so happy i could die [ fic ]
happy together, part 1
gd/top | r, 4229 words, canon
imagine me and you, i do.
(I can't see me loving nobody but you for all my life)
Jiyong tells him he's in love with him for the second time exactly six minutes before New Year's, six seconds before they're due for their encore.
"No you don't," says Seunghyun automatically, and then they're back on stage and Jiyong is saying "love is pain," into a microphone, which sounds about right. Lies is easy, familiar; it's timed to a fault and almost an art form, and they make it backstage again to celebrate with college party cups full of Dom Perignon with twenty extra seconds to spare. Teddy has turned the television to the station broadcasting the countdown. Jiyong corners Seunghyun by the sink in the back.
"I'm so sorry but I love you," he half-sings, eyes crazy with left-over adrenalin and one arm out of his t-shirt. Seunghyun shoves champagne at his face.
"Fourteen," screams Seungri as he pushes past them with an armful of party poppers. "Thirteen! Twelve!"
Jiyong downs the whole cup and wipes at his mouth, undeterred. "I can keep singing if you want."
"Is this just so you'll have somebody to kiss in six seconds?"
"No," Jiyong says.
"FIVE! FOUR! THREE!" The entire room is thundering loud - as even Hyunsuk, and Master Hwang, and the security guards join in the chanting - "TWO! ONE--"
On "HAPPY-NEW-YEAR," Seunghyun tries feigning to the right, but Jiyong knows him almost as well as Lies and goes left in time to catch and press him against the wall.
"Don't." At the last second he slows, like he's suddenly a bit shy - Seunghyun watches Jiyong's eyelids flicker before he then resolutely tightens his grip on Seunghyun's arm and closes the last millimeters of distance between them. He tastes like champagne and sweat and smeared lip gloss, and he combs careful fingers through Seunghyun's hair. When he trips over his own feet trying to get closer he starts laughing against Seunghyun's mouth and almost accidentally knees him in the crotch.
"Can you learn how to handle your alcohol now?" Seunghyun says sourly, but he gets a faceful of smile before Jiyong buries his head in Seunghyun's neck, the ha-ha-ha's now vibrating against Seunghyun's throat.
"I love you more, more," he says after he's calmed down. Seunghyun rolls his eyes. Jiyong starts laughing all over again.
Jiyong tells him to get out of the car forty minutes outside Tokyo.
Seunghyun is two-thirds asleep with an outdated road map crumpled in his lap and his forehead pressed against the window. It doesn't register in his head until Jiyong pulls off the road onto gravel and starts losing speed. "Wait, are you - what? Here?"
To his left is a yellow field with a few bales of hay and a red Coke can stuck in the ground, shadows of what are maybe houses, or barns, or fucking vortexes for all he knows, in the distance. To his right are Jiyong's knuckles on the steering wheel, sharp and white.
"Seriously? Can we just--"
"No." Jiyong keeps his eyes on the road, five-hundred-dollar Persols over his eyes even though the sky has been overcast all day. "I can't, fucking can't right now, and you just--"
"What the hell am I supposed to do here, walk?"
"--need to get out of the car." He hits the brakes too hard, and they both lurch forward; the map tumbles off Seunghyun's legs and onto the mat.
For a moment neither of them move, the only sounds the idling engine and the static-y between-cities radio reception of an upbeat pop song. Outside, the fog is starting to curl towards them, and Seunghyun doesn't do well with no road signs; he'll end up spiraling in circles.
"Jiyong." No answer - but when he tries to touch Jiyong he snaps back, shoves him away like he's scared.
Seunghyun wipes a hand over his face and tries to be the Hyung. "Our apartment is, like, half an hour away."
Jiyong doesn't even look at him.
Seunghyun gets out of the car. Barely counts to to three before it's engulfed by the fog.
It takes Jaejoong two hours to find him. By the time he pulls up, day has melted into evening and Seunghyun's fingers are about to fall off from the cold.
"Look, you're going to have to be a little more descriptive than 'I'm by a haystack and probably a barn' next time." Jaejoong is wearing his glasses, and the hair that is usually styled over his eyes is in a top-bun. He aims the heating vents at Seunghyun's face and presses 'return journey' on the GPS. "And you're out in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere because..."
"We haven't broken up in the country yet," Seunghyun mutters. "Thought it'd be fun."
"Loads of fun," Jaejoong agrees, squinting at the six feet in front of him that he can see. "For future reference, can you tell Jiyong to start ditching you right outside my lobby? I don't like being your hero anymore."
"Yea," Seunghyun mumbles as they merge onto a highway he might actually recognize, "I don't know. Don't think I want to do this anymore."
Jaejoong decides to keep his mouth shut. He turns up the speakers instead, and Seunghyun nods off listening to him singing along to SS501, warm air fanning his face. When he next opens his eyes, they're at Jaejoong's apartment complex (sorry, Jaejoong says, I don't remember which street you live on) and Seunghyun decides to stay.
He thinks about it later, in the darkness of Jaejoong's spare room and freshly laundered sheets, and can't remember how they got here. He can't ever really remember, whether it's because the good things are big enough to blot out the bad things, or if it's just because everything is so jumbled together - the good and the bad and the in-between and the separations - that it's impossible to pull any one thread out of the fray.
They fought in the car because Jiyong got them lost. And then Seunghyun couldn't read the map and Jiyong wouldn't ask for directions and Seunghyun fell asleep instead of doing it for him. They were in the car because... because Jiyong wanted to go to Chiba to see the sun over the coastline. Because there had been a tune, or a poem, or - something, some stupid written thing that Seunghyun translated for their tutor last week that said something about the beach in Chiba and made it sound disgusting and over-the-top and incredibly Jiyong. Seunghyun didn't care. The sun was the sun, they had oceans in Korea, and the only Japanese he was okay with in public was "please," "how much," and "bathroom," but he made a playlist for the road all the same. After three hours of being lost and looping through it four times, they were both sick of the songs.
