Fic, GTOP, Every Shattered Breath
Title: Every Shattered Breath
Pairings/Characters: Kwon Jiyong | G-Dragon, Choi Seunghyun | T.O.P.
Rating/Warnings: T for language and some violence; major character death implied; attempted suicide
Disclaimer: I own nothing; written just for fun
Summary: Seunghyun and Jiyong are dancers forced to deal with the reality of Jiyong's failing health as it affects their lives, careers, and relationship
A/N: So this happened one night somewhere between two chapters of JaeMin. I only wish it were happier (cross posted to AO3).
Every Shattered Breath
1.
“It’s frustrating,” Jiyong said, wiping sweat from his brow with a faded purple towel, “when your body which you’ve always relied on fails you. And really, really disappointing.”
The scene cut again, a new angle revealing his sloping profile as he tugged on the stirrup of a tattered legwarmer, toyed at the edge of a deep run in the knit material that extended from his ankle bone up the line of his calf…
“…And when I’m frustrated, I either give up, or I fight back, 103%. I love ballet. Dancing is breathing for me, so obviously I had to fight for this unless I wanted to totally give up, like, you know…” Ji’s voice cut off in an uncharacteristic strangle, tears brimming at the fringe of his eyelashes; he glanced away but smiled bravely, refusing them release.
Seunghyun’s bit came next, a clip from an interview taken the same day, but not in the corner of the warm studio where Jiyong had sat stretching for the camera, the muscles of his splayed limbs loosening as they pulled taught. They had made Seunghyun sit formally in a chair, the one from the tiny lobby with the awkward backrest that had been there forever and had probably come from someone’s Aunt’s basement before that.
“It’s amazing what he’s done, making it this far with a chronic disease, fighting so hard for every breath, every movement. Most people would just give up halfway, or never attempt it in the first place. But not Ji. He’s tough.” Seunghyun laughed, an elbow knocking awkwardly against the armrest.
And Ji was tough, really tough. That didn’t mean he didn’t cry behind closed doors, though, or when he thought no one was looking. Seunghyun sat up with a shivering sigh and paused the video just as Jiyong launched powerful hips into the first jump of a variation. It was old choreography, something Seunghyun had done for him not long after they had met.
The front door opened with a quiet click and Seunghyun sat up to close the lid of his laptop. He could finish previewing the first cut of the documentary the video editor had given him later. His eyes were starting to get tired, anyway. He hadn’t noticed how dark the living room was getting.
Jiyong skated into the room on sock feet, tossing his dance bag onto the yoga mat by the TV. A pill bottle inside rattled as it hit the roll of foam. Seunghyun jerked as the light flipped on.
Jiyong didn’t say anything, just went straight to the kitchen for a glass of something from the fridge. He ran the sink for a long minute after the glass hit the wire dish rack, probably rinsing his face and neck under the cold stream as well.
Sure enough, he came back into the living room dripping, shaking his head like a flustered puppy and flinging water droplets from the curling ends of his hair. One hit Seunghyun on the nose. Jiyong flopped onto the couch next to him, one wrist upturned dramatically over his brow, the fingers of his other hand grazing the rug under the coffee table.
“Yo.” Ji’s voice was small in space between them.
“Hey.” Jiyong sighed in response and rolled up through his back into a sitting position, arching back against his fists balled into the cushion behind him before slumping over his knees til the front pieces of his silky hair dusted across the edge of the table.
“How was class.” Seunghyun restrained the hand that longed to slide along his back, wipe the tension from the shoulders that lingered there even in Ji’s exhaustion.
“I’m not sure if I’m just disappointed in life, or my body, or myself,” Jiyong said with a nervous laugh that rippled through his back, not attempting to hide the threat of tears that colored his voice with a sharp clarity. He had never hidden his tears from Seunghyun before, and Seunghyun was glad at least that hadn’t changed. So, so glad. He wasn’t sure he’d know what to do anymore if it had.
“Yeah.” Seunghyun knew all about disappointment. They both did.
“You were watching it.” It wasn’t a question, just a soft statement of acknowledgement. Seunghyun swallowed the soft laugh that rose in his throat. He had closed the laptop but of course Ji had still noticed the flashdrive blinking in the sideport.
“Yeah.”
“Was it good. Was I good.” Jiyong took a shaky breath, a lock of blonde hair trembling on the corner of the scarred table before sliding over the edge. “Did I...say the right things?”
“Yeah.” In Seunghyun’s opinion, Ji should’ve been much more worried about the awkward words apt to spill from his partner’s mouth than his own. Perspective was funny like that, the things it let you see, the things it hid.
The growing fatigue made Ji move with a quiet grace that he’d not had before. Or maybe it had always been there, just under the surface of the never ending energy that had always consumed him, and Seunghyun had just not noticed in the same way he’d never noticed Ji’s way with words before. Perhaps the only good thing about this season was that it had brought that talent to the limelight. It had definitely forced them both to do a lot of explaining with words rather than gestures recently, but Seunghyun still felt as clumsy with his mouth as he did on his first day of dance class some 20 years earlier.
“I think…” Ji dropped one hand to hang at his side. It swing languidly in the space for a beat before stilling. “I think I want to write after this, you know, when I can’t…anymore…” His face pressed deeper into the crevice between his knees, his throat working silently in tight circles.
“Ok.” Seunghyun just watched though he longed to touch, waiting with quiet patience for Jiyong to regain his balance lest he tip him over the edge of some unseen precipice and open a never ending chasm between them. “You should.”
“I will.” Jiyong’s voice was a little stronger, warmer, starting to come back to where Seunghyun stood waiting for him. He took a deep breath and pushed it out slowly, a feathered strand of hair fluttering at his temple. “Kay. Let’s watch something now.” Ji nudged the remote on the rug between them with his foot and Seunghyun bent to retrieve it, groaning softly at the pull in his back.
“Are you hungry at all?”
“No…” Seunghyun closed his eyes at the sound of Ji’s soft sigh and sunk his thumb into the power button. There was nothing good on, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t bother changing the channel, relaxing his grip around the remote and drifting off to the sound of Jiyong’s slowing breaths.
2.
“You’re breathtaking,” he whispered, his vocal cords shorting out on him without warning as Ji twirled in front of him with a delighted laugh.
“Is that your idea of a bad joke,” Jiyong murmured through cracked lips, the tip of his tongue darting out to skate over the sharp crevices in a futile attempt to smooth them. “Cause if it is, I’ll murder you.” A shaky hand darted up to muss the blonde waves he had just painstakingly arranged in the dressing room mirror.
“Murder away,” Seunghyun sighed with a soft smile. “Flatter the donors, charm the critics, down a bottle of champagne, and then please, finish me.” He squeezed Ji’s hand, an unexpected giggle bubbling into his throat.
“I fully intend to,” Jiyong glared, squeezing back with an intensity in his grip that hands that cute should not be allowed to possess, their knuckles the same shade of bone white for a fleeting second.
“Ow!” Seunghyun gasped and wrung his hand, fingers throbbing as the blood rushed back to them. Jiyong’s fingertips stayed pale and colorless. Seunghyun bit his tongue. The flesh beneath Ji’s nails would probably be tinged blue right now if not for the soft black arm warmers that engulfed his hands up to the knuckles and bunched in luxurious fleecy folds all the way to his elbows. Years of heavy medication had destroyed the capillaries in his extremities, fried the delicate nerve endings until it was hard for Jiyong to keep the feeling in his feet sometimes, especially in the winter.
If he had stumbled at all in tonight’s performance though, Seunghyun hadn’t noticed in the slightest, too caught up in vibrant life Jiyong imbued each movement with, mesmerized by the full rainbow of colors he caressed into the music as it caught and vibrated in the space they cohabitated. Nothing he had met thus far could dull Ji’s energy on stage.
“Are you sure I look ok?” Seunghyun snapped back to attention to see Jiyong worrying the flesh of his lip between sharp teeth again, pulling at a tear of dry skin with nervous fingers. Seunghyun knocked Ji’s hand away from his face and pressed a tube of lip balm into his fingers.
“You’re a knockout.” A hot blush stole over Jiyong's cheeks as Seunghyun reached up to arrange the folds of his favorite pink scarf looped over the front of a padded zip-up vest, smoothing lingering fingers over the crushed silk shirt beneath which disappeared into the waist of the tight black leather pants that rode low on his hips. Probably not the outfit the company’s PR rep had envisioned on the star of the evening when she planned the formalwear reception for the renowned soloist Kwon Jiyong’s retirement performance, but Seunghyun was pleased that Ji felt free to be himself even here. Especially here.
