(no subject)
title: when things are different (and so we start over)
author: chartre
rating: pg-13
pairing: jiyong/seungri
summary: he just brushed through the hallway and swung the door open just like that and now he’s staring at his back, his clavicles, all smooth and white and maknae-like.
notes: fiction. my first big bang fic, spare me! \o/ somewhat a leader-and-maknae sort of relationship, but i hope it doesn't disappoint anyone. :)
When Things Are Different (And So We Start Over)
jiyong/seungri
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
He steps out of the elevator and is immediately discouraged. A nurse is pushing an empty wheelchair into a familiar room, and a million and one ideas rush into Jiyong’s head. He knows he’s the last to arrive, and it’s obvious; he hears murmurs in the room across the hallway.
Jiyong knocks and ducks his head into the room. The room immediately smells like antiseptic and it’s nauseating. The lights are dimmed with a small trace of yellow light above the hospital bed, where he’s lying. They all help him out, crutches sitting on the other end of the darkened room, and the wheelchair close to the bed like it provokes him without pity.
Jiyong swallows hard.
Everyone is here: Seunghyun, Daesung, Taeyang, and-
“Seungri,” he breathes quietly to himself as he watches the boy settle into the low seat with wheels. Jiyong can’t believe his eyes. “What is this-”
No one meets his gaze because they are all as troubled as he is.
Seungri looks terrible, the circles under his eyes even darker than the last time he’s seen him; even worse than how he was during concert nights and sleepless productions and Jiyong can’t stand it.
Seungri asks all of them leave the room. “Except for Jiyong.”
They all leave quietly and close the door behind them. Wait in silence and patience while the news slowly unfolds for Jiyong. Maybe he should have visited more often. Maybe he should have considered it a little more.
He didn’t think things like this would be too grave, too serious, too dramatic for the world.
“Seungri. Talk to me.”
He doesn’t, he sits helplessly and quietly in the dark and waits for the tears to run like they’re guilt marks for Jiyong to see and when Jiyong does, he doesn’t look at Seungri. It’s cruel enough having to see him like this because Jiyong doesn’t like it one bit.
And he feels like he’s partly to be blamed for it.
“From knees down,” the doctor explains later to the boys and to their manager, the youngest still alone in the room. The chances are thin but there is a little bit of hope. The manager depends on that as he contemplated about what should be revealed to the public in their next press conference, but Jiyong doesn’t. The others don’t know what to think, but Daesung tells them that the glass is better half-full than half-empty and he tries to smile.
“He can still sing, can he?”
“But he can’t dance,” Seunghyun says lowly. “We can’t bring a wheelchair onstage or on set.”
“Crutches?”
Taeyang shakes his head. “He doesn’t want to give them a try.”
“What about a digital single?” Jiyong can see their effort while he keeps to the silence. It all hasn’t sunken in yet. Not yet. He needs a little more time.
“It still isn’t good for his public image.”
“Poor guy. At such a young age too.”
“Eighteen isn’t that too long ago,” Jiyong scolds a little. He never really liked anyone belittling Seungri. Not even if it was already obvious, even to the entire fandom. They call him maknae, and they do for a reason. They all do.
“What’s going to happen to us, hyung? To Big Bang? To Seungri, what’s going to happen to him now?” Taeyang asks, but no one answers him; no one wants to because no one knows.
“I don’t know, hyung. I don’t know.”
It’s difficult to believe that nothing has changed, even if nothing much happened over the past few weeks since the last release of a new single. They’re like that, always sticking up for each other.
“How are you doing?” Jiyong comes to visit him the following morning, yellow orchids in hand to brighten up the room, he supposes.
Seungri turns his head around from the window. He looks surprised, and Jiyong feels a little uneasy seeing that.
“They said you can already leave,” Jiyong shrugs. He squints his eyes from the bright light spread across the room. He smells it again, the antisepticise.
Seungri looks back at the window and stays silent for awhile. “I don’t think I want to leave.”
Jiyong winces and bites his lip. “It’ll only be temporary if you do something about it. You should try walking with crutches,” he says (and it’s an order), and thinks maybe he shouldn’t have left him to go home by himself that night.
“If you’re depressed-”
“I’m not depressed,” Seungri interrupts and turns his head. “Don’t say that Jiyong.”
“Then what do you want to do?” he asks with a little bit of a scold as he watches him try to maneuver the wheelchair on his own, but he’s going nowhere in direction. Jiyong reaches for him, but a hand violently pushes him on his arm and he stammers back.
Jiyong doesn’t have the heart to feel sorry for this boy; just worried, and that’s good enough, he says. He deserved that blow, maybe, but Seungri feels guilty for hitting him anyway.
“Sorry,” he says and rests his hands on the upper side of the wheels. “I just want to do this myself.”
“And then what?” Jiyong mutters, a little more remorseful about where this is going. He pauses. “Sorry, I’m-”
“It’s okay, I should…” Seungri looks away and tries to spin his weight on the wheelchair; while Jiyong watches with disgust (he has never imagined seeing him like this) in the silence.
“Seungri,”
He looks up at him, and pushes on one wheel. He’s starting to get the hang of it.
“Come back soon, okay?” he grimaces. “We-I don’t want to see you like this.”
“It’s depression,” Taeyang says.
“Or brain damage,” Daesung says. “You wouldn’t know; he was in an accident after all.” They all reconsider while Seunghyun gives him a good whack on the head.
“Why, weren’t you in one too?”
Daesung shrugs, and rubs the back of his head. “At least he’s alive, right?” he says, and Jiyong has the mind to hit him too, but digresses. It’s a part of the effort, he thinks; at least he still is.
“Anyway, can it be cured?”
“I told him to make use of crutches instead,” Jiyong smirks. “It’s not that he’s attached to the wheelchair but. I don’t think he just wants to try. At all.”