Before that, Seunghyun had made Jiyong laugh at the rest stop. Jiyong wove their fingers together from the stretch of road between Ichikawa and Funabashi, when they were still sure they were en route. The night before that, Jiyong had crawled into his bed. They'd laid kissing for a long time and then Jiyong had curled into him and slid his hand underneath Seunghyun's shirt, cold fingers stinging his belly like a reminder that he was there. Before that they hadn't talked for a week.
Why? Seunghyun doesn't remember.
They'd veered off course somewhere outside Yachiyo. Jiyong took his hand away to drive. Seunghyun pulled out the map and said I think you were supposed to turn right at the last exit. Jiyong said you don't even know the characters for Chiba, let me concentrate where is a fucking gas station my meter is low. He tried calling Youngbae but there was no reception. Seunghyun fell asleep.
It always ends with Seunghyun falling asleep.
It's raining the next morning. It takes Seunghyun longer than usual to wake up, twice as long to wash his face and stuff himself back in yesterday's clothes. Twice as long to open the door and see Jiyong sitting against the wall right outside his room.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi."
There's an open pack of cigarettes next to Jiyong's feet, haggard lines on his face. He looks like he hasn't slept much. "Jaejoong-hyung told me you were here."
"Yea."
Jiyong nods, chews on his lip, smoothes out invisible wrinkles on his khaki pants, then his mismatched jacket, then his (or is it Seunghyun's) shirt. "We were worried."
Seunghyun sighs. He's tired. "Jiyong--"
"Why didn't," Jiyong interrupts, "Why didn't you call me?" He has trouble meeting Seunghyun's eyes, and talks instead into his lap. "I kept thinking you would call. But you didn't."
"You didn't, either."
Jiyong's hands twist inside his jacket pockets. It is quiet for a long moment. The rain turns into television static, downpour bouncing off the apartment's large windows like a drumbeat and casting distorted shadows that pockmark their faces.
"I know you don't want to see me," Jiyong says - and maybe it's half-true, Seunghyun still has one hand on the doorknob and is thinking about rolling back into bed and sleeping until dinner - but Jiyong, when he says "hyung" a second later and reaches for him, Seunghyun drops down next to him on the hardwood floor. Jiyong pauses before scooting closer to carefully lean against him, red hair tickling his cheek. Seunghyun remembers sitting with him at the salon when he picked the color, remembers calling him Hamtaro all night and slowly combing his fingers through the red strands in the cab home. Sleeping is never an option.
"Have you been here long?" Seunghyun eventually says. Jiyong shrugs, his shoulder knocking into Seunghyun's back.
"No. I don't know. It's okay."
Seunghyun shifts a little, uncomfortable on the hardwood floor. "Jaejoong-hyung has couches."
"Uh-huh."
"You could've sat on them."
"I didn't want to fall asleep." Jiyong rubs his eyes, irony in the way he yawns halfway through his sentence. "And I was trying to make a gesture."
Despite everything, Seunghyun feels a surge of ridiculous affection at Jiyong's inability to ever apologize straight. "Is that how it works?"
"Yes." A second passes by before Jiyong adds, "Also Jaejoong's creepy cat lives out there and it kept staring at me."
Seunghyun chuckles. Some of the knotted tension in Jiyong's body immediately eases, and one of his hands flies up over his eyes like he's embarrassed - though really, it's for Seunghyun's benefit.
They leave a little later because they have schedules today. Seunghyun steals an umbrella from Jaejoong's hall closet before following Jiyong out of the apartment building and into the rain, Jiyong turning his collar up for him before they run to the rental car across the street.
By the time they shut the doors and Jiyong turns on the ignition, it has started to sleet. "I hate this weather," Jiyong says. "I hate this car."
Seunghyun snorts. "You're mad no one recognizes you in a Nissan."
"Up yours," Jiyong says, but he sounds amused, relieved that they're back here again.
They meet the others in the lobby two minutes late for the van to take them to their radio show/talk show/whatever. The other three look relatively unsurprised when Seunghyun climbs into the car, even moreso when Jiyong follows him in and sits next to him in the back. The Boy who Cried Wolf, said Daesung once, when Seunghyun came back after a week-long absence and nobody even looked up from their dinners.
Show, tutoring, rehearsal, music station, tutoring, sleep. The rest of the week falls neatly between the lines of their written-out schedule, and Jiyong stays near to him for most of it. By the time they pack up for Korea, Seunghyun hasn't added any Japanese to his vocabulary except a list of sex words that Jiyong tears out of Youngbae's hand dictionary one night and passes to Seunghyun like illicit drugs.
"Funny, I don't think I'll ever use this," Seunghyun says. Jiyong is too busy snickering over the slang for "someone with frequent erections" (binbin daze) to hear him, so Seunghyun pulls Jiyong's vocabulary notebook towards him and copies "fellatio" into the blank squares twenty times before moving onto "tit-fuck." I like to tit-fuck. You like to tit-fuck. He/she likes to tit-fuck. Jiyong keeps rolling away from him on his bed to laugh and rolling back to comment on his terrible handwriting.
"Why're you being so loud?" Seungri whines, poking his head into Jiyong's room. "It's three in the morning."
Seunghyun looks up from carving we like to tit-fuck into Jiyong's arm with a marker.
"Binbin daze?" Jiyong says, and points to Seungri. Seunghyun stares at him for a moment before - he can't help it - he starts to laugh.
"What? What did you say? What's that mean?" Seungri says. "What?"