Jiyong leaned forward, stretching on tiptoe to lean his head on Seunghyun’s shoulder and sinking into his heat until their belt buckles met, Ji’s heavy studded one against the slim chrome clasp of Seunghyun’s.
“I wish you had been on stage with me again, one last time,” Jiyong whispered, his lips rough against the crisp lapel of Seunghyun’s blazer, the quiet longing in his voice wrapping fingers of mirrored want around Seunghyun’s throat. He had to swallow twice before his voice would cooperate again.
“I know. But tonight was all yours, Ji. You still shine brighter than any of them. And you know I’m right there with you when you breathe life into my work, into all of my imaginations.” Jiyong nodded once against his chest, pushing blonde tresses into tangling masses. Seunghyun drew back to smooth Ji’s hair back into place, careful fingers combing through the strands rough with dried sweat and sticky gel.
“Thanks,” Jiyong whispered, eyes fluttering shut at Seunghyun’s soothing touch.
“Come on, handsome. This is your party.” Seunghyun gently tugged him towards the door and Jiyong’s kohl rimmed eyes flashed open with a wicked grin as he pushed it open.
“Well then, let’s go find the vodka!” He leapt into the crack of light beaming through the open door, turning back to Seunghyun with an impatient laugh. “Let’s go!”
3.
“Fuck!” A loud crack from the adjoining studio broke Seunghyun’s concentration, his breath catching as the cd player skipped. He burst through the double doors into the room where Jiyong was warming up.
“What’s wrong?” One of the heavy metal practice barres lay on its side in the middle of the dance floor. Jiyong was crouched against a panel of the mirror, a long jagged crack in its surface extending from the part his body shielded. He was sobbing, the lilting piano music still pouring from the speakers of his ipod dock obliterating the broken moans but not the vibrations of his jerking shoulders that slammed into Seunghyun’s chest, jarring his heartbeat.
“Go away!” he hissed at the contact of Seunghyun’s hand on his shoulder, but Seunghyun wouldn’t let Ji shake him off.
“Jiyong, baby, where does it hurt? What’s wrong?” Jiyong didn’t pull away this time but he kept wrenching tight, angry sobs from his heaving chest. “Ji?” Seunghyun was seconds away from dialing for an ambulance, already reaching for his phone, but Jiyong stuck a hand out and snatched his wrist away, digging in with the blunt edges of his ragged nails.
“I can’t make it through adage!” His face was mottled red and purple with horror now, chest constricting on each pull of air. “I can’t even finish fucking rond de jambes!” He broke off mid-wail with a whimper, panting for oxygen. Seunghyun waited, his pulse still caught in Jiyong’s strangling grip. “You quit because you wanted to! You had the choice, and you fucking threw it away! But even n-now your l-lazy ass can finish class whenever you feel like it! It’s so--it’s s-so--!”
Unfair. Neither of them could utter the word that hung heavy between them. Jiyong’s throat was rasping hoarsely with each gasp now.
“Ji--”
“You bastard!” Jiyong spat, “not even rond de jambe! And I skipped straight from tendus to conserve energy...” he trailed off with a broken whimper that suckerpunched Seunghyun straight in the gut.
“For how long…”
“More than a week,” Jiyong smiled bitterly through his slowing tears, sniffing miserably.
“Ji! Ji, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” Jiyong turned away at Seunghyun’s pleading tone. Seunghyun had been dreading this moment for months now, waiting for it to come crashing down ever since the night of Jiyong’s last performance. Or last public one, anyway; virtually everything Ji did was a performance. Jiyong lifted his head with one last dry, rattling sob.
“Hey, hey shh…” Seunghyun soothed, smoothing a thumb along Ji’s tear streaked jawline. “Let’s go get breakfast. You want pancakes?” As if they could pretend to be any other couple out for a relaxing meal at 9:00 AM on a warm spring Saturday.
“Mmph,” Jiyong whimpered, nodding slowly. Seunghyun lunged for the box of tissues on the chair by the door and handed it over.
“Here. Just clean up a little, I’ll go get your things.” Ji nodded again, reaching for his towel.
“I’m sorry about the mirror.”
“It’s ok, really.”
“Aren’t you gonna ask about my foot?” Seunghyun rolled his eyes, lips pulling into a fond smile.
“Did you break that too, you klutz?”
“Bastard,” Jiyong muttered without any of the previous venom, flinging his sweat soaked towel across Seunghyun’s feet.
“I’ll be right back.” Seunghyun backed slowly out of the studio, not able to tear his eyes away from the tired smile in front of him as if he thought it might disappear forever the moment he closed the door.
4.
“You’re going to live a long time,” Jiyong announced, slicing cleanly through a tomato. Seunghyun cocked an interested eyebrow. “You are,” Ji insisted with a pouty frown, “I decided. Probably until you’re ninety, and then some.”
“Do I get to decide your life span, then?” Seunghyun asked, amused. Jiyong’s face fell, the hard lines of determination in his expression slipping like crumbled stone from the face of a proud cliff.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he whispered to the tomato halves as he seeded them with a blunt spoon. Regret trickled down Seunghyun’s throat like the red juice sliding down the slanted cutting board and into the basin of the sink, fresh and acid. Ji scraped the clinging seeds away from the surface with the dull edge of the knife blade, his fierce, deliberate strokes belying the anger stirring the pulse in his graceful neck to rapid speed.
“You’re going to get fucking old, wrinkled old, warty old, swiss-cheese-boned old, so old the air just smells like dirt to you despite the shorts in your olfactory wires-“ he paused a beat to rinse the board with a blast from the faucet. “It’ll smell like dirt, all the time, like the wet earth in the spring; and it will feel familiar, like home, like your primal juices are already joining the mud beneath you, oozing out of the soles of your wrinkled feet--!” Jiyong climbed onto the chair by the sink, lifting the knife as high as it would go but still nowhere near grazing the vaulted ceiling of his parents’ kitchen. “And-and you’ll still be alive, even then, alive enough to feel it and think it.” His eyes flashed dark and brilliant above Seunghyun, absorbing all his electrons and radiant heat in their pull.
“Ok,” Seunghyun agreed, swallowing tightly. “I’ll be fucking old. And what will I do?”
“You!” Ji brandished the knife at the skylight above them. “You will scare all the little children, even more than you do now with your haughty danseur’s epaulement!” He laughed wickedly, a curl of amusement tugging at his features. “And also, you will see. You will remember. You will imagine.” His face softened as the volume ebbed from his voice. “You have to. You have to write.”
One tiny ankle wobbled, an elbow sighed, and Jiyong was falling, collapsing in on the pressure of his own magnetism. The knife hit the floor, the sharp tip singing into the linoleum. Jiyong crumpled into Seunghyun, the force of his lung-crushing brightness exploding into Seunghyun’s collarbone and between his eyes.
They panted into the empty vacuum Jiyong’s plunge had swept, Ji’s soft exhales feathering the steel blade beside them with hot mist.
“Who will I write for,” Seunghyun whispered into the soft shell of Ji’s ear. Even though he knew the answer he needed to hear Ji’s voice, needed to feel the damp pulse of his breath against his throat.
“You have to,” Ji sighed through his nose, face all squeushed in delicious contours against Seunghyun’s warmth. “You’ll write for me.”
5.
Seunghyun straightened up from the floor, wiping a slow trickle of sweat away from it’s deliberate path towards his eyes. He kicked at the wad of black fabric tape that he had stripped from the floor and rubbed at the kink between his shoulder blades. He let out a heavy breath and surveyed their afternoon of progress: they had finished pulling up the flooring tape in the third studio now, and just in time, too. Seunghyun noted the time with a glance to the clock, the short hand edging towards four o'clock with every tick of the second hand. They needed to get a move on to the hospital if they were going to make it in time for Jiyong’s appointment.
Seunghyun sighed, wincing at the thought of traffic, and looked back to the floor. The long panels of marley still lay in place on top of the sprung floor, curling slightly upward at the edges, but their vinyl surfaces needed to be scrubbed clean before they could be taped down tight and secure. That was work for another day, though.
“So, we should probably get going,” Seunghyun said. Jiyong ignored him, still picking at bits of the rotten tape that had shredded during removal and clung stubbornly to the vinyl. “Ji?” Seunghyun called again. “It’s almost four.”
