[oneshot] someday we'll cut our critics down to size
Title: someday we'll cut our critics down to size
Pairing: jiyong-centric (gtop if you squint)
Rating: pg13 for language
Genre: slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: post-scandal fic. really pointless! for underhand_glory because she is demanding as fuck and i love her. 1,890 words.
we fall but then we rise
that's the story of our lives
we are trainwrecks
( trainwrecks, weezer )
Youngbae is the one who finally gets Daesung to come out of hiding, which, in and of itself, is nothing new. They share rooms on tour, after all, and in times of great off-the-wall stress they've been known to cajole each other out of snits. Jiyong's too prickly, Seungri has no sense or tact, and Seunghyun prefers not to get involved unless it's absolutely necessary. Youngbae has always been the mother.
It's the way he does it that turns out to be oddly screwball. Jiyong guesses church, Seungri picks obligation, and Seunghyun, as usual, vows to stay out of it even though Daesung's silent stasis is killing them a little bit. It ends up being the gym, of all things. Youngbae kicks Master Hwang out of the workout room half a month before they have to fly out to New Zealand and drags Daesung down there for a couple of hours to lift weights or something.
They come back tired and dripping, and Daesung is still awfully quiet, but he's moving, at least.
"This is definitely, like, something straight out of a porn," Seunghyun remarks idly, gesturing at the almost translucent material of Daesung's muscle shirt. It startles the first laugh they've heard out of him in weeks.
It's a start. It's something.
The funny thing is that Jiyong doesn't even like weed. It's more Hyuksoo and Yanggaeng's thing, so he does his duty and takes a couple of drags whenever he's out partying with the rest of Nuthang, but it's never been something he consciously seeks out for the high. There are other things that do the trick a lot better when he really needs it.
So he tries not to think anything of it when the police call him in for the tests. It's not until YG's PR people call him in the middle of the night and the news breaks the next morning that the full weight of it hits him like a blow to the chest.
And bam-Seungri's walking on eggshells around him, Boram's never sure what to say, and Bom brings him a fruit basket because she's Bom and that's what she does. Jiyong goes in for concert-related shit and sometimes he can barely breathe from all the awkward stares and long pauses in conversation.
"You're just imagining it," Chaerin tells him flatly. "No one here cares."
Which may be true, but it feels like the entire rest of the world cares too fucking much.
Daesung's better. He goes to church with Youngbae and jokes with Seunghyun. For a while after the verdict is passed down in August, Daesung almost slips back into that aberrant shell of reclusiveness and crushing guilt he'd cultivated since the end of May. This time it's obligation that snaps him out of it: there are recordings to