“We mean his depression-or brain damage-or whatever.”
“Oh.”
“But, he does need to try,” Taeyang considers. “But then again, what are we going to do with him? We can’t just leave him like that.”
There’s a long pause in between. Seunghyun narrows his eyes and waits for something to come to mind. It’s early in the morning and they’re sitting between hot coffee thinking of what to do. Jiyong looks at the three and counts to five before anything else.
“I’ll try to talk to him again,” he says. “Maybe he just needs a little persuasion.”
“Or a lot.”
“Kang Daesung, you’re not helping.”
When Jiyong comes back to the hospital late in the afternoon, he walks in on Seungri half-undressed; struggling into the holes of his t-shirt and the contours of his body against the orange sunset light give him some sort of meaning. Of significance. And Jiyong stares.
“You’re here again,” Seungri turns his head around and smiles; (Jiyong flushes and decides that he’s in a better mood. That’s good) “I didn’t hear you knock.”
Jiyong didn’t; he just brushed through the hallway and swung the door open just like that and now he’s staring at his back, his clavicles, all smooth and white and maknae-like-but he doesn’t think he should tell him that.
He walks to his side and helps him through his shirt. Seungri lets him.
“Hold still,” Jiyong laughs as he helps him search for the right arm hole.
“Quit running your fingers everywhere,” Seungri laughs a little and elbows Jiyong.
“Come on, be a little grateful, won’t you? At least they’re not making you wear their hospital gowns anymore.”
Once he gets his head through neckline, Jiyong brushes his hair out of his face and smoothes it out with his fingers. Seungri’s eyelids flutter open. Their eyes meet and Jiyong wonders why he’s never noticed him like this, so up close; pretty eyes, pretty eyelashes, even the circles under his eyes-
“Hyung,” Seungri whines and Jiyong snaps. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he says, “You’ve still got some sleep in your eyes,” Jiyong reaches for his face and brushes a thumb across his eyelid. Jiyong takes a moment to breathe. “Had a nap?”
Seungri nods. “Just for awhile. I needed to think.”
“In your sleep?” Jiyong smiles, and Seungri smiles back. Jiyong’s heart settles a little bit. “What were you thinking about?”
He pauses. “It was nothing.”
“Ri,” he smirks and rests a hand on his knee. It takes awhile for them to notice: Jiyong rubbing on the fabric on his knee and Seungri giggling but it’s not like he’s used to this, this lack of feeling. A moment passes and they realize that there’s nothing. Seungri doesn’t feel anything.
Seungri turns pale. He bites his lips and looks down. Jiyong takes his hand away from him.
“Seungri, Seungri, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“No, don’t,” he pushes him away but it’s effortless and tired. Seungri ducks his head lower as he buries his face in his hands, his forehead creased with frown lines and the room turns significantly quiet. Jiyong isn’t surprised to hear soft sobbing, nor feel Seungri’s shoulders quivering against his when he holds him close and tries to calm him down. Jiyong can’t help but blame it all on himself again. “Such an idiot.”
He comes back in the morning when the tears have subsided and dried on hollow cheekbones, and when Seungri has fallen asleep on kinder words that sooth his broken heart. Jiyong stops by the coffee shop and bookstore first and gets them both something to drink. He picks out a few titles off the shelf for comfort. Lee Seunghyun still refuses to leave the hospital room, and Jiyong worries about him not being able to do much.
“I bought you something to read,” Jiyong says and brings out the brown paper bag from under his lap. “So you won’t get bored.” Seungri sips his coffee and smiles through the rim of his cup.
The morning light streams through the vertical blinds on his window onto the cover of a book he holds in his hands. “What’s this about?”
“Something about a seagull.” Jiyong points out the obvious, looking at the picture of the silhouette of a bird on the cover. He doesn’t remember much but he knows he’s bought it for a difficult reason. A pun, or something like that.
He takes one look at him and waits for a train of thought to pass. Seungri sits in bed as if without a care at all as he begins to turn the pages of his new book, eyes behind a pair of glasses cast down and a smile on his face.
This shouldn’t be like this. Jiyong thinks to himself as he leaves the room for work.
In the evening, Seungri makes a call out to Jiyong (because the nurse lets him, reminds him that he can finally leave too but all he does is smile at her and then taps numbers on the telephone).
“Seungri?” Jiyong sounds a little surprised. “How are you?”
“Everyone’s still asking me that,” he sighs. “I finished that book you gave me.”
“Which one?” there are muffled sounds on the other line, something like music and people.
Seungri pauses. “The one with the seagull on the cover.”
“You did?” he could hear Jiyong smiling through his voice. “How was it?”
Someone’s screaming on Jiyong’s line, but Seungri supposes it isn’t a cry for help. After awhile the sound blurs out and it’s silent like suburban roads in the nighttime.
“Ji,” Seungri says, and holds the receiver tighter beneath his fingers. “I had an x-ray today. The doctors say my bones are healing.”
Jiyong smiles through his words. “Really? That’s great news!”
“But my nerves aren’t.”
There is a pause on the other line. Seungri bites his lip and waits. “Hyung, are you still there?” there is a slight quiver in his voice, and he’s nervous to know if Jiyong can hear him in the quiet.
“Jiyong?”
“Seungri,” he finally speaks, but there’s something wrong with his voice over the line, like there’s something lodged in his throat and Seungri is afraid, cold fingers and still shivering in the hospital hallway.
Seungri hangs up before Jiyong has the chance to say anything. He hears the beeping in his ear and it’s loud and deafening and it makes his heart ache and Jiyong isn’t doing anything about it. He kicks the dirt under his shoe and curses under his breath, screaming unpleasant words in his head because this isn’t supposed to end this way, Seungri isn’t supposed to be hurting like this and there’s just too much drama for a reality of two when it should just be enclosed in fiction and soap operas on television-where they belong-and not out there in broken telephone conversations.