“We’re not finished yet.” Jiyong's voice was small and hard, echoing softly against the mirror he was facing.
“Ji, you have to go. You have to go and get better and you--”
“You’re not finished yet,” he repeated with quiet vehemence. “I’ll take the train.”
“Ji, remember what the doctor said? Your immune system is shot, you can’t take the fucking--”
“You don’t want to go. You hate going.” The accusatory bite in his voice sharpened as his volume rose.
“I think we share the same opinion of hospitals, Jiyong,” Seunghyun started hesitantly. “But I don’t mind going as long as I’m there with you.”
“I hate myself for doing this to you!” Jiyong was rocking on his heels, doubled over his knees as the words ripped out of him. “I hate that you have to watch it.” He choked on the words, but they both knew what he was thinking of: the pinch of hollow needles biting into bruised veins, the cold sweat filming the vinyl of exam tables, the purple bruises under tired eyes that only deepened with every passing week.
“You told me, from the beginning. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.” It was the truth, but it rang leaden and distant in Seunghyun’s ears, his own words did, when he thought of the day Ji had told him. It had been their first fight, he remembered fondly, a sad sort of twinge spasming through his gut at the memory.
“Why are you smiling!” Jiyong’s eyes shone glassy, refracting fluorescent sparks of pained betrayal, raw self-hatred, loneliness. Seunghyun had always wondered at how Jiyong seemed his most vulnerable when he got defensive. He was like a piece of brittle, brittle glass, sharp and deadly between crushing finger bones. Seunghyun had learned long ago not to hold on too tight. “Stop it!” Jiyong screamed, nostrils flaring in time with his heaving gasps.
“Sorry.” Seunghyun frowned, careful to wipe every trace of amusement, of happy, from his face.
“I don’t want you to be sorry!” Ji hurled a roll of electrical tape that Seunghyun had forgotten to put away after marking blocking positions the day before. The throw was wide, missing its target by a few feet to bounce off a barre in the back with a dull clang, but Seunghyun ducked anyway to humor Jiyong’s temper; as much as he wanted to stand strong for his breaking Ji, the last thing he wanted right now was for Jiyong to misunderstand his stolidness for disdain or condescension. Or for the worst of all crimes, being unfeeling, unmoved.
In reality, he was so moved right now he thought he could melt at the slightest touch of breath across his skin, at the sight of the subtlest movement from Jiyong. All of Jiyong’s movements were exquisite. Even reckless, angry, unbridled, he was still beautiful; god, the most beautiful.
Seunghyun squeezed his legs, engaging external rotaters, iliopsoas, quadriceps, sartorii, inner thighs, calves shins and metatarsals, a smooth ripple of tension flowing to the floor to root him in a stance strong enough to hold back his tears. As fiercely as the snarl of emotions threatening to rip through him surged in his core, he had to stand firm; it was not his turn to cry.
“I don’t want your fucking pity!” Seunghyun released the hold with a whoosh of exhaled breath, ducking the next missile. He opened his eyes to watch a hairbrush hit the cracked vinyl divider behind him with a sharp splack, registering his own cringing wince at the movement of his mirror image.
What do you want? The words died at the back of Seunghyun’s throat, their tiny slippery edges sliding down his windpipe to punch the air from his lungs, their heavy imprints settling into his terminal bronchioles like leaden dust, carbon black.
“I don’t want anything from you! I can’t take anything else...I already took too much…” Jiyong fell silent, still rocking to the beat of inaudible music. He always moved with music. Seunghyun watched the short hand on the ugly utility clock scoot a notch closer to four, then three more notches, then one past. He could wait. He had waited before.
They were going to be late, really fucking late if you figured in for traffic, but it would be ok. Sometimes tears were more important. Jiyong’s tears were always important. Seunghyun waited and wondered who would care, if anyone would care, when it was his turn to cry.
He knew his turn would come.
6.
He found him crouched in the shadows of their tiny kitchen cradling the cleaver to his stomach, the dull edge of it biting into his bloated stomach through his thin T-shirt, the razor edge of it ghosting along the inner softness of his forearm.
“Jiyong, put it down.” Seunghyun set his empty water glass on the floor behind him and reached towards him, the knife blade glinting in soft glow of the night light above the kitchen sink.
“Why.” The hard, pebbled word wasn’t a question, it was a challenge.
“Because I said so.”
“Why.”
“Why? The same reason you swallow three different antibiotics, the same reason you wait long hours in a hospital waiting room for your turn at the torture apparatus, the same--”
“Answer the fucking question, Choi Seunghyun.”
“Because you’ve made it almost ten years with this thing, because you’ve beaten it for ten and nothing’s stopping you from another good ten. Hell, you could have 20! I’m not allowed to decide for you, remember?” He ended in a strangled laugh as the truth of his last words hit him in reverse. Not allowed, not allowed, not all--
“Seunghyun…” The air sang out of Jiyong’s lungs in a high pitched keen.
“Yeah?” Jiyong pressed a damp wad of tissues into his fingers. Seunghyun could smell the answer before Ji even opened his mouth, choked on his obliviousness for missing it in the first place.
“I started coughing up blood.” The back of Jiyong’s head hit the refrigerator door with a dull thud.
“C’mere.” Jiyong didn’t protest at all as Seunghyun removed the knife from his grasp and gathered him into his arms. He rocked Jiyong gently in his embrace for a few moments before carrying him out to the car for the lonely drive to hospital.
7.
“Promise me one thing.”
“Hmm?” Seunghyun brushed breathless lips against cold blue fingertips.
“You have to quit smoking.” Jiyong’s eyes were closed, but he formed the words so deliberately, each stroke of his tongue searing ember red, filter white, and ashy black into Seunghyun’s buzzing eardrums, that he could see their hard glint through Ji’s eyelids, from the depths of his sunken sockets.
The guilt hit Seunghyun in a tidal wave of bilious nausea, forcing the pitiful contents of his stomach out, up, out. Jiyong caught the plume of liquor darkened mucous in his calamine pink kidney dish. Seunghyun drained the nearest glass of water in one swallow.
“Ok.”
8.
“I like watching you sleep.” Seunghyun blinked awake, the soft light of early morning no match for the radiance of the smile it illuminated on Jiyong’s face.
“Mmrfgrrln, yamff,” he groaned in response, mostly to savor the sweet ripple of laughter that pealed across the angles of Jiyong’s body, rolling smooth and liquid to his adorable toes.
“Do that again!” Jiyong demanded, continuing to laugh until a sharp hitch in his breath aborted the sweet ring mid note. They both managed to withhold a wince, Seunghyun’s calves bunching in tight knots, Jiyong’s fingers knotting in the bed sheets; they were getting good at pretending, ignoring.
“I said,” Seunghyun lifted his fuzzy head with a dark smolder that was totally ruined by his spreading grin, “I should be the one saying that!” He caught up Jiyong’s wrist in a possessive finger embrace and nipped at the ragged thumbnail affectionately. Jiyong snickered again, his warm breath stuttering out of his nostrils to ghost over their entwined fingers as he arched forward in quiet hysterics, his tight back muscles pulling taught like steel cables through the thin green gown. “I should,” Seunghyun repeated in a whisper, his eyes catching with Ji’s in a suffocating gaze as he settled back against the mattress, suffocating because it was so full of shared warmth and life.
Jiyong scowled, poking the edge of his pink tongue between his lips in a lazy taunt. Jiyong was usually the first one to fall asleep after sex, the hot silk of his back tucked against Seunghyun’s broad chest, or the slack heat of his lips pressed in an open mouthed kiss against Seunghyun’s throat. Jiyong burned hot and furious before knocking out into comatose slumber, not shifting from the position he fell asleep in, and Seunghyun would lie awake to stroke his rough hair between rougher fingers, carefully counting each strand into the memory of his palms as his mind slowed and drifted towards oblivion along a sea of unspoken thoughts.
“Get used to it, jerk.” Ji’s fingers tangled in Seunghyun’s, lazy and possessive. “I’m gonna be watching over you for a long, long time.”
9.
“Ji, I’m going to get really-hella-fucking old, aren’t I.” Seunghyun slumped against the cold pane of mirror behind him, his back leaving a slick trail of sweat as he slid to the floor.