Jiyong knocks Seunghyun in the hip and rolls closer, hands in Seunghyun's hoodie and his own laugh muffled against Seunghyun's ribcage, and then Seungri is giving up and stomping out of Jiyong's room as they laugh, laugh, laugh harder. Seunghyun knows Jiyong does it on purpose, this, trying too hard to make Seunghyun laugh after they fight - as if it can smooth over the ridges Jiyong can't otherwise fix.
Maybe it will. Jiyong has tit-fuck imprinted backwards on his cheek the next morning and after sniggering for fifteen minutes straight, Seunghyun helps him scrub it off over the bathroom sink. Jiyong's smile is wide and bright against the sunlight streaming in from the windows; Seunghyun has trouble seeing anything else. (So maybe it will.)
Another time, another fight. Why can't you ever just tell me what's wrong, says Jiyong, I'm not a mind reader. Nothing's wrong, says Seunghyun, and heads for the door. Stop saying that. I'm not a little kid. Don't just fucking go again. Don't go.
They all start to sound the same after a while, except this time Seunghyun leaves for his movie and Jiyong finds somebody else to be with.
He has weird hair, shaved on one side, and broad shoulders, like he's competing with Youngbae. This is according to Daesung, through text messages and random fifteen minute phone calls that Seunghyun can spare between shooting schedules and press conferences.
It's good to keep busy. Seunghyun has no time to think. Sangwoo and Seungwon sometimes ask him if he's feeling all right, but Seunghyun chalks it up to exhaustion, the movie, post traumatic stress disorder. Too many bombs on the staged war field. He cracks a few jokes and they leave him alone.
"He seems nice," says Dongwook.
Information trickles into his phone when Seunghyun is in places with reception. He's tall, he takes Jiyong to weird underground raves, he shows up on obscure style section blogs and supposedly helped out with the detailing in this year's Prabal Gurung pre-fall collection. He studied abroad in Turkey and can tie cherry stems in knots with his tongue (you know what that means). He possibly makes Jiyong a little bit happy.
"He's not you," says Youngbae.
Seunghyun stops checking his phone. The director commends him on his dedication.
Last of all is the Seoul premiere. Seunghyun ducks out as soon as the credits stop rolling and hails a cab back to his apartment, legs unsteady at the sudden appearance of the lights. It seems strange, here at home again with his dog-eared script tucked away in a box and nothing on the agenda for tomorrow. He's still in his designer party clothes when the buzzer rings.
Jiyong's hair is messy, and he's dressed in plain clothes too short to be Seunghyun's, too loose to be his own. They stare at each other for a second before Jiyong breaks the silence. "You weren't there," he says, and gestures vaguely behind him. "At the after party, I mean."
"...I was kind of tired." Seunghyun says. "Do you wanna come inside?"
Jiyong shakes his head. "No, I just, I just wanted to see if you were... so are you, like, back now? Everything's done?"
Not really; YG's told him to rest for a few weeks, but Seunghyun's going stir crazy after two minutes and has already made plans to meet with a list of directors he wants to work with. "Pretty much."
Jiyong smiles briefly. He takes a step forward into the light spilling out to the corridor from Seunghyun's apartment, and when he meets his eye Seunghyun sees how red they are. "So you liked the movie?"
"Oh," says Jiyong, and looks like he's been caught off-guard for a second, blinking a few times. "Yea, um, it was really great, the part with--" and then he glimpses of Seunghyun's expression and looks affronted. "Oh, fuck you, I wasn't - Seungri just kept, like, slapping me every time he choked up, and Bom was crying herself blind right behind me, and like--"
"Some of it got in your eye?"
Jiyong dissolves into laughter in the middle of describing Youngbae hiding behind his sunglasses. "Whatever. It wasn't anything you did, anyway."
"Of course," Seunghyun agrees. "All for Sangwoo-hyung, right?"
Jiyong's phone buzzes before he can answer. His fingers fumble to pull it out from his back pocket, and he stares down at it for a second, something familiar and simultaneously strange flickering across his face before he presses the silencer and puts it away again. Seunghyun clears his throat. "Is that..."
"Yea."
Yea. Seunghyun drops his arms, feeling awkward as he keeps his face pleasant. "I'm glad things worked out for you."
Jiyong stares at him - and in an instant, his expression changes, sours. "No you're not," he says.
"What?"
"You're not glad." Jiyong comes forward, steps over the threshold so he's standing on Seunghyun's welcome mat. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're not glad."
"Ji--" Seunghyun says, but Jiyong cuts him off.
"You're not fucking glad!" He pushes him back so he knocks against the doorknob before he roughly grabs his arms, face inches away and furious.
"Jiyong--"
"Just shut the fuck up, Seunghyun! You don't think I know how you kept asking people about me? How you kept tabs on me even when you were all the way in fucking Mongolia? What, you don't think people talk? They're my friends too, remember?" His voice reverberates around the concrete of the hall, sounding louder, angrier, and he shakes Seunghyun hard, door rattling in the frame with the effort.
Seunghyun tries shrugging him off but Jiyong only tightens his grip, breath hot against Seunghyun's face, cheeks flushed.
"You wanna know what I know about you? Huh? I mean besides the fact that you're still a shitty liar."
"Get off me."
"I know you're not glad." Jiyong's fingernails dig into his arms. "You're not glad things worked out for me - you wish I were as fucking miserable as you are so I'd just follow you inside and let you fuck me and then we could go back to that fucking trainwreck of a relationship!"
Seunghyun averts his eyes. "Stop it."