It’s the first time in awhile when Big Bang makes an appearance to the public. They’re a member-less in a press conference to explain their next project but Jiyong makes up for the fifth shadow in the group as band leader. He talks about their maknae’s condition and that he’s “still recuperating and trying his best to get well soon. Please continue to support him until then.”
Seungri looks up from his book (another one of Jiyong’s buys) and at the screen where he sees his four bandmates. His friends. Family.
He closes the book on his lap and wonders why he isn’t there out there with them.
There is an audible knock on the door before it swings open to reveal just them, all four of them.
“Hyung,” Seungri smiles wide and all teeth when he sees Taeyang enter the room Seunghyun, Daesung and Jiyong behind him. He walks to the bedside and Seungri’s fingers clutch onto the hem of his shirt. Taeyang rests his hand on the back of his neck. Jiyong watches from the back of the room and there’s something about this that makes him tick.
“How’s our maknae doing?” Taeyang cocks his hip towards him. Jiyong smirks.
Seungri doesn’t dignify the question anymore and just smiles. “I saw you on TV just now.”
“Our press conference,” Daesung points up on the screen on the wall, “happened last night. This one’s just a recording, naturally.”
“Don’t you have work?”
“Not this evening, at least,” Taeyang says. “We just wanted to pay you a visit.”
They ask him about leaving the hospital to recuperate at home, but Seungri shrugs at all of them. His eyes meet Jiyong’s for a second and it’s still something undecided, but noticeably cold. Seungri tries to smile and the rest of them smile back.
“You’re starting to look a little better, aren’t you?”
Seungri shrugs again.
“C’mon Ri, you’re going to have to talk a little. You’re making us nervous here,” Daesung laughs regrettably, and it sounds a little forced. They all try to put on a face.
Jiyong clears his throat. “He’s tired. We probably should go now, he needs rest.”
They say their goodbyes and head out of the room. It’s barely been ten minutes and the air has already grown cold. Jiyong stops just before the door, tells them he’ll stay for awhile and shuts it close.
“Hyung, do they-”
“No,” Jiyong cuts him mid-sentence and turns to look at him. “They don’t know. I haven’t told them,” and Jiyong doesn’t plan on telling, either.
“Then what about the conference?”
“What about the conference?” Jiyong walks to him on his bedside. “It happened last night. Before you called me up-and then hung up on me.”
Seungri ducked his head and twisted his fingers into the blanket on his lap, his knuckles white-tipped.
“I was on my way out, and then you called. Seunghyun, I-this. You could have-you should have-”
“Ji,” Seungri stops him mid-sentence, and it’s false courage on the corners of his mouth now, creases on his forehead, frowning eyes and a stiff upper lip. Seungri feels accused.
It’s one thing when the crippled boy starts shifting on the bed-like he’s forcing himself out of it-but it’s another when one of his palms miss a bed spring and it slips off the bed.
It’s almost too impossible, too surreal and life-threatening because Jiyong has never come close to death like this, but Seungri has, and Jiyong isn’t going to allow that to happen again.
He dives right in, twisting his arm one way undesirable and his knees scrape against the hot friction of the carpet beneath, teeth gritting in pain but Seungri’s face is next to his, his arms on his shoulders and oh my god he’s safe.
“Jiyong!” Seungri cries but the pain is nothing now, Jiyong assures him as he gets back up on his feet. His jeans are bleached, and beneath them his knees are red and lined with burn scratches, but all Jiyong does is throw his head back and laugh.
A nurse comes rushing in the room. All seems sound and good, save for Jiyong’s knees but he explains to her with a twist here and there. Seungri sits helpless in bed as he listens to him and his white lies, and then smiles at the nurse. She sighs in relief and turns to leave to make her rounds. Jiyong turns back to him and smiles sadly. Seungri notices it immediately because he turns away just as quick, his face flushed.
“Seungri, please take care of yourself. We’ll still be waiting.”
Jiyong is close to leaving but Seungri reaches his hand out on nothing and calls for him. Jiyong turns, knees keeping up as he smiles at Seungri. Still broken.
“Think they allow beer inside the hospital?”
Seungri pops a can open with a fsss and waits for the sound to settle. “I can drink this, right?”
“Eighteen, right? That seems to be legal, I think.”
Seungri chuckles and presses his lips to the rim of the can. Jiyong sits beside him with his own can, the rest of the cans under the bed just in case a nurse decides to stop by and check up on Seungri.
It’s a little bit past one in the morning when they sit in the dark with the lights turned off-just because-and Jiyong starts laughing by himself, pretending not to see Seungri in the dark while he blows into his ear and Seungri just runs his fingers on his arms and giggles and giggles.
“Hyung, stop it,” Seungri says for the nth time. There’s a certain softness to his voice, like it’s delicate and purposely pretty and gentle like this. Jiyong stops blowing in his ear and starts to recognize him in the dark. Their faces are just adjacent, and Jiyong can feel his breath on his cheek, his heartbeat under the skin of his palm.
“Jiyong?”
Jiyong blinks. And then slides a hand under Seungri’s jaw.
“Jiyong?”
Jiyong leans forward. Presses his lips against Seungri’s. The corners of his lips twitch a little knowingly and they bend at an awkward angle, but Jiyong doesn’t mind it.
Seungri tries something in the dark, closes his eyes and he kisses him back and suddenly the kiss turns fleeting, his stomach churning and twisting.
They pull back after awhile, and Jiyong can taste him on his lips and he tastes like. Like beer, and it’s sweet and bitter and wet.
“You taste like beer,” Seungri whispers, touches his lips and they’re warm and tickling under his fingers.