“Yup.” Ji’s eyes were closed but his lashes quivered faintly against his cheek, the thin gold chain doubled through the swell of his earlobe vibrating imperceptibly at his light hum of agreement; Seunghyun knew it did because he had caught the resonance against the pads of his fingers so many times.
“I’m gonna…lose my mind, aren’t I.” His voice cracked on the words that had been torturing him for weeks now, finally speaking images he was terrified of releasing into sound waves lest they ricochet back to embed beneath his skin with the finality of fate.
“Hah,” Jiyong scoffed in the back of his throat. “Nice try, Hyunnie, you’re already crazy as a loon and we both know it.”
“No, I mean like, really lose it, like lose the past, or forget it. Forget it all. Lose my pieces of you.” He choked back a vicious sob as Jiyong sank insistent fingers into his forearm, twisting to kneel in front of Seunghyun's sagging figure.
“I said you were crazy.” Ji’s voice was even but his eyes were angry. Seunghyun stared up into them, his own frozen open in uncertain fear. The edge in Jiyong’s eyes dulled into warm concern. “Just listen to yourself.”
He released Seunghyun’s arm to brush gentle knuckles across his forehead, under his stubbled chin, over the sweep of his eyebrows, into the hollows of his cheeks. A smudge of his thumb against the furrowed groove in Seunghyun’s brow loosened the knot in his chest and six months of swallowed sobs ripped out of him like an earring tearing loose from an infected lobe, hot and slick in a bright burst of pain. It left the two halves of his chest cavity cloven and dangling.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-“ Jiyong cut off his mantra of choked whimpers with the hard line of his fingers against Seunghyun’s lips.
“Shhh. Stop it, stop it. Hush.” But Jiyong was choking too, now, the heel of his hand screwing against Seunghyun’s mouth to muffle the broken moans.
“Mmhmm mmf!” Snot was sliding down Seunghyun’s face, strings of it wrapping tentacles around Jiyong’s trembling wrist, gobs of it dripping between Ji’s clawed fingers into his open mouth. His chest ached so deeply, all the fibers of muscle hot with pain he could only cry harder at the thought of what Ji must feel every day, with every pull of oxygen. Saliva and mucous were coating the back of his throat, thicker and thicker, until he was drowning in it, and shit--there was the familiar dull, metallic tang seeping under his tongue again, blotting out the sharp minerals of the salty mess pouring into his mouth. Another nosebleed.
“Holy shit, Seunghyun!” Jiyong sat up, shoulders rolling, face streaked and hot. A pink trickle of blood slid from his palm to his elbow, diluted with their mingled tears. “Stop! You’ve got to stop it!” he begged. Seunghyun wanted to, wanted to ease the sharp scent of fear in Jiyong’s sweat, wanted to still the bucking gasps of his ribcage, wanted to let Ji lap up the last of his acid tears with his sweet pink tongue, he wanted, wanted, wanted! But it was too much, had already whelmed his last defenses, and he grasped blindly at what to stop first, clawed at the hem of Ji’s shirt, his throat closing on a gob of putrid phlegm, the veins in his nasal passages collapsing in on themselves, the rims of his eyes sagging under-
The flat of Ji’s palm connected with his face with a sharp, wet slap. It stopped, all of it, except for the shuddering breaths that kept hissing out of him and the hot blood that ran down his lips and chin in smooth pulses as his heart beat slowed. Jiyong stood to snatch a roll of toilet paper from the music stand in the corner, his eyes never leaving Seunghyun’s.
Thank you. Seunghyun could only thank him with his eyes, knowing that Ji already understood, anyway. He always did in the end. Jiyong’s fingers were careful, so precise as he wicked away the layers of blood and fluid from Seunghyun’s stinging face, stopping only once to swipe roughly at his own with the ragged cuff of his sleeve when the snot dared to bubble out.
“Ji, I’m-“
“Shh,” his pursed lips soothed. “Just let me take care of you.” Seunghyun relaxed into Jiyong’s touch, swollen eyes falling shut again as Ji finished with gentle strokes across his chin. They were both still panting when he wadded the sodden mass in a clench of his fist and dropped the mess into the empty metal waste bin at the edge of the marley, the absorbed blood already darkening in oxygen induced death. Ji slipped his fingers into Seunghyun’s, folding them in a warm curl against his palm.
“Let’s go home.”
You wouldn’t think that those two hands would fit together so perfectly, one white, compact, and restless, one broad and warm, grooves and peaks held together with sinewed dignity, but somehow they slipped into each other easily, spanning a practiced perfection between them, more perfect with every embrace.
Just trust him at his word, Seunghyun knew what perfect felt like.
10.
The pain made him move with a heavy gravity that he’d never felt before, always so light in health his feet seemed to barely skim the ground, bouncing and leaping his way forward. Not that this new weight didn’t suit him. It rooted Ji in quiet dignity, connected him to the earth as if he were just an extension of the fullness of nature: timeless, boundless, infinite.
“I think…” Ji dropped the pencil that hung loosely between his fingers, the web of skin stretching thinner each day it seemed. “I think I know now why I met you, why we’re together.”
“And why is that?”
“You’ll find that letter someday.” He closed his eyes with a soft smile. “I’ve been writing you for months now, you know, leaving them places you’ll look when I’m...when…” He dropped his head back against the pillow, struggling to suppress a racking cough as a single tear escaped down his cheek.
“Shh, shh it’s ok Ji,” Seunghyun slipped into the hospice bed beside him as gently as he could, gathering Ji’s small frame into the circle of his arms. He had always been small, just not…frail like this. It made Seunghyun want to carefully regulate even his breathing in Jiyong’s presence. “It’s ok, I know.”
“I know you know,” Jiyong whispered, another tear escaping from his lowered lashes and dropping onto Seunghyun’s wrist. “You bastard, you always know, you always have.” Seunghyun knew from his voice he was smiling, even though his own eyes were closed against the assault of blue veins, gray skin, thinning hair.
He tried to just feel Ji in his arms, picturing his lithe form throwing tour after sauté across their studio, sweat sliding across his smooth pink skin and tousled hair falling into his eyes; he could never remember to bring a headband; he was always stealing Seunghyun’s. Seunghyun suppressed a bubbling laugh at the thought lest it come out like a sob. No wonder he’d been stuck using the same gray headband going on two weeks now without realizing it. He needed to switch it out when he went back to work, maybe steal one of Jiyong’s neon ones in revenge.
“Shit. Why am I crying, Seunghyun?” Ji stirred listlessly in his arms and Seunghyun noticed the tears pooling in the dip of his wrist bone. “Why do I keep crying?” Jiyong’s shoulders were shaking with incredulous laughter as he hiccupped out pitiful sobs.
“I don’t know…” Seunghyun stretched out his hand to trace tears from jutting cheekbones, to sweep soft bangs from a hot brow. Jiyong’s fever was up again; he’d have to get up for more Tylenol soon. Shit, why didn’t he think to bring that to the bedroom before. “Let me know if you figure it out.”
Jiyong nodded, gulping back the rest of his tears. The tightness relaxed from his wasted shoulders and he slumped back into his lover’s embrace. Seunghyun’s breath caught in his throat for an awful second before Ji’s ribcage expanded slightly as he inhaled a shallow breath. As much as he hated seeing Jiyong all worked up, knew it was bad him, at least his tension let Seunghyun know he was still there, still fighting.
Seunghyun closed his eyes again, his fingertips that felt so clumsy and rough on the planes of Ji’s face never ceasing their soothing movement, and tried to reconjure that bright image, that vibrant Jiyong laughing and panting in the studio.
It was no use. Even with his lids sealed tight against the body in front of him, he could still feel reality invading the safe circle of his arms. The dead weight of each bird boned limb, the shuddering flutter of each shallow breath, the languid pulse oozing through bruised and punctured wrists: their physical imprint on the retinas of his nervous system was so graphic even Seunghyun’s heralded imagination couldn’t blot it out.
Jiyong heaved a long sigh, the tail of it rasping softly in his dry throat dragging out for minutes it seemed like, but his pulse never faltered in its feeble rhythm under Seunghyun’s fingertips where they had migrated.
“I’m going to sleep for a bit, if that’s ok.” Seunghyun opened his eyes, unable, unwilling to waste another precious moment deluding himself. His Jiyong was so beautiful; beautiful, even like this.
“Hyunnie,” Jiyong whimpered, grinding back with a weak wriggle of impatience. “Ok?”