Jiyong crashes his lips into Seunghyun's, kisses him harsh and violent till their teeth scrape together and his tongue is in his mouth. His hands scrabble at Seunghyun's back, and he uses it to grind his hips up and into Seunghyun's, again when it makes Seunghyun's breath catch in his throat, again, again. Seunghyun's ears are ringing, he can't think. Everything in his brain is turned off, pinnacled to Jiyong pressed against him and how he's already half-hard inside his clothes, how much he wants it.
"Fuck--" Jiyong slides a hand around to Seunghyun's stomach, down between his legs to rub him through the stiff material of his suit. He mouths wetly at Seunghyun's neck, nips his ear, perfect in the way he just fits against him - and then Seunghyun smells somebody else on Jiyong's skin. He jerks back and pushes Jiyong off him, hard, till Jiyong stumbles backwards and collides with the railing.
There's white-hot pain at his bottom lip; when Seunghyun wipes at it with a finger, it comes away smeared with blood. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Jiyong doesn't answer. He's shaking, his eyes hooded and seemingly disoriented as he hunches over, panting.
After a second he turns around and leaves - or Seunghyun closes the door first - and either way, it's over.
Jiyong tells Seunghyun he's in love with him for the first time right before the last take of the Haru Haru video shoot.
"What?" Seunghyun says, "you what?" They're sitting on the floor of a hospital and it's three in the morning, fourteen hours into their day, so he thinks that he can't possibly have heard him right, except then Jiyong says it again.
"I think I have been for, like, a really long fucking time now," he continues, "but I just thought it was like, you know, you were my hyung, and you were really cool. So idol worship or whatever. But it's not." His eyes look too clear behind the smudged makeup on his face, even though his cheeks are red and he's fidgeting, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs so he doesn't have to look Seunghyun in the face. "Is that weird?"
Seunghyun wonders what in the fuck to say, but the director tells them to line up for the shot again and then he doesn't have to. The last shot turns into another shot, then another, until Daesung falls asleep sprawled on a row of plastic chairs and Seungri is asking Youngbae under his breath why Seunghyun keeps messing up.
Jiyong manages to keep quiet in the ride back home, but as soon as they make it inside and kick their shoes off, he pulls Seunghyun into his room and shuts the door. "Hyung," he says, and he starts in all over again, all the reasons and the small details until Seunghyun cuts him off.
"You can't be," he says. "Not with me. That's--"
"Insane, fucking insane, I know, okay?" Jiyong says, and he grabs Seunghyun's wrist, the touch timid and quiet, like he's conscious of overstepping his boundaries. "But, hyung, can you just think about it for a second? Because it could be kind of great, at least I think so, and I can't stop thinking about you, and--"
"Are you shitting me?" Seunghyun says. A misplaced, terribly unkind laugh flies from his throat and Jiyong blinks, looking a little deflated. "I don't even - look," he says, and tries to get his bearings. "Why do you even think you like me? Or - yea, whatever."
Jiyong pauses. "I don't - I don't think I like you. Jesus, hyung, I'm not a little kid." When Seunghyun doesn't answer, Jiyong tries to laugh, his fingers slipping away and into his pockets. "I... okay, I have to have a list of reasons now? I don't--"
"Don't, then." Seunghyun says. "You're wrong." Except Jiyong's hair is in his eyes and Seunghyun is suddenly remembering how he kept knocking Jiyong's hat off during the fight scene earlier in the day, and how every time he helped Jiyong put it back on, he'd comb his hair back and his fingers would graze Jiyong's cheek and Jiyong would smile, almost giddy.
"If you would just let me--"
"No." Seunghyun says, and his voice sounds panicked, even to him. "Stop. Just stop."
The silence that follows is long, broken by sounds of Daesung saying goodnight to Youngbae outside.
Seunghyun eventually pushes past Jiyong and leaves the room. But it's a catalyst, and once something like this has been set in motion, Seunghyun knows that it never really stops.
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
Nothing for twelve days, except his lip eventually stops bleeding and scabs over. He hears Jiyong working in Kush's studio, hears him laugh sometimes and echoes of his voice from inside the booth, but he stays four doors down, keeps his eyes trained on a notebook until he doesn't know what he's writing anymore and Teddy tells him to go home.
It's five thirty-two in the morning on a Wednesday when his phone rings. Seunghyun gropes around on his night stand for it, squints at the light-up display till goes silent and he drops his head back down on his pillow, shutting his eyes.
It starts to ring again. Jiyong, jiyong, kwon jiyong.
"Hello?"
"Hyung," Jiyong says - and maybe it's the exhaustion transparent in his voice when he usually knows exactly how to hide it, maybe how he's heard Jiyong's been drinking Red Bulls and vodka and coffee instead of going to bed and maybe it's none of it, maybe it's just that it's Jiyong. It is five thirty-seven in the morning and Seunghyun is wide awake.
"You okay?"
"Yea, I'm okay," Jiyong says. Something sounds in the background - an intercom, somebody yelling - and Jiyong laughs, but it comes out sounding more like a cough. "It's, stupid, I know it's really early but they made me go to the hospital and now they're, now I have to leave and I - just." Seunghyun hears his breath hit the phone, coming out as static through the line. "Can you... come pick me up?"
"...What about your boyfriend?"
"He's, we're..." he hears. A pause - when Jiyong speaks again, there's disappointment riding on the fatigue in his voice. "Nevermind. Go back to sleep." He hangs up.
Seunghyun is wide awake.
to be continued
notes: heavily inspired by the amazing cantonese movie of the same title. the title, summary, and beginning quote in parenthesis are also taken from "happy together" by the turtles. alskdjf this wasn't supposed to be this long. whetstone is a bully and also the best beta as always, and without her i definitely would not have accomplished this. i'm sorry my behavior as far as posting fic here is so erratic. hopefully i will become more consistent. ♥
gd/top | r, 4229 words, canon
imagine me and you, i do.