“So do you,” Jiyong says a little scornfully, but they both know they’re smiling in the dark.
They kiss again. Jiyong’s fingers cradles his face and he pushes his tongue between his teeth. Several things run through his head at the moment as the springs creak under their weight, and Seungri holds tight onto Jiyong’s shoulders, makes a quiet sound in his throat and it makes Jiyong shiver.
Fingers tighten into his hair and Seungri can feel his bottom lip bruise from Jiyong’s teeth and he can’t breathe; he needs to breathe but Jiyong is kissing and kissing him and it’s hard to breathe when he doesn’t want to stop either.
They pull apart minutes later, faces flushed with heat in the dark, and Seungri cups his mouth with both hands. He tries to stay quiet, but he’s catching his breath, and so is Jiyong, their breaths hitching at mixed paces.
“Jiyong, I’m scared.”
“Scared for what?” he breathes, rests his hands on Seungri’s neck. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No,” Seungri’s voice quivers and Jiyong stops and notices it.
“I don’t want to go back,” Seungri whispers, his voice soft with the hint of tears at the corners of his eyes. “I want to stop dancing and singing and trying because I know I’m never going to get there, I’m never going to be as good as any of you-”
“Us?”
“-and I’m never going to live up to your standards. If I’m going to be the underdog for the rest of my life then I might as well forget about everything I’ve gone through because I don’t deserve any of this. Jiyong, Jiyong I hate it, I don’t want, I don’t-”
“Baby, stop,” Jiyong tries to shake some sense into the boy, despite the quiet sobs and the startled breathing, despite the tears that trickle down Seungri’s face and onto the hands that rest on his shoulders, and the fear that Jiyong has been keeping to himself, lying about to himself.
“What are you. This. Is this what you’ve been worried about all this time?”
Seungri is still silent, his sobbing still soft but audible.
“Baby, come on, talk to me. You’ve just got some alcohol polluting your system, this will pass.”
“I’m going to miss you guys.”
“Seunghyun, shut up. You’re not leaving us.”
“I’ll sit in a wheelchair my entire life.”
“Lee Seunghyun,” Jiyong raises his voice and grips his shoulders tighter. He’s shivering. “You’re eighteen.”
His mind is a mess of mixed words and Jiyong can’t speak, he can’t get the right words to say. He’s probably just as afraid as the boy, probably even more scared if it weren’t for the darkness and the silence and the invisible startled eyes he keeps imagining on Seungri.
“Seungri, I should have told you, I shouldn’t have left you to leave fro work alone that night. This wouldn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have fallen into that freak accident and this wouldn’t have happened at all.
“I. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Any of this. I should have paid attention but instead I was pretending that you were going to be okay, that this wasn’t going to be any big deal but. But here you are, here-you’re here in the hospital and you refuse to walk and run and dance again because of me, because of this stupid ego I have, because I’m a selfish bastard and look what it’s made you do.”
For awhile, no words pass between them. Jiyong could feel the weight of Seungri stare and he feels damned and guilty under it. He leaves the room still without any exchange of words.
In a week, Big Bang shows up at an evening music show. Everyone is getting ready, but Jiyong doesn’t feel like preparing. He smiles for all the cameras but it’s a little forced knowing they’re missing their maknae, his maknae. He feels uneasy, but Taeyang pats him on the back and tells him it’s going to be just fine. Some assurance, but Jiyong doesn’t feel it.
After the show, he makes his way to the hospital again, this time rehearsing apologies that are probably half-meant by now, but Jiyong does mean them, he means them a lot. “I’m sorry I haven’t been paying attention,” or “I’m sorry I didn’t give a damn about what or how you felt,” or “I’m sorry but I love you.”
Jiyong scratches that last one just because it sounds like a song.
The moment he enters the room, he doesn’t know what to think. It takes awhile for him to register this in his head, Seungri feet away from his bed and in between a pair of wooden crutches on either side of his arms.
Jiyong stands almost painfully against the wall of the room, but he knows it’s not his knees that are caving in. Seungri grunts and struggles and tries and Jiyong can see his feet moving slowly across the carpet. Jiyong takes a deep breath and forgets everything, waits for the tears to slide down the edge of his jaw before anything else.
Seungri looks up and he sees Jiyong crying tears and he knows they’re for him. He tries to plant both feet firmly on the floor, and then smiles at him.
Jiyong’s heart swells.
“Jiyong.”
“Seungri,” he mutters and listens to him giggle and it’s real and natural and god how it sounded like nothing but relief in Jiyong’s ears.
He runs to him and throws his arms around his shoulders, his face digging into the dip of his collarbone. He tightens his grip around him as Seungri holds himself up on both feet.
Jiyong pulls himself apart from him and cups his baby’s face with a smile passed between teeth and gleam, and then leans forward to kiss him on the lips.
“I’m proud of you maknae.”
Seungri is discharged from the hospital two days later. All five of them get together more often in the week to help him cope, take turns and have a little fun because they’re like that, always sticking up for each other. Jiyong can’t help but notice the progress he makes every time, the more-than-often smiles he puts on his face and sooner than later, he’s already trying to get around without his crutches. Jiyong presses kisses down his neck and it makes Seungri giggle, but he knows it’s good, it’s all getting better.
Big Bang releases a new single and Seungri shows up for the production of the music video and the press conference. Fans go wild seeing their favorite maknae, but it’s nothing compared to what Jiyong feels standing next to him, dancing with him and he’s doing it all on his own without the artificial support anymore.