“Sure.” Screw the Tylenol. Pain was reality anyway.
Pairings/Characters: Kwon Jiyong | G-Dragon, Choi Seunghyun | T.O.P.
Rating/Warnings: T for language and some violence; major character death implied; attempted suicide
Disclaimer: I own nothing; written just for fun
Summary: Seunghyun and Jiyong are dancers forced to deal with the reality of Jiyong's failing health as it affects their lives, careers, and relationship
A/N: So this happened one night somewhere between two chapters of JaeMin. I only wish it were happier (cross posted to AO3).
Every Shattered Breath
1.
“It’s frustrating,” Jiyong said, wiping sweat from his brow with a faded purple towel, “when your body which you’ve always relied on fails you. And really, really disappointing.”
The scene cut again, a new angle revealing his sloping profile as he tugged on the stirrup of a tattered legwarmer, toyed at the edge of a deep run in the knit material that extended from his ankle bone up the line of his calf…
“…And when I’m frustrated, I either give up, or I fight back, 103%. I love ballet. Dancing is breathing for me, so obviously I had to fight for this unless I wanted to totally give up, like, you know…” Ji’s voice cut off in an uncharacteristic strangle, tears brimming at the fringe of his eyelashes; he glanced away but smiled bravely, refusing them release.
Seunghyun’s bit came next, a clip from an interview taken the same day, but not in the corner of the warm studio where Jiyong had sat stretching for the camera, the muscles of his splayed limbs loosening as they pulled taught. They had made Seunghyun sit formally in a chair, the one from the tiny lobby with the awkward backrest that had been there forever and had probably come from someone’s Aunt’s basement before that.
“It’s amazing what he’s done, making it this far with a chronic disease, fighting so hard for every breath, every movement. Most people would just give up halfway, or never attempt it in the first place. But not Ji. He’s tough.” Seunghyun laughed, an elbow knocking awkwardly against the armrest.
And Ji was tough, really tough. That didn’t mean he didn’t cry behind closed doors, though, or when he thought no one was looking. Seunghyun sat up with a shivering sigh and paused the video just as Jiyong launched powerful hips into the first jump of a variation. It was old choreography, something Seunghyun had done for him not long after they had met.
The front door opened with a quiet click and Seunghyun sat up to close the lid of his laptop. He could finish previewing the first cut of the documentary the video editor had given him later. His eyes were starting to get tired, anyway. He hadn’t noticed how dark the living room was getting.
Jiyong skated into the room on sock feet, tossing his dance bag onto the yoga mat by the TV. A pill bottle inside rattled as it hit the roll of foam. Seunghyun jerked as the light flipped on.
Jiyong didn’t say anything, just went straight to the kitchen for a glass of something from the fridge. He ran the sink for a long minute after the glass hit the wire dish rack, probably rinsing his face and neck under the cold stream as well.
Sure enough, he came back into the living room dripping, shaking his head like a flustered puppy and flinging water droplets from the curling ends of his hair. One hit Seunghyun on the nose. Jiyong flopped onto the couch next to him, one wrist upturned dramatically over his brow, the fingers of his other hand grazing the rug under the coffee table.
“Yo.” Ji’s voice was small in space between them.
“Hey.” Jiyong sighed in response and rolled up through his back into a sitting position, arching back against his fists balled into the cushion behind him before slumping over his knees til the front pieces of his silky hair dusted across the edge of the table.
“How was class.” Seunghyun restrained the hand that longed to slide along his back, wipe the tension from the shoulders that lingered there even in Ji’s exhaustion.
“I’m not sure if I’m just disappointed in life, or my body, or myself,” Jiyong said with a nervous laugh that rippled through his back, not attempting to hide the threat of tears that colored his voice with a sharp clarity. He had never hidden his tears from Seunghyun before, and Seunghyun was glad at least that hadn’t changed. So, so glad. He wasn’t sure he’d know what to do anymore if it had.
“Yeah.” Seunghyun knew all about disappointment. They both did.
“You were watching it.” It wasn’t a question, just a soft statement of acknowledgement. Seunghyun swallowed the soft laugh that rose in his throat. He had closed the laptop but of course Ji had still noticed the flashdrive blinking in the sideport.
“Yeah.”
“Was it good. Was I good.” Jiyong took a shaky breath, a lock of blonde hair trembling on the corner of the scarred table before sliding over the edge. “Did I...say the right things?”
“Yeah.” In Seunghyun’s opinion, Ji should’ve been much more worried about the awkward words apt to spill from his partner’s mouth than his own. Perspective was funny like that, the things it let you see, the things it hid.
The growing fatigue made Ji move with a quiet grace that he’d not had before. Or maybe it had always been there, just under the surface of the never ending energy that had always consumed him, and Seunghyun had just not noticed in the same way he’d never noticed Ji’s way with words before. Perhaps the only good thing about this season was that it had brought that talent to the limelight. It had definitely forced them both to do a lot of explaining with words rather than gestures recently, but Seunghyun still felt as clumsy with his mouth as he did on his first day of dance class some 20 years earlier.
“I think…” Ji dropped one hand to hang at his side. It swing languidly in the space for a beat before stilling. “I think I want to write after this, you know, when I can’t…anymore…” His face pressed deeper into the crevice between his knees, his throat working silently in tight circles.
“Ok.” Seunghyun just watched though he longed to touch, waiting with quiet patience for Jiyong to regain his balance lest he tip him over the edge of some unseen precipice and open a never ending chasm between them. “You should.”
“I will.” Jiyong’s voice was a little stronger, warmer, starting to come back to where Seunghyun stood waiting for him. He took a deep breath and pushed it out slowly, a feathered strand of hair fluttering at his temple. “Kay. Let’s watch something now.” Ji nudged the remote on the rug between them with his foot and Seunghyun bent to retrieve it, groaning softly at the pull in his back.
“Are you hungry at all?”
“No…” Seunghyun closed his eyes at the sound of Ji’s soft sigh and sunk his thumb into the power button. There was nothing good on, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t bother changing the channel, relaxing his grip around the remote and drifting off to the sound of Jiyong’s slowing breaths.
2.
“You’re breathtaking,” he whispered, his vocal cords shorting out on him without warning as Ji twirled in front of him with a delighted laugh.
“Is that your idea of a bad joke,” Jiyong murmured through cracked lips, the tip of his tongue darting out to skate over the sharp crevices in a futile attempt to smooth them. “Cause if it is, I’ll murder you.” A shaky hand darted up to muss the blonde waves he had just painstakingly arranged in the dressing room mirror.
“Murder away,” Seunghyun sighed with a soft smile. “Flatter the donors, charm the critics, down a bottle of champagne, and then please, finish me.” He squeezed Ji’s hand, an unexpected giggle bubbling into his throat.
“I fully intend to,” Jiyong glared, squeezing back with an intensity in his grip that hands that cute should not be allowed to possess, their knuckles the same shade of bone white for a fleeting second.
“Ow!” Seunghyun gasped and wrung his hand, fingers throbbing as the blood rushed back to them. Jiyong’s fingertips stayed pale and colorless. Seunghyun bit his tongue. The flesh beneath Ji’s nails would probably be tinged blue right now if not for the soft black arm warmers that engulfed his hands up to the knuckles and bunched in luxurious fleecy folds all the way to his elbows. Years of heavy medication had destroyed the capillaries in his extremities, fried the delicate nerve endings until it was hard for Jiyong to keep the feeling in his feet sometimes, especially in the winter.
If he had stumbled at all in tonight’s performance though, Seunghyun hadn’t noticed in the slightest, too caught up in vibrant life Jiyong imbued each movement with, mesmerized by the full rainbow of colors he caressed into the music as it caught and vibrated in the space they cohabitated. Nothing he had met thus far could dull Ji’s energy on stage.
“Are you sure I look ok?” Seunghyun snapped back to attention to see Jiyong worrying the flesh of his lip between sharp teeth again, pulling at a tear of dry skin with nervous fingers. Seunghyun knocked Ji’s hand away from his face and pressed a tube of lip balm into his fingers.
“You’re a knockout.” A hot blush stole over Jiyong's cheeks as Seunghyun reached up to arrange the folds of his favorite pink scarf looped over the front of a padded zip-up vest, smoothing lingering fingers over the crushed silk shirt beneath which disappeared into the waist of the tight black leather pants that rode low on his hips. Probably not the outfit the company’s PR rep had envisioned on the star of the evening when she planned the formalwear reception for the renowned soloist Kwon Jiyong’s retirement performance, but Seunghyun was pleased that Ji felt free to be himself even here. Especially here.