(I can't see me loving nobody but you for all my life)
Jiyong tells him he's in love with him for the second time exactly six minutes before New Year's, six seconds before they're due for their encore.
"No you don't," says Seunghyun automatically, and then they're back on stage and Jiyong is saying "love is pain," into a microphone, which sounds about right. Lies is easy, familiar; it's timed to a fault and almost an art form, and they make it backstage again to celebrate with college party cups full of Dom Perignon with twenty extra seconds to spare. Teddy has turned the television to the station broadcasting the countdown. Jiyong corners Seunghyun by the sink in the back.
"I'm so sorry but I love you," he half-sings, eyes crazy with left-over adrenalin and one arm out of his t-shirt. Seunghyun shoves champagne at his face.
"Fourteen," screams Seungri as he pushes past them with an armful of party poppers. "Thirteen! Twelve!"
Jiyong downs the whole cup and wipes at his mouth, undeterred. "I can keep singing if you want."
"Is this just so you'll have somebody to kiss in six seconds?"
"No," Jiyong says.
"FIVE! FOUR! THREE!" The entire room is thundering loud - as even Hyunsuk, and Master Hwang, and the security guards join in the chanting - "TWO! ONE--"
On "HAPPY-NEW-YEAR," Seunghyun tries feigning to the right, but Jiyong knows him almost as well as Lies and goes left in time to catch and press him against the wall.
"Don't." At the last second he slows, like he's suddenly a bit shy - Seunghyun watches Jiyong's eyelids flicker before he then resolutely tightens his grip on Seunghyun's arm and closes the last millimeters of distance between them. He tastes like champagne and sweat and smeared lip gloss, and he combs careful fingers through Seunghyun's hair. When he trips over his own feet trying to get closer he starts laughing against Seunghyun's mouth and almost accidentally knees him in the crotch.
"Can you learn how to handle your alcohol now?" Seunghyun says sourly, but he gets a faceful of smile before Jiyong buries his head in Seunghyun's neck, the ha-ha-ha's now vibrating against Seunghyun's throat.
"I love you more, more," he says after he's calmed down. Seunghyun rolls his eyes. Jiyong starts laughing all over again.
Jiyong tells him to get out of the car forty minutes outside Tokyo.
Seunghyun is two-thirds asleep with an outdated road map crumpled in his lap and his forehead pressed against the window. It doesn't register in his head until Jiyong pulls off the road onto gravel and starts losing speed. "Wait, are you - what? Here?"
To his left is a yellow field with a few bales of hay and a red Coke can stuck in the ground, shadows of what are maybe houses, or barns, or fucking vortexes for all he knows, in the distance. To his right are Jiyong's knuckles on the steering wheel, sharp and white.
"Seriously? Can we just--"
"No." Jiyong keeps his eyes on the road, five-hundred-dollar Persols over his eyes even though the sky has been overcast all day. "I can't, fucking can't right now, and you just--"
"What the hell am I supposed to do here, walk?"
"--need to get out of the car." He hits the brakes too hard, and they both lurch forward; the map tumbles off Seunghyun's legs and onto the mat.
For a moment neither of them move, the only sounds the idling engine and the static-y between-cities radio reception of an upbeat pop song. Outside, the fog is starting to curl towards them, and Seunghyun doesn't do well with no road signs; he'll end up spiraling in circles.
"Jiyong." No answer - but when he tries to touch Jiyong he snaps back, shoves him away like he's scared.
Seunghyun wipes a hand over his face and tries to be the Hyung. "Our apartment is, like, half an hour away."
Jiyong doesn't even look at him.
Seunghyun gets out of the car. Barely counts to to three before it's engulfed by the fog.
It takes Jaejoong two hours to find him. By the time he pulls up, day has melted into evening and Seunghyun's fingers are about to fall off from the cold.
"Look, you're going to have to be a little more descriptive than 'I'm by a haystack and probably a barn' next time." Jaejoong is wearing his glasses, and the hair that is usually styled over his eyes is in a top-bun. He aims the heating vents at Seunghyun's face and presses 'return journey' on the GPS. "And you're out in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere because..."
"We haven't broken up in the country yet," Seunghyun mutters. "Thought it'd be fun."
"Loads of fun," Jaejoong agrees, squinting at the six feet in front of him that he can see. "For future reference, can you tell Jiyong to start ditching you right outside my lobby? I don't like being your hero anymore."
"Yea," Seunghyun mumbles as they merge onto a highway he might actually recognize, "I don't know. Don't think I want to do this anymore."
Jaejoong decides to keep his mouth shut. He turns up the speakers instead, and Seunghyun nods off listening to him singing along to SS501, warm air fanning his face. When he next opens his eyes, they're at Jaejoong's apartment complex (sorry, Jaejoong says, I don't remember which street you live on) and Seunghyun decides to stay.
He thinks about it later, in the darkness of Jaejoong's spare room and freshly laundered sheets, and can't remember how they got here. He can't ever really remember, whether it's because the good things are big enough to blot out the bad things, or if it's just because everything is so jumbled together - the good and the bad and the in-between and the separations - that it's impossible to pull any one thread out of the fray.
They fought in the car because Jiyong got them lost. And then Seunghyun couldn't read the map and Jiyong wouldn't ask for directions and Seunghyun fell asleep instead of doing it for him. They were in the car because... because Jiyong wanted to go to Chiba to see the sun over the coastline. Because there had been a tune, or a poem, or - something, some stupid written thing that Seunghyun translated for their tutor last week that said something about the beach in Chiba and made it sound disgusting and over-the-top and incredibly Jiyong. Seunghyun didn't care. The sun was the sun, they had oceans in Korea, and the only Japanese he was okay with in public was "please," "how much," and "bathroom," but he made a playlist for the road all the same. After three hours of being lost and looping through it four times, they were both sick of the songs.
