morning and watching you fiddle with your cameras on the floor of the living room for hours. Even missed your passive aggressive criticism. I was playing a set at Paradiso days after you left and all I could think about was the road trip we took up there the summer after junior year, putting miles on Daesung's old Mazda. I stayed at Hyeyoon's because it felt weird being here and not knowing if you'd be back." He exhales, smiling a little. "Maybe all the time you spend away makes the times I do see you even better."
Jiyong rears back at that last bit and mimes gagging. "So fucking cheesy. You're sure you write lyrics for a living?"
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he quips, fingers digging into Jiyong's hips. "Sextus Propertius, bitch. Shit is classic." He pauses, and a slow grin spreads over his face. "Can we go back to kissing, now? That was good."
"One track mind, huh," Jiyong says drily, but he doesn't protest when Seunghyun bumps their noses together on the way back down.
They meander downstairs in the afternoon and lug the last five months of mail from the front desk back to the apartment. "I didn't forget your birthday, by the way," Seunghyun says. "I didn't think you'd want to hear from me so soon, or I would've called." Jiyong raises his eyebrows. Seunghyun plucks a package out of the stack and hands it to him. "From Chicago," he grunts, and when Jiyong opens it there's a tiny camera lighter nestled in the bubble wrap. "Saw it at Lollapalooza and thought of you."
Jiyong finds the postcards and the package from Shanghai amidst all the bank statements and phone bills and thrusts them in Seunghyun's lap. The glass figurine of the Oriental Pearl Tower didn't survive the trip overseas, but Seunghyun looks pleased as punch anyway.
"Nothing a little superglue won't fix." He rummages around for another package, tosses it in Jiyong's lap. "Picked this one up at Burning Man," he explains, when Jiyong comes up with a fire extinguisher lighter. Typical. "We should go together next year, if you're around."
Jiyong drapes a hand over his eyes and laughs, flicking the thumbwheel. The flame burns hot against his fingers.
"What?"
"Nothing," he says. He shakes his head and lets the fire go out, sucks his thumb between his lips to cool the aching skin. "I'm-relieved? We're really stupid."
"Nah," says Seunghyun with a careless toss of his head. "I prefer to think we're just a little more thorough than most." He grins. Jiyong rolls his eyes. When Seunghyun leans over to kiss him, he lifts his mouth to meet it.
Poll Round 21: Heart like a canvas