Jiyong leaned forward, stretching on tiptoe to lean his head on Seunghyun’s shoulder and sinking into his heat until their belt buckles met, Ji’s heavy studded one against the slim chrome clasp of Seunghyun’s.
“I wish you had been on stage with me again, one last time,” Jiyong whispered, his lips rough against the crisp lapel of Seunghyun’s blazer, the quiet longing in his voice wrapping fingers of mirrored want around Seunghyun’s throat. He had to swallow twice before his voice would cooperate again.
“I know. But tonight was all yours, Ji. You still shine brighter than any of them. And you know I’m right there with you when you breathe life into my work, into all of my imaginations.” Jiyong nodded once against his chest, pushing blonde tresses into tangling masses. Seunghyun drew back to smooth Ji’s hair back into place, careful fingers combing through the strands rough with dried sweat and sticky gel.
“Thanks,” Jiyong whispered, eyes fluttering shut at Seunghyun’s soothing touch.
“Come on, handsome. This is your party.” Seunghyun gently tugged him towards the door and Jiyong’s kohl rimmed eyes flashed open with a wicked grin as he pushed it open.
“Well then, let’s go find the vodka!” He leapt into the crack of light beaming through the open door, turning back to Seunghyun with an impatient laugh. “Let’s go!”
3.
“Fuck!” A loud crack from the adjoining studio broke Seunghyun’s concentration, his breath catching as the cd player skipped. He burst through the double doors into the room where Jiyong was warming up.
“What’s wrong?” One of the heavy metal practice barres lay on its side in the middle of the dance floor. Jiyong was crouched against a panel of the mirror, a long jagged crack in its surface extending from the part his body shielded. He was sobbing, the lilting piano music still pouring from the speakers of his ipod dock obliterating the broken moans but not the vibrations of his jerking shoulders that slammed into Seunghyun’s chest, jarring his heartbeat.
“Go away!” he hissed at the contact of Seunghyun’s hand on his shoulder, but Seunghyun wouldn’t let Ji shake him off.
“Jiyong, baby, where does it hurt? What’s wrong?” Jiyong didn’t pull away this time but he kept wrenching tight, angry sobs from his heaving chest. “Ji?” Seunghyun was seconds away from dialing for an ambulance, already reaching for his phone, but Jiyong stuck a hand out and snatched his wrist away, digging in with the blunt edges of his ragged nails.
“I can’t make it through adage!” His face was mottled red and purple with horror now, chest constricting on each pull of air. “I can’t even finish fucking rond de jambes!” He broke off mid-wail with a whimper, panting for oxygen. Seunghyun waited, his pulse still caught in Jiyong’s strangling grip. “You quit because you wanted to! You had the choice, and you fucking threw it away! But even n-now your l-lazy ass can finish class whenever you feel like it! It’s so--it’s s-so--!”
Unfair. Neither of them could utter the word that hung heavy between them. Jiyong’s throat was rasping hoarsely with each gasp now.
“Ji--”
“You bastard!” Jiyong spat, “not even rond de jambe! And I skipped straight from tendus to conserve energy...” he trailed off with a broken whimper that suckerpunched Seunghyun straight in the gut.
“For how long…”
“More than a week,” Jiyong smiled bitterly through his slowing tears, sniffing miserably.
“Ji! Ji, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” Jiyong turned away at Seunghyun’s pleading tone. Seunghyun had been dreading this moment for months now, waiting for it to come crashing down ever since the night of Jiyong’s last performance. Or last public one, anyway; virtually everything Ji did was a performance. Jiyong lifted his head with one last dry, rattling sob.
“Hey, hey shh…” Seunghyun soothed, smoothing a thumb along Ji’s tear streaked jawline. “Let’s go get breakfast. You want pancakes?” As if they could pretend to be any other couple out for a relaxing meal at 9:00 AM on a warm spring Saturday.
“Mmph,” Jiyong whimpered, nodding slowly. Seunghyun lunged for the box of tissues on the chair by the door and handed it over.
“Here. Just clean up a little, I’ll go get your things.” Ji nodded again, reaching for his towel.
“I’m sorry about the mirror.”
“It’s ok, really.”
“Aren’t you gonna ask about my foot?” Seunghyun rolled his eyes, lips pulling into a fond smile.
“Did you break that too, you klutz?”
“Bastard,” Jiyong muttered without any of the previous venom, flinging his sweat soaked towel across Seunghyun’s feet.
“I’ll be right back.” Seunghyun backed slowly out of the studio, not able to tear his eyes away from the tired smile in front of him as if he thought it might disappear forever the moment he closed the door.
4.
“You’re going to live a long time,” Jiyong announced, slicing cleanly through a tomato. Seunghyun cocked an interested eyebrow. “You are,” Ji insisted with a pouty frown, “I decided. Probably until you’re ninety, and then some.”
“Do I get to decide your life span, then?” Seunghyun asked, amused. Jiyong’s face fell, the hard lines of determination in his expression slipping like crumbled stone from the face of a proud cliff.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he whispered to the tomato halves as he seeded them with a blunt spoon. Regret trickled down Seunghyun’s throat like the red juice sliding down the slanted cutting board and into the basin of the sink, fresh and acid. Ji scraped the clinging seeds away from the surface with the dull edge of the knife blade, his fierce, deliberate strokes belying the anger stirring the pulse in his graceful neck to rapid speed.
“You’re going to get fucking old, wrinkled old, warty old, swiss-cheese-boned old, so old the air just smells like dirt to you despite the shorts in your olfactory wires-“ he paused a beat to rinse the board with a blast from the faucet. “It’ll smell like dirt, all the time, like the wet earth in the spring; and it will feel familiar, like home, like your primal juices are already joining the mud beneath you, oozing out of the soles of your wrinkled feet--!” Jiyong climbed onto the chair by the sink, lifting the knife as high as it would go but still nowhere near grazing the vaulted ceiling of his parents’ kitchen. “And-and you’ll still be alive, even then, alive enough to feel it and think it.” His eyes flashed dark and brilliant above Seunghyun, absorbing all his electrons and radiant heat in their pull.
“Ok,” Seunghyun agreed, swallowing tightly. “I’ll be fucking old. And what will I do?”
“You!” Ji brandished the knife at the skylight above them. “You will scare all the little children, even more than you do now with your haughty danseur’s epaulement!” He laughed wickedly, a curl of amusement tugging at his features. “And also, you will see. You will remember. You will imagine.” His face softened as the volume ebbed from his voice. “You have to. You have to write.”
One tiny ankle wobbled, an elbow sighed, and Jiyong was falling, collapsing in on the pressure of his own magnetism. The knife hit the floor, the sharp tip singing into the linoleum. Jiyong crumpled into Seunghyun, the force of his lung-crushing brightness exploding into Seunghyun’s collarbone and between his eyes.
They panted into the empty vacuum Jiyong’s plunge had swept, Ji’s soft exhales feathering the steel blade beside them with hot mist.
“Who will I write for,” Seunghyun whispered into the soft shell of Ji’s ear. Even though he knew the answer he needed to hear Ji’s voice, needed to feel the damp pulse of his breath against his throat.
“You have to,” Ji sighed through his nose, face all squeushed in delicious contours against Seunghyun’s warmth. “You’ll write for me.”
5.
Seunghyun straightened up from the floor, wiping a slow trickle of sweat away from it’s deliberate path towards his eyes. He kicked at the wad of black fabric tape that he had stripped from the floor and rubbed at the kink between his shoulder blades. He let out a heavy breath and surveyed their afternoon of progress: they had finished pulling up the flooring tape in the third studio now, and just in time, too. Seunghyun noted the time with a glance to the clock, the short hand edging towards four o'clock with every tick of the second hand. They needed to get a move on to the hospital if they were going to make it in time for Jiyong’s appointment.
Seunghyun sighed, wincing at the thought of traffic, and looked back to the floor. The long panels of marley still lay in place on top of the sprung floor, curling slightly upward at the edges, but their vinyl surfaces needed to be scrubbed clean before they could be taped down tight and secure. That was work for another day, though.
“So, we should probably get going,” Seunghyun said. Jiyong ignored him, still picking at bits of the rotten tape that had shredded during removal and clung stubbornly to the vinyl. “Ji?” Seunghyun called again. “It’s almost four.”