They both sit down side by side on the corner of the dance floor during break time and listen to their single play in the background. Seungri rests his head on Jiyong’s shoulder and holds up the book with the seagull on the cover in front of his face for him to see. Jiyong laughs and laughs and thinks that things have changed, but they’re ready start things over.
author: chartre
rating: pg-13
pairing: jiyong/seungri
summary: he just brushed through the hallway and swung the door open just like that and now he’s staring at his back, his clavicles, all smooth and white and maknae-like.
notes: fiction. my first big bang fic, spare me! \o/ somewhat a leader-and-maknae sort of relationship, but i hope it doesn't disappoint anyone. :)
When Things Are Different (And So We Start Over)
jiyong/seungri
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.
- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
He steps out of the elevator and is immediately discouraged. A nurse is pushing an empty wheelchair into a familiar room, and a million and one ideas rush into Jiyong’s head. He knows he’s the last to arrive, and it’s obvious; he hears murmurs in the room across the hallway.
Jiyong knocks and ducks his head into the room. The room immediately smells like antiseptic and it’s nauseating. The lights are dimmed with a small trace of yellow light above the hospital bed, where he’s lying. They all help him out, crutches sitting on the other end of the darkened room, and the wheelchair close to the bed like it provokes him without pity.
Jiyong swallows hard.
Everyone is here: Seunghyun, Daesung, Taeyang, and-
“Seungri,” he breathes quietly to himself as he watches the boy settle into the low seat with wheels. Jiyong can’t believe his eyes. “What is this-”
No one meets his gaze because they are all as troubled as he is.
Seungri looks terrible, the circles under his eyes even darker than the last time he’s seen him; even worse than how he was during concert nights and sleepless productions and Jiyong can’t stand it.
Seungri asks all of them leave the room. “Except for Jiyong.”
They all leave quietly and close the door behind them. Wait in silence and patience while the news slowly unfolds for Jiyong. Maybe he should have visited more often. Maybe he should have considered it a little more.
He didn’t think things like this would be too grave, too serious, too dramatic for the world.
“Seungri. Talk to me.”
He doesn’t, he sits helplessly and quietly in the dark and waits for the tears to run like they’re guilt marks for Jiyong to see and when Jiyong does, he doesn’t look at Seungri. It’s cruel enough having to see him like this because Jiyong doesn’t like it one bit.
And he feels like he’s partly to be blamed for it.
“From knees down,” the doctor explains later to the boys and to their manager, the youngest still alone in the room. The chances are thin but there is a little bit of hope. The manager depends on that as he contemplated about what should be revealed to the public in their next press conference, but Jiyong doesn’t. The others don’t know what to think, but Daesung tells them that the glass is better half-full than half-empty and he tries to smile.
“He can still sing, can he?”
“But he can’t dance,” Seunghyun says lowly. “We can’t bring a wheelchair onstage or on set.”
“Crutches?”
Taeyang shakes his head. “He doesn’t want to give them a try.”
“What about a digital single?” Jiyong can see their effort while he keeps to the silence. It all hasn’t sunken in yet. Not yet. He needs a little more time.
“It still isn’t good for his public image.”
“Poor guy. At such a young age too.”
“Eighteen isn’t that too long ago,” Jiyong scolds a little. He never really liked anyone belittling Seungri. Not even if it was already obvious, even to the entire fandom. They call him maknae, and they do for a reason. They all do.
“What’s going to happen to us, hyung? To Big Bang? To Seungri, what’s going to happen to him now?” Taeyang asks, but no one answers him; no one wants to because no one knows.
“I don’t know, hyung. I don’t know.”
It’s difficult to believe that nothing has changed, even if nothing much happened over the past few weeks since the last release of a new single. They’re like that, always sticking up for each other.
“How are you doing?” Jiyong comes to visit him the following morning, yellow orchids in hand to brighten up the room, he supposes.
Seungri turns his head around from the window. He looks surprised, and Jiyong feels a little uneasy seeing that.
“They said you can already leave,” Jiyong shrugs. He squints his eyes from the bright light spread across the room. He smells it again, the antisepticise.
Seungri looks back at the window and stays silent for awhile. “I don’t think I want to leave.”
Jiyong winces and bites his lip. “It’ll only be temporary if you do something about it. You should try walking with crutches,” he says (and it’s an order), and thinks maybe he shouldn’t have left him to go home by himself that night.
“If you’re depressed-”
“I’m not depressed,” Seungri interrupts and turns his head. “Don’t say that Jiyong.”
“Then what do you want to do?” he asks with a little bit of a scold as he watches him try to maneuver the wheelchair on his own, but he’s going nowhere in direction. Jiyong reaches for him, but a hand violently pushes him on his arm and he stammers back.
Jiyong doesn’t have the heart to feel sorry for this boy; just worried, and that’s good enough, he says. He deserved that blow, maybe, but Seungri feels guilty for hitting him anyway.
“Sorry,” he says and rests his hands on the upper side of the wheels. “I just want to do this myself.”
“And then what?” Jiyong mutters, a little more remorseful about where this is going. He pauses. “Sorry, I’m-”
“It’s okay, I should…” Seungri looks away and tries to spin his weight on the wheelchair; while Jiyong watches with disgust (he has never imagined seeing him like this) in the silence.
“Seungri,”
He looks up at him, and pushes on one wheel. He’s starting to get the hang of it.
“Come back soon, okay?” he grimaces. “We-I don’t want to see you like this.”
“It’s depression,” Taeyang says.
“Or brain damage,” Daesung says. “You wouldn’t know; he was in an accident after all.” They all reconsider while Seunghyun gives him a good whack on the head.
“Why, weren’t you in one too?”
Daesung shrugs, and rubs the back of his head. “At least he’s alive, right?” he says, and Jiyong has the mind to hit him too, but digresses. It’s a part of the effort, he thinks; at least he still is.
“Anyway, can it be cured?”
“I told him to make use of crutches instead,” Jiyong smirks. “It’s not that he’s attached to the wheelchair but. I don’t think he just wants to try. At all.”