Before that, Seunghyun had made Jiyong laugh at the rest stop. Jiyong wove their fingers together from the stretch of road between Ichikawa and Funabashi, when they were still sure they were en route. The night before that, Jiyong had crawled into his bed. They'd laid kissing for a long time and then Jiyong had curled into him and slid his hand underneath Seunghyun's shirt, cold fingers stinging his belly like a reminder that he was there. Before that they hadn't talked for a week.
Why? Seunghyun doesn't remember.
They'd veered off course somewhere outside Yachiyo. Jiyong took his hand away to drive. Seunghyun pulled out the map and said I think you were supposed to turn right at the last exit. Jiyong said you don't even know the characters for Chiba, let me concentrate where is a fucking gas station my meter is low. He tried calling Youngbae but there was no reception. Seunghyun fell asleep.
It always ends with Seunghyun falling asleep.
It's raining the next morning. It takes Seunghyun longer than usual to wake up, twice as long to wash his face and stuff himself back in yesterday's clothes. Twice as long to open the door and see Jiyong sitting against the wall right outside his room.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi."
There's an open pack of cigarettes next to Jiyong's feet, haggard lines on his face. He looks like he hasn't slept much. "Jaejoong-hyung told me you were here."
"Yea."
Jiyong nods, chews on his lip, smoothes out invisible wrinkles on his khaki pants, then his mismatched jacket, then his (or is it Seunghyun's) shirt. "We were worried."
Seunghyun sighs. He's tired. "Jiyong--"
"Why didn't," Jiyong interrupts, "Why didn't you call me?" He has trouble meeting Seunghyun's eyes, and talks instead into his lap. "I kept thinking you would call. But you didn't."
"You didn't, either."
Jiyong's hands twist inside his jacket pockets. It is quiet for a long moment. The rain turns into television static, downpour bouncing off the apartment's large windows like a drumbeat and casting distorted shadows that pockmark their faces.
"I know you don't want to see me," Jiyong says - and maybe it's half-true, Seunghyun still has one hand on the doorknob and is thinking about rolling back into bed and sleeping until dinner - but Jiyong, when he says "hyung" a second later and reaches for him, Seunghyun drops down next to him on the hardwood floor. Jiyong pauses before scooting closer to carefully lean against him, red hair tickling his cheek. Seunghyun remembers sitting with him at the salon when he picked the color, remembers calling him Hamtaro all night and slowly combing his fingers through the red strands in the cab home. Sleeping is never an option.
"Have you been here long?" Seunghyun eventually says. Jiyong shrugs, his shoulder knocking into Seunghyun's back.
"No. I don't know. It's okay."
Seunghyun shifts a little, uncomfortable on the hardwood floor. "Jaejoong-hyung has couches."
"Uh-huh."
"You could've sat on them."
"I didn't want to fall asleep." Jiyong rubs his eyes, irony in the way he yawns halfway through his sentence. "And I was trying to make a gesture."
Despite everything, Seunghyun feels a surge of ridiculous affection at Jiyong's inability to ever apologize straight. "Is that how it works?"
"Yes." A second passes by before Jiyong adds, "Also Jaejoong's creepy cat lives out there and it kept staring at me."
Seunghyun chuckles. Some of the knotted tension in Jiyong's body immediately eases, and one of his hands flies up over his eyes like he's embarrassed - though really, it's for Seunghyun's benefit.
They leave a little later because they have schedules today. Seunghyun steals an umbrella from Jaejoong's hall closet before following Jiyong out of the apartment building and into the rain, Jiyong turning his collar up for him before they run to the rental car across the street.
By the time they shut the doors and Jiyong turns on the ignition, it has started to sleet. "I hate this weather," Jiyong says. "I hate this car."
Seunghyun snorts. "You're mad no one recognizes you in a Nissan."
"Up yours," Jiyong says, but he sounds amused, relieved that they're back here again.
They meet the others in the lobby two minutes late for the van to take them to their radio show/talk show/whatever. The other three look relatively unsurprised when Seunghyun climbs into the car, even moreso when Jiyong follows him in and sits next to him in the back. The Boy who Cried Wolf, said Daesung once, when Seunghyun came back after a week-long absence and nobody even looked up from their dinners.
Show, tutoring, rehearsal, music station, tutoring, sleep. The rest of the week falls neatly between the lines of their written-out schedule, and Jiyong stays near to him for most of it. By the time they pack up for Korea, Seunghyun hasn't added any Japanese to his vocabulary except a list of sex words that Jiyong tears out of Youngbae's hand dictionary one night and passes to Seunghyun like illicit drugs.
"Funny, I don't think I'll ever use this," Seunghyun says. Jiyong is too busy snickering over the slang for "someone with frequent erections" (binbin daze) to hear him, so Seunghyun pulls Jiyong's vocabulary notebook towards him and copies "fellatio" into the blank squares twenty times before moving onto "tit-fuck." I like to tit-fuck. You like to tit-fuck. He/she likes to tit-fuck. Jiyong keeps rolling away from him on his bed to laugh and rolling back to comment on his terrible handwriting.
"Why're you being so loud?" Seungri whines, poking his head into Jiyong's room. "It's three in the morning."
Seunghyun looks up from carving we like to tit-fuck into Jiyong's arm with a marker.
"Binbin daze?" Jiyong says, and points to Seungri. Seunghyun stares at him for a moment before - he can't help it - he starts to laugh.
"What? What did you say? What's that mean?" Seungri says. "What?"