“We’re not finished yet.” Jiyong's voice was small and hard, echoing softly against the mirror he was facing.
“Ji, you have to go. You have to go and get better and you--”
“You’re not finished yet,” he repeated with quiet vehemence. “I’ll take the train.”
“Ji, remember what the doctor said? Your immune system is shot, you can’t take the fucking--”
“You don’t want to go. You hate going.” The accusatory bite in his voice sharpened as his volume rose.
“I think we share the same opinion of hospitals, Jiyong,” Seunghyun started hesitantly. “But I don’t mind going as long as I’m there with you.”
“I hate myself for doing this to you!” Jiyong was rocking on his heels, doubled over his knees as the words ripped out of him. “I hate that you have to watch it.” He choked on the words, but they both knew what he was thinking of: the pinch of hollow needles biting into bruised veins, the cold sweat filming the vinyl of exam tables, the purple bruises under tired eyes that only deepened with every passing week.
“You told me, from the beginning. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into.” It was the truth, but it rang leaden and distant in Seunghyun’s ears, his own words did, when he thought of the day Ji had told him. It had been their first fight, he remembered fondly, a sad sort of twinge spasming through his gut at the memory.
“Why are you smiling!” Jiyong’s eyes shone glassy, refracting fluorescent sparks of pained betrayal, raw self-hatred, loneliness. Seunghyun had always wondered at how Jiyong seemed his most vulnerable when he got defensive. He was like a piece of brittle, brittle glass, sharp and deadly between crushing finger bones. Seunghyun had learned long ago not to hold on too tight. “Stop it!” Jiyong screamed, nostrils flaring in time with his heaving gasps.
“Sorry.” Seunghyun frowned, careful to wipe every trace of amusement, of happy, from his face.
“I don’t want you to be sorry!” Ji hurled a roll of electrical tape that Seunghyun had forgotten to put away after marking blocking positions the day before. The throw was wide, missing its target by a few feet to bounce off a barre in the back with a dull clang, but Seunghyun ducked anyway to humor Jiyong’s temper; as much as he wanted to stand strong for his breaking Ji, the last thing he wanted right now was for Jiyong to misunderstand his stolidness for disdain or condescension. Or for the worst of all crimes, being unfeeling, unmoved.
In reality, he was so moved right now he thought he could melt at the slightest touch of breath across his skin, at the sight of the subtlest movement from Jiyong. All of Jiyong’s movements were exquisite. Even reckless, angry, unbridled, he was still beautiful; god, the most beautiful.
Seunghyun squeezed his legs, engaging external rotaters, iliopsoas, quadriceps, sartorii, inner thighs, calves shins and metatarsals, a smooth ripple of tension flowing to the floor to root him in a stance strong enough to hold back his tears. As fiercely as the snarl of emotions threatening to rip through him surged in his core, he had to stand firm; it was not his turn to cry.
“I don’t want your fucking pity!” Seunghyun released the hold with a whoosh of exhaled breath, ducking the next missile. He opened his eyes to watch a hairbrush hit the cracked vinyl divider behind him with a sharp splack, registering his own cringing wince at the movement of his mirror image.
What do you want? The words died at the back of Seunghyun’s throat, their tiny slippery edges sliding down his windpipe to punch the air from his lungs, their heavy imprints settling into his terminal bronchioles like leaden dust, carbon black.
“I don’t want anything from you! I can’t take anything else...I already took too much…” Jiyong fell silent, still rocking to the beat of inaudible music. He always moved with music. Seunghyun watched the short hand on the ugly utility clock scoot a notch closer to four, then three more notches, then one past. He could wait. He had waited before.
They were going to be late, really fucking late if you figured in for traffic, but it would be ok. Sometimes tears were more important. Jiyong’s tears were always important. Seunghyun waited and wondered who would care, if anyone would care, when it was his turn to cry.
He knew his turn would come.
6.
He found him crouched in the shadows of their tiny kitchen cradling the cleaver to his stomach, the dull edge of it biting into his bloated stomach through his thin T-shirt, the razor edge of it ghosting along the inner softness of his forearm.
“Jiyong, put it down.” Seunghyun set his empty water glass on the floor behind him and reached towards him, the knife blade glinting in soft glow of the night light above the kitchen sink.
“Why.” The hard, pebbled word wasn’t a question, it was a challenge.
“Because I said so.”
“Why.”
“Why? The same reason you swallow three different antibiotics, the same reason you wait long hours in a hospital waiting room for your turn at the torture apparatus, the same--”
“Answer the fucking question, Choi Seunghyun.”
“Because you’ve made it almost ten years with this thing, because you’ve beaten it for ten and nothing’s stopping you from another good ten. Hell, you could have 20! I’m not allowed to decide for you, remember?” He ended in a strangled laugh as the truth of his last words hit him in reverse. Not allowed, not allowed, not all--
“Seunghyun…” The air sang out of Jiyong’s lungs in a high pitched keen.
“Yeah?” Jiyong pressed a damp wad of tissues into his fingers. Seunghyun could smell the answer before Ji even opened his mouth, choked on his obliviousness for missing it in the first place.
“I started coughing up blood.” The back of Jiyong’s head hit the refrigerator door with a dull thud.
“C’mere.” Jiyong didn’t protest at all as Seunghyun removed the knife from his grasp and gathered him into his arms. He rocked Jiyong gently in his embrace for a few moments before carrying him out to the car for the lonely drive to hospital.
7.
“Promise me one thing.”
“Hmm?” Seunghyun brushed breathless lips against cold blue fingertips.
“You have to quit smoking.” Jiyong’s eyes were closed, but he formed the words so deliberately, each stroke of his tongue searing ember red, filter white, and ashy black into Seunghyun’s buzzing eardrums, that he could see their hard glint through Ji’s eyelids, from the depths of his sunken sockets.
The guilt hit Seunghyun in a tidal wave of bilious nausea, forcing the pitiful contents of his stomach out, up, out. Jiyong caught the plume of liquor darkened mucous in his calamine pink kidney dish. Seunghyun drained the nearest glass of water in one swallow.
“Ok.”
8.
“I like watching you sleep.” Seunghyun blinked awake, the soft light of early morning no match for the radiance of the smile it illuminated on Jiyong’s face.
“Mmrfgrrln, yamff,” he groaned in response, mostly to savor the sweet ripple of laughter that pealed across the angles of Jiyong’s body, rolling smooth and liquid to his adorable toes.
“Do that again!” Jiyong demanded, continuing to laugh until a sharp hitch in his breath aborted the sweet ring mid note. They both managed to withhold a wince, Seunghyun’s calves bunching in tight knots, Jiyong’s fingers knotting in the bed sheets; they were getting good at pretending, ignoring.
“I said,” Seunghyun lifted his fuzzy head with a dark smolder that was totally ruined by his spreading grin, “I should be the one saying that!” He caught up Jiyong’s wrist in a possessive finger embrace and nipped at the ragged thumbnail affectionately. Jiyong snickered again, his warm breath stuttering out of his nostrils to ghost over their entwined fingers as he arched forward in quiet hysterics, his tight back muscles pulling taught like steel cables through the thin green gown. “I should,” Seunghyun repeated in a whisper, his eyes catching with Ji’s in a suffocating gaze as he settled back against the mattress, suffocating because it was so full of shared warmth and life.
Jiyong scowled, poking the edge of his pink tongue between his lips in a lazy taunt. Jiyong was usually the first one to fall asleep after sex, the hot silk of his back tucked against Seunghyun’s broad chest, or the slack heat of his lips pressed in an open mouthed kiss against Seunghyun’s throat. Jiyong burned hot and furious before knocking out into comatose slumber, not shifting from the position he fell asleep in, and Seunghyun would lie awake to stroke his rough hair between rougher fingers, carefully counting each strand into the memory of his palms as his mind slowed and drifted towards oblivion along a sea of unspoken thoughts.
“Get used to it, jerk.” Ji’s fingers tangled in Seunghyun’s, lazy and possessive. “I’m gonna be watching over you for a long, long time.”
9.
“Ji, I’m going to get really-hella-fucking old, aren’t I.” Seunghyun slumped against the cold pane of mirror behind him, his back leaving a slick trail of sweat as he slid to the floor.