“We mean his depression-or brain damage-or whatever.”
“Oh.”
“But, he does need to try,” Taeyang considers. “But then again, what are we going to do with him? We can’t just leave him like that.”
There’s a long pause in between. Seunghyun narrows his eyes and waits for something to come to mind. It’s early in the morning and they’re sitting between hot coffee thinking of what to do. Jiyong looks at the three and counts to five before anything else.
“I’ll try to talk to him again,” he says. “Maybe he just needs a little persuasion.”
“Or a lot.”
“Kang Daesung, you’re not helping.”
When Jiyong comes back to the hospital late in the afternoon, he walks in on Seungri half-undressed; struggling into the holes of his t-shirt and the contours of his body against the orange sunset light give him some sort of meaning. Of significance. And Jiyong stares.
“You’re here again,” Seungri turns his head around and smiles; (Jiyong flushes and decides that he’s in a better mood. That’s good) “I didn’t hear you knock.”
Jiyong didn’t; he just brushed through the hallway and swung the door open just like that and now he’s staring at his back, his clavicles, all smooth and white and maknae-like-but he doesn’t think he should tell him that.
He walks to his side and helps him through his shirt. Seungri lets him.
“Hold still,” Jiyong laughs as he helps him search for the right arm hole.
“Quit running your fingers everywhere,” Seungri laughs a little and elbows Jiyong.
“Come on, be a little grateful, won’t you? At least they’re not making you wear their hospital gowns anymore.”
Once he gets his head through neckline, Jiyong brushes his hair out of his face and smoothes it out with his fingers. Seungri’s eyelids flutter open. Their eyes meet and Jiyong wonders why he’s never noticed him like this, so up close; pretty eyes, pretty eyelashes, even the circles under his eyes-
“Hyung,” Seungri whines and Jiyong snaps. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he says, “You’ve still got some sleep in your eyes,” Jiyong reaches for his face and brushes a thumb across his eyelid. Jiyong takes a moment to breathe. “Had a nap?”
Seungri nods. “Just for awhile. I needed to think.”
“In your sleep?” Jiyong smiles, and Seungri smiles back. Jiyong’s heart settles a little bit. “What were you thinking about?”
He pauses. “It was nothing.”
“Ri,” he smirks and rests a hand on his knee. It takes awhile for them to notice: Jiyong rubbing on the fabric on his knee and Seungri giggling but it’s not like he’s used to this, this lack of feeling. A moment passes and they realize that there’s nothing. Seungri doesn’t feel anything.
Seungri turns pale. He bites his lips and looks down. Jiyong takes his hand away from him.
“Seungri, Seungri, I’m sorry, I’m-”
“No, don’t,” he pushes him away but it’s effortless and tired. Seungri ducks his head lower as he buries his face in his hands, his forehead creased with frown lines and the room turns significantly quiet. Jiyong isn’t surprised to hear soft sobbing, nor feel Seungri’s shoulders quivering against his when he holds him close and tries to calm him down. Jiyong can’t help but blame it all on himself again. “Such an idiot.”
He comes back in the morning when the tears have subsided and dried on hollow cheekbones, and when Seungri has fallen asleep on kinder words that sooth his broken heart. Jiyong stops by the coffee shop and bookstore first and gets them both something to drink. He picks out a few titles off the shelf for comfort. Lee Seunghyun still refuses to leave the hospital room, and Jiyong worries about him not being able to do much.
“I bought you something to read,” Jiyong says and brings out the brown paper bag from under his lap. “So you won’t get bored.” Seungri sips his coffee and smiles through the rim of his cup.
The morning light streams through the vertical blinds on his window onto the cover of a book he holds in his hands. “What’s this about?”
“Something about a seagull.” Jiyong points out the obvious, looking at the picture of the silhouette of a bird on the cover. He doesn’t remember much but he knows he’s bought it for a difficult reason. A pun, or something like that.
He takes one look at him and waits for a train of thought to pass. Seungri sits in bed as if without a care at all as he begins to turn the pages of his new book, eyes behind a pair of glasses cast down and a smile on his face.
This shouldn’t be like this. Jiyong thinks to himself as he leaves the room for work.
In the evening, Seungri makes a call out to Jiyong (because the nurse lets him, reminds him that he can finally leave too but all he does is smile at her and then taps numbers on the telephone).
“Seungri?” Jiyong sounds a little surprised. “How are you?”
“Everyone’s still asking me that,” he sighs. “I finished that book you gave me.”
“Which one?” there are muffled sounds on the other line, something like music and people.
Seungri pauses. “The one with the seagull on the cover.”
“You did?” he could hear Jiyong smiling through his voice. “How was it?”
Someone’s screaming on Jiyong’s line, but Seungri supposes it isn’t a cry for help. After awhile the sound blurs out and it’s silent like suburban roads in the nighttime.
“Ji,” Seungri says, and holds the receiver tighter beneath his fingers. “I had an x-ray today. The doctors say my bones are healing.”
Jiyong smiles through his words. “Really? That’s great news!”
“But my nerves aren’t.”
There is a pause on the other line. Seungri bites his lip and waits. “Hyung, are you still there?” there is a slight quiver in his voice, and he’s nervous to know if Jiyong can hear him in the quiet.
“Jiyong?”
“Seungri,” he finally speaks, but there’s something wrong with his voice over the line, like there’s something lodged in his throat and Seungri is afraid, cold fingers and still shivering in the hospital hallway.
Seungri hangs up before Jiyong has the chance to say anything. He hears the beeping in his ear and it’s loud and deafening and it makes his heart ache and Jiyong isn’t doing anything about it. He kicks the dirt under his shoe and curses under his breath, screaming unpleasant words in his head because this isn’t supposed to end this way, Seungri isn’t supposed to be hurting like this and there’s just too much drama for a reality of two when it should just be enclosed in fiction and soap operas on television-where they belong-and not out there in broken telephone conversations.