Jiyong knocks Seunghyun in the hip and rolls closer, hands in Seunghyun's hoodie and his own laugh muffled against Seunghyun's ribcage, and then Seungri is giving up and stomping out of Jiyong's room as they laugh, laugh, laugh harder. Seunghyun knows Jiyong does it on purpose, this, trying too hard to make Seunghyun laugh after they fight - as if it can smooth over the ridges Jiyong can't otherwise fix.
Maybe it will. Jiyong has tit-fuck imprinted backwards on his cheek the next morning and after sniggering for fifteen minutes straight, Seunghyun helps him scrub it off over the bathroom sink. Jiyong's smile is wide and bright against the sunlight streaming in from the windows; Seunghyun has trouble seeing anything else. (So maybe it will.)
Another time, another fight. Why can't you ever just tell me what's wrong, says Jiyong, I'm not a mind reader. Nothing's wrong, says Seunghyun, and heads for the door. Stop saying that. I'm not a little kid. Don't just fucking go again. Don't go.
They all start to sound the same after a while, except this time Seunghyun leaves for his movie and Jiyong finds somebody else to be with.
He has weird hair, shaved on one side, and broad shoulders, like he's competing with Youngbae. This is according to Daesung, through text messages and random fifteen minute phone calls that Seunghyun can spare between shooting schedules and press conferences.
It's good to keep busy. Seunghyun has no time to think. Sangwoo and Seungwon sometimes ask him if he's feeling all right, but Seunghyun chalks it up to exhaustion, the movie, post traumatic stress disorder. Too many bombs on the staged war field. He cracks a few jokes and they leave him alone.
"He seems nice," says Dongwook.
Information trickles into his phone when Seunghyun is in places with reception. He's tall, he takes Jiyong to weird underground raves, he shows up on obscure style section blogs and supposedly helped out with the detailing in this year's Prabal Gurung pre-fall collection. He studied abroad in Turkey and can tie cherry stems in knots with his tongue (you know what that means). He possibly makes Jiyong a little bit happy.
"He's not you," says Youngbae.
Seunghyun stops checking his phone. The director commends him on his dedication.
Last of all is the Seoul premiere. Seunghyun ducks out as soon as the credits stop rolling and hails a cab back to his apartment, legs unsteady at the sudden appearance of the lights. It seems strange, here at home again with his dog-eared script tucked away in a box and nothing on the agenda for tomorrow. He's still in his designer party clothes when the buzzer rings.
Jiyong's hair is messy, and he's dressed in plain clothes too short to be Seunghyun's, too loose to be his own. They stare at each other for a second before Jiyong breaks the silence. "You weren't there," he says, and gestures vaguely behind him. "At the after party, I mean."
"...I was kind of tired." Seunghyun says. "Do you wanna come inside?"
Jiyong shakes his head. "No, I just, I just wanted to see if you were... so are you, like, back now? Everything's done?"
Not really; YG's told him to rest for a few weeks, but Seunghyun's going stir crazy after two minutes and has already made plans to meet with a list of directors he wants to work with. "Pretty much."
Jiyong smiles briefly. He takes a step forward into the light spilling out to the corridor from Seunghyun's apartment, and when he meets his eye Seunghyun sees how red they are. "So you liked the movie?"
"Oh," says Jiyong, and looks like he's been caught off-guard for a second, blinking a few times. "Yea, um, it was really great, the part with--" and then he glimpses of Seunghyun's expression and looks affronted. "Oh, fuck you, I wasn't - Seungri just kept, like, slapping me every time he choked up, and Bom was crying herself blind right behind me, and like--"
"Some of it got in your eye?"
Jiyong dissolves into laughter in the middle of describing Youngbae hiding behind his sunglasses. "Whatever. It wasn't anything you did, anyway."
"Of course," Seunghyun agrees. "All for Sangwoo-hyung, right?"
Jiyong's phone buzzes before he can answer. His fingers fumble to pull it out from his back pocket, and he stares down at it for a second, something familiar and simultaneously strange flickering across his face before he presses the silencer and puts it away again. Seunghyun clears his throat. "Is that..."
"Yea."
Yea. Seunghyun drops his arms, feeling awkward as he keeps his face pleasant. "I'm glad things worked out for you."
Jiyong stares at him - and in an instant, his expression changes, sours. "No you're not," he says.
"What?"
"You're not glad." Jiyong comes forward, steps over the threshold so he's standing on Seunghyun's welcome mat. "Are you fucking kidding me? You're not glad."
"Ji--" Seunghyun says, but Jiyong cuts him off.
"You're not fucking glad!" He pushes him back so he knocks against the doorknob before he roughly grabs his arms, face inches away and furious.
"Jiyong--"
"Just shut the fuck up, Seunghyun! You don't think I know how you kept asking people about me? How you kept tabs on me even when you were all the way in fucking Mongolia? What, you don't think people talk? They're my friends too, remember?" His voice reverberates around the concrete of the hall, sounding louder, angrier, and he shakes Seunghyun hard, door rattling in the frame with the effort.
Seunghyun tries shrugging him off but Jiyong only tightens his grip, breath hot against Seunghyun's face, cheeks flushed.
"You wanna know what I know about you? Huh? I mean besides the fact that you're still a shitty liar."
"Get off me."
"I know you're not glad." Jiyong's fingernails dig into his arms. "You're not glad things worked out for me - you wish I were as fucking miserable as you are so I'd just follow you inside and let you fuck me and then we could go back to that fucking trainwreck of a relationship!"
Seunghyun averts his eyes. "Stop it."