“Yup.” Ji’s eyes were closed but his lashes quivered faintly against his cheek, the thin gold chain doubled through the swell of his earlobe vibrating imperceptibly at his light hum of agreement; Seunghyun knew it did because he had caught the resonance against the pads of his fingers so many times.
“I’m gonna…lose my mind, aren’t I.” His voice cracked on the words that had been torturing him for weeks now, finally speaking images he was terrified of releasing into sound waves lest they ricochet back to embed beneath his skin with the finality of fate.
“Hah,” Jiyong scoffed in the back of his throat. “Nice try, Hyunnie, you’re already crazy as a loon and we both know it.”
“No, I mean like, really lose it, like lose the past, or forget it. Forget it all. Lose my pieces of you.” He choked back a vicious sob as Jiyong sank insistent fingers into his forearm, twisting to kneel in front of Seunghyun's sagging figure.
“I said you were crazy.” Ji’s voice was even but his eyes were angry. Seunghyun stared up into them, his own frozen open in uncertain fear. The edge in Jiyong’s eyes dulled into warm concern. “Just listen to yourself.”
He released Seunghyun’s arm to brush gentle knuckles across his forehead, under his stubbled chin, over the sweep of his eyebrows, into the hollows of his cheeks. A smudge of his thumb against the furrowed groove in Seunghyun’s brow loosened the knot in his chest and six months of swallowed sobs ripped out of him like an earring tearing loose from an infected lobe, hot and slick in a bright burst of pain. It left the two halves of his chest cavity cloven and dangling.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-“ Jiyong cut off his mantra of choked whimpers with the hard line of his fingers against Seunghyun’s lips.
“Shhh. Stop it, stop it. Hush.” But Jiyong was choking too, now, the heel of his hand screwing against Seunghyun’s mouth to muffle the broken moans.
“Mmhmm mmf!” Snot was sliding down Seunghyun’s face, strings of it wrapping tentacles around Jiyong’s trembling wrist, gobs of it dripping between Ji’s clawed fingers into his open mouth. His chest ached so deeply, all the fibers of muscle hot with pain he could only cry harder at the thought of what Ji must feel every day, with every pull of oxygen. Saliva and mucous were coating the back of his throat, thicker and thicker, until he was drowning in it, and shit--there was the familiar dull, metallic tang seeping under his tongue again, blotting out the sharp minerals of the salty mess pouring into his mouth. Another nosebleed.
“Holy shit, Seunghyun!” Jiyong sat up, shoulders rolling, face streaked and hot. A pink trickle of blood slid from his palm to his elbow, diluted with their mingled tears. “Stop! You’ve got to stop it!” he begged. Seunghyun wanted to, wanted to ease the sharp scent of fear in Jiyong’s sweat, wanted to still the bucking gasps of his ribcage, wanted to let Ji lap up the last of his acid tears with his sweet pink tongue, he wanted, wanted, wanted! But it was too much, had already whelmed his last defenses, and he grasped blindly at what to stop first, clawed at the hem of Ji’s shirt, his throat closing on a gob of putrid phlegm, the veins in his nasal passages collapsing in on themselves, the rims of his eyes sagging under-
The flat of Ji’s palm connected with his face with a sharp, wet slap. It stopped, all of it, except for the shuddering breaths that kept hissing out of him and the hot blood that ran down his lips and chin in smooth pulses as his heart beat slowed. Jiyong stood to snatch a roll of toilet paper from the music stand in the corner, his eyes never leaving Seunghyun’s.
Thank you. Seunghyun could only thank him with his eyes, knowing that Ji already understood, anyway. He always did in the end. Jiyong’s fingers were careful, so precise as he wicked away the layers of blood and fluid from Seunghyun’s stinging face, stopping only once to swipe roughly at his own with the ragged cuff of his sleeve when the snot dared to bubble out.
“Ji, I’m-“
“Shh,” his pursed lips soothed. “Just let me take care of you.” Seunghyun relaxed into Jiyong’s touch, swollen eyes falling shut again as Ji finished with gentle strokes across his chin. They were both still panting when he wadded the sodden mass in a clench of his fist and dropped the mess into the empty metal waste bin at the edge of the marley, the absorbed blood already darkening in oxygen induced death. Ji slipped his fingers into Seunghyun’s, folding them in a warm curl against his palm.
“Let’s go home.”
You wouldn’t think that those two hands would fit together so perfectly, one white, compact, and restless, one broad and warm, grooves and peaks held together with sinewed dignity, but somehow they slipped into each other easily, spanning a practiced perfection between them, more perfect with every embrace.
Just trust him at his word, Seunghyun knew what perfect felt like.
10.
The pain made him move with a heavy gravity that he’d never felt before, always so light in health his feet seemed to barely skim the ground, bouncing and leaping his way forward. Not that this new weight didn’t suit him. It rooted Ji in quiet dignity, connected him to the earth as if he were just an extension of the fullness of nature: timeless, boundless, infinite.
“I think…” Ji dropped the pencil that hung loosely between his fingers, the web of skin stretching thinner each day it seemed. “I think I know now why I met you, why we’re together.”
“And why is that?”
“You’ll find that letter someday.” He closed his eyes with a soft smile. “I’ve been writing you for months now, you know, leaving them places you’ll look when I’m...when…” He dropped his head back against the pillow, struggling to suppress a racking cough as a single tear escaped down his cheek.
“Shh, shh it’s ok Ji,” Seunghyun slipped into the hospice bed beside him as gently as he could, gathering Ji’s small frame into the circle of his arms. He had always been small, just not…frail like this. It made Seunghyun want to carefully regulate even his breathing in Jiyong’s presence. “It’s ok, I know.”
“I know you know,” Jiyong whispered, another tear escaping from his lowered lashes and dropping onto Seunghyun’s wrist. “You bastard, you always know, you always have.” Seunghyun knew from his voice he was smiling, even though his own eyes were closed against the assault of blue veins, gray skin, thinning hair.
He tried to just feel Ji in his arms, picturing his lithe form throwing tour after sauté across their studio, sweat sliding across his smooth pink skin and tousled hair falling into his eyes; he could never remember to bring a headband; he was always stealing Seunghyun’s. Seunghyun suppressed a bubbling laugh at the thought lest it come out like a sob. No wonder he’d been stuck using the same gray headband going on two weeks now without realizing it. He needed to switch it out when he went back to work, maybe steal one of Jiyong’s neon ones in revenge.
“Shit. Why am I crying, Seunghyun?” Ji stirred listlessly in his arms and Seunghyun noticed the tears pooling in the dip of his wrist bone. “Why do I keep crying?” Jiyong’s shoulders were shaking with incredulous laughter as he hiccupped out pitiful sobs.
“I don’t know…” Seunghyun stretched out his hand to trace tears from jutting cheekbones, to sweep soft bangs from a hot brow. Jiyong’s fever was up again; he’d have to get up for more Tylenol soon. Shit, why didn’t he think to bring that to the bedroom before. “Let me know if you figure it out.”
Jiyong nodded, gulping back the rest of his tears. The tightness relaxed from his wasted shoulders and he slumped back into his lover’s embrace. Seunghyun’s breath caught in his throat for an awful second before Ji’s ribcage expanded slightly as he inhaled a shallow breath. As much as he hated seeing Jiyong all worked up, knew it was bad him, at least his tension let Seunghyun know he was still there, still fighting.
Seunghyun closed his eyes again, his fingertips that felt so clumsy and rough on the planes of Ji’s face never ceasing their soothing movement, and tried to reconjure that bright image, that vibrant Jiyong laughing and panting in the studio.
It was no use. Even with his lids sealed tight against the body in front of him, he could still feel reality invading the safe circle of his arms. The dead weight of each bird boned limb, the shuddering flutter of each shallow breath, the languid pulse oozing through bruised and punctured wrists: their physical imprint on the retinas of his nervous system was so graphic even Seunghyun’s heralded imagination couldn’t blot it out.
Jiyong heaved a long sigh, the tail of it rasping softly in his dry throat dragging out for minutes it seemed like, but his pulse never faltered in its feeble rhythm under Seunghyun’s fingertips where they had migrated.
“I’m going to sleep for a bit, if that’s ok.” Seunghyun opened his eyes, unable, unwilling to waste another precious moment deluding himself. His Jiyong was so beautiful; beautiful, even like this.
“Hyunnie,” Jiyong whimpered, grinding back with a weak wriggle of impatience. “Ok?”
“Sure.” Screw the Tylenol. Pain was reality anyway.