It’s the first time in awhile when Big Bang makes an appearance to the public. They’re a member-less in a press conference to explain their next project but Jiyong makes up for the fifth shadow in the group as band leader. He talks about their maknae’s condition and that he’s “still recuperating and trying his best to get well soon. Please continue to support him until then.”
Seungri looks up from his book (another one of Jiyong’s buys) and at the screen where he sees his four bandmates. His friends. Family.
He closes the book on his lap and wonders why he isn’t there out there with them.
There is an audible knock on the door before it swings open to reveal just them, all four of them.
“Hyung,” Seungri smiles wide and all teeth when he sees Taeyang enter the room Seunghyun, Daesung and Jiyong behind him. He walks to the bedside and Seungri’s fingers clutch onto the hem of his shirt. Taeyang rests his hand on the back of his neck. Jiyong watches from the back of the room and there’s something about this that makes him tick.
“How’s our maknae doing?” Taeyang cocks his hip towards him. Jiyong smirks.
Seungri doesn’t dignify the question anymore and just smiles. “I saw you on TV just now.”
“Our press conference,” Daesung points up on the screen on the wall, “happened last night. This one’s just a recording, naturally.”
“Don’t you have work?”
“Not this evening, at least,” Taeyang says. “We just wanted to pay you a visit.”
They ask him about leaving the hospital to recuperate at home, but Seungri shrugs at all of them. His eyes meet Jiyong’s for a second and it’s still something undecided, but noticeably cold. Seungri tries to smile and the rest of them smile back.
“You’re starting to look a little better, aren’t you?”
Seungri shrugs again.
“C’mon Ri, you’re going to have to talk a little. You’re making us nervous here,” Daesung laughs regrettably, and it sounds a little forced. They all try to put on a face.
Jiyong clears his throat. “He’s tired. We probably should go now, he needs rest.”
They say their goodbyes and head out of the room. It’s barely been ten minutes and the air has already grown cold. Jiyong stops just before the door, tells them he’ll stay for awhile and shuts it close.
“Hyung, do they-”
“No,” Jiyong cuts him mid-sentence and turns to look at him. “They don’t know. I haven’t told them,” and Jiyong doesn’t plan on telling, either.
“Then what about the conference?”
“What about the conference?” Jiyong walks to him on his bedside. “It happened last night. Before you called me up-and then hung up on me.”
Seungri ducked his head and twisted his fingers into the blanket on his lap, his knuckles white-tipped.
“I was on my way out, and then you called. Seunghyun, I-this. You could have-you should have-”
“Ji,” Seungri stops him mid-sentence, and it’s false courage on the corners of his mouth now, creases on his forehead, frowning eyes and a stiff upper lip. Seungri feels accused.
It’s one thing when the crippled boy starts shifting on the bed-like he’s forcing himself out of it-but it’s another when one of his palms miss a bed spring and it slips off the bed.
It’s almost too impossible, too surreal and life-threatening because Jiyong has never come close to death like this, but Seungri has, and Jiyong isn’t going to allow that to happen again.
He dives right in, twisting his arm one way undesirable and his knees scrape against the hot friction of the carpet beneath, teeth gritting in pain but Seungri’s face is next to his, his arms on his shoulders and oh my god he’s safe.
“Jiyong!” Seungri cries but the pain is nothing now, Jiyong assures him as he gets back up on his feet. His jeans are bleached, and beneath them his knees are red and lined with burn scratches, but all Jiyong does is throw his head back and laugh.
A nurse comes rushing in the room. All seems sound and good, save for Jiyong’s knees but he explains to her with a twist here and there. Seungri sits helpless in bed as he listens to him and his white lies, and then smiles at the nurse. She sighs in relief and turns to leave to make her rounds. Jiyong turns back to him and smiles sadly. Seungri notices it immediately because he turns away just as quick, his face flushed.
“Seungri, please take care of yourself. We’ll still be waiting.”
Jiyong is close to leaving but Seungri reaches his hand out on nothing and calls for him. Jiyong turns, knees keeping up as he smiles at Seungri. Still broken.
“Think they allow beer inside the hospital?”
Seungri pops a can open with a fsss and waits for the sound to settle. “I can drink this, right?”
“Eighteen, right? That seems to be legal, I think.”
Seungri chuckles and presses his lips to the rim of the can. Jiyong sits beside him with his own can, the rest of the cans under the bed just in case a nurse decides to stop by and check up on Seungri.
It’s a little bit past one in the morning when they sit in the dark with the lights turned off-just because-and Jiyong starts laughing by himself, pretending not to see Seungri in the dark while he blows into his ear and Seungri just runs his fingers on his arms and giggles and giggles.
“Hyung, stop it,” Seungri says for the nth time. There’s a certain softness to his voice, like it’s delicate and purposely pretty and gentle like this. Jiyong stops blowing in his ear and starts to recognize him in the dark. Their faces are just adjacent, and Jiyong can feel his breath on his cheek, his heartbeat under the skin of his palm.
“Jiyong?”
Jiyong blinks. And then slides a hand under Seungri’s jaw.
“Jiyong?”
Jiyong leans forward. Presses his lips against Seungri’s. The corners of his lips twitch a little knowingly and they bend at an awkward angle, but Jiyong doesn’t mind it.
Seungri tries something in the dark, closes his eyes and he kisses him back and suddenly the kiss turns fleeting, his stomach churning and twisting.
They pull back after awhile, and Jiyong can taste him on his lips and he tastes like. Like beer, and it’s sweet and bitter and wet.
“You taste like beer,” Seungri whispers, touches his lips and they’re warm and tickling under his fingers.