Jiyong crashes his lips into Seunghyun's, kisses him harsh and violent till their teeth scrape together and his tongue is in his mouth. His hands scrabble at Seunghyun's back, and he uses it to grind his hips up and into Seunghyun's, again when it makes Seunghyun's breath catch in his throat, again, again. Seunghyun's ears are ringing, he can't think. Everything in his brain is turned off, pinnacled to Jiyong pressed against him and how he's already half-hard inside his clothes, how much he wants it.
"Fuck--" Jiyong slides a hand around to Seunghyun's stomach, down between his legs to rub him through the stiff material of his suit. He mouths wetly at Seunghyun's neck, nips his ear, perfect in the way he just fits against him - and then Seunghyun smells somebody else on Jiyong's skin. He jerks back and pushes Jiyong off him, hard, till Jiyong stumbles backwards and collides with the railing.
There's white-hot pain at his bottom lip; when Seunghyun wipes at it with a finger, it comes away smeared with blood. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Jiyong doesn't answer. He's shaking, his eyes hooded and seemingly disoriented as he hunches over, panting.
After a second he turns around and leaves - or Seunghyun closes the door first - and either way, it's over.
Jiyong tells Seunghyun he's in love with him for the first time right before the last take of the Haru Haru video shoot.
"What?" Seunghyun says, "you what?" They're sitting on the floor of a hospital and it's three in the morning, fourteen hours into their day, so he thinks that he can't possibly have heard him right, except then Jiyong says it again.
"I think I have been for, like, a really long fucking time now," he continues, "but I just thought it was like, you know, you were my hyung, and you were really cool. So idol worship or whatever. But it's not." His eyes look too clear behind the smudged makeup on his face, even though his cheeks are red and he's fidgeting, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs so he doesn't have to look Seunghyun in the face. "Is that weird?"
Seunghyun wonders what in the fuck to say, but the director tells them to line up for the shot again and then he doesn't have to. The last shot turns into another shot, then another, until Daesung falls asleep sprawled on a row of plastic chairs and Seungri is asking Youngbae under his breath why Seunghyun keeps messing up.
Jiyong manages to keep quiet in the ride back home, but as soon as they make it inside and kick their shoes off, he pulls Seunghyun into his room and shuts the door. "Hyung," he says, and he starts in all over again, all the reasons and the small details until Seunghyun cuts him off.
"You can't be," he says. "Not with me. That's--"
"Insane, fucking insane, I know, okay?" Jiyong says, and he grabs Seunghyun's wrist, the touch timid and quiet, like he's conscious of overstepping his boundaries. "But, hyung, can you just think about it for a second? Because it could be kind of great, at least I think so, and I can't stop thinking about you, and--"
"Are you shitting me?" Seunghyun says. A misplaced, terribly unkind laugh flies from his throat and Jiyong blinks, looking a little deflated. "I don't even - look," he says, and tries to get his bearings. "Why do you even think you like me? Or - yea, whatever."
Jiyong pauses. "I don't - I don't think I like you. Jesus, hyung, I'm not a little kid." When Seunghyun doesn't answer, Jiyong tries to laugh, his fingers slipping away and into his pockets. "I... okay, I have to have a list of reasons now? I don't--"
"Don't, then." Seunghyun says. "You're wrong." Except Jiyong's hair is in his eyes and Seunghyun is suddenly remembering how he kept knocking Jiyong's hat off during the fight scene earlier in the day, and how every time he helped Jiyong put it back on, he'd comb his hair back and his fingers would graze Jiyong's cheek and Jiyong would smile, almost giddy.
"If you would just let me--"
"No." Seunghyun says, and his voice sounds panicked, even to him. "Stop. Just stop."
The silence that follows is long, broken by sounds of Daesung saying goodnight to Youngbae outside.
Seunghyun eventually pushes past Jiyong and leaves the room. But it's a catalyst, and once something like this has been set in motion, Seunghyun knows that it never really stops.
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
Nothing for twelve days, except his lip eventually stops bleeding and scabs over. He hears Jiyong working in Kush's studio, hears him laugh sometimes and echoes of his voice from inside the booth, but he stays four doors down, keeps his eyes trained on a notebook until he doesn't know what he's writing anymore and Teddy tells him to go home.
It's five thirty-two in the morning on a Wednesday when his phone rings. Seunghyun gropes around on his night stand for it, squints at the light-up display till goes silent and he drops his head back down on his pillow, shutting his eyes.
It starts to ring again. Jiyong, jiyong, kwon jiyong.
"Hello?"
"Hyung," Jiyong says - and maybe it's the exhaustion transparent in his voice when he usually knows exactly how to hide it, maybe how he's heard Jiyong's been drinking Red Bulls and vodka and coffee instead of going to bed and maybe it's none of it, maybe it's just that it's Jiyong. It is five thirty-seven in the morning and Seunghyun is wide awake.
"You okay?"
"Yea, I'm okay," Jiyong says. Something sounds in the background - an intercom, somebody yelling - and Jiyong laughs, but it comes out sounding more like a cough. "It's, stupid, I know it's really early but they made me go to the hospital and now they're, now I have to leave and I - just." Seunghyun hears his breath hit the phone, coming out as static through the line. "Can you... come pick me up?"
"...What about your boyfriend?"
"He's, we're..." he hears. A pause - when Jiyong speaks again, there's disappointment riding on the fatigue in his voice. "Nevermind. Go back to sleep." He hangs up.
Seunghyun is wide awake.
to be continued
notes: heavily inspired by the amazing cantonese movie of the same title. the title, summary, and beginning quote in parenthesis are also taken from "happy together" by the turtles. alskdjf this wasn't supposed to be this long. whetstone is a bully and also the best beta as always, and without her i definitely would not have accomplished this. i'm sorry my behavior as far as posting fic here is so erratic. hopefully i will become more consistent. ♥