“So do you,” Jiyong says a little scornfully, but they both know they’re smiling in the dark.
They kiss again. Jiyong’s fingers cradles his face and he pushes his tongue between his teeth. Several things run through his head at the moment as the springs creak under their weight, and Seungri holds tight onto Jiyong’s shoulders, makes a quiet sound in his throat and it makes Jiyong shiver.
Fingers tighten into his hair and Seungri can feel his bottom lip bruise from Jiyong’s teeth and he can’t breathe; he needs to breathe but Jiyong is kissing and kissing him and it’s hard to breathe when he doesn’t want to stop either.
They pull apart minutes later, faces flushed with heat in the dark, and Seungri cups his mouth with both hands. He tries to stay quiet, but he’s catching his breath, and so is Jiyong, their breaths hitching at mixed paces.
“Jiyong, I’m scared.”
“Scared for what?” he breathes, rests his hands on Seungri’s neck. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“No,” Seungri’s voice quivers and Jiyong stops and notices it.
“I don’t want to go back,” Seungri whispers, his voice soft with the hint of tears at the corners of his eyes. “I want to stop dancing and singing and trying because I know I’m never going to get there, I’m never going to be as good as any of you-”
“Us?”
“-and I’m never going to live up to your standards. If I’m going to be the underdog for the rest of my life then I might as well forget about everything I’ve gone through because I don’t deserve any of this. Jiyong, Jiyong I hate it, I don’t want, I don’t-”
“Baby, stop,” Jiyong tries to shake some sense into the boy, despite the quiet sobs and the startled breathing, despite the tears that trickle down Seungri’s face and onto the hands that rest on his shoulders, and the fear that Jiyong has been keeping to himself, lying about to himself.
“What are you. This. Is this what you’ve been worried about all this time?”
Seungri is still silent, his sobbing still soft but audible.
“Baby, come on, talk to me. You’ve just got some alcohol polluting your system, this will pass.”
“I’m going to miss you guys.”
“Seunghyun, shut up. You’re not leaving us.”
“I’ll sit in a wheelchair my entire life.”
“Lee Seunghyun,” Jiyong raises his voice and grips his shoulders tighter. He’s shivering. “You’re eighteen.”
His mind is a mess of mixed words and Jiyong can’t speak, he can’t get the right words to say. He’s probably just as afraid as the boy, probably even more scared if it weren’t for the darkness and the silence and the invisible startled eyes he keeps imagining on Seungri.
“Seungri, I should have told you, I shouldn’t have left you to leave fro work alone that night. This wouldn’t have happened, you wouldn’t have fallen into that freak accident and this wouldn’t have happened at all.
“I. I didn’t mean for this to happen. Any of this. I should have paid attention but instead I was pretending that you were going to be okay, that this wasn’t going to be any big deal but. But here you are, here-you’re here in the hospital and you refuse to walk and run and dance again because of me, because of this stupid ego I have, because I’m a selfish bastard and look what it’s made you do.”
For awhile, no words pass between them. Jiyong could feel the weight of Seungri stare and he feels damned and guilty under it. He leaves the room still without any exchange of words.
In a week, Big Bang shows up at an evening music show. Everyone is getting ready, but Jiyong doesn’t feel like preparing. He smiles for all the cameras but it’s a little forced knowing they’re missing their maknae, his maknae. He feels uneasy, but Taeyang pats him on the back and tells him it’s going to be just fine. Some assurance, but Jiyong doesn’t feel it.
After the show, he makes his way to the hospital again, this time rehearsing apologies that are probably half-meant by now, but Jiyong does mean them, he means them a lot. “I’m sorry I haven’t been paying attention,” or “I’m sorry I didn’t give a damn about what or how you felt,” or “I’m sorry but I love you.”
Jiyong scratches that last one just because it sounds like a song.
The moment he enters the room, he doesn’t know what to think. It takes awhile for him to register this in his head, Seungri feet away from his bed and in between a pair of wooden crutches on either side of his arms.
Jiyong stands almost painfully against the wall of the room, but he knows it’s not his knees that are caving in. Seungri grunts and struggles and tries and Jiyong can see his feet moving slowly across the carpet. Jiyong takes a deep breath and forgets everything, waits for the tears to slide down the edge of his jaw before anything else.
Seungri looks up and he sees Jiyong crying tears and he knows they’re for him. He tries to plant both feet firmly on the floor, and then smiles at him.
Jiyong’s heart swells.
“Jiyong.”
“Seungri,” he mutters and listens to him giggle and it’s real and natural and god how it sounded like nothing but relief in Jiyong’s ears.
He runs to him and throws his arms around his shoulders, his face digging into the dip of his collarbone. He tightens his grip around him as Seungri holds himself up on both feet.
Jiyong pulls himself apart from him and cups his baby’s face with a smile passed between teeth and gleam, and then leans forward to kiss him on the lips.
“I’m proud of you maknae.”
Seungri is discharged from the hospital two days later. All five of them get together more often in the week to help him cope, take turns and have a little fun because they’re like that, always sticking up for each other. Jiyong can’t help but notice the progress he makes every time, the more-than-often smiles he puts on his face and sooner than later, he’s already trying to get around without his crutches. Jiyong presses kisses down his neck and it makes Seungri giggle, but he knows it’s good, it’s all getting better.
Big Bang releases a new single and Seungri shows up for the production of the music video and the press conference. Fans go wild seeing their favorite maknae, but it’s nothing compared to what Jiyong feels standing next to him, dancing with him and he’s doing it all on his own without the artificial support anymore.
They both sit down side by side on the corner of the dance floor during break time and listen to their single play in the background. Seungri rests his head on Jiyong’s shoulder and holds up the book with the seagull on the cover in front of his face for him to see. Jiyong laughs and laughs and thinks that things have changed, but they’re ready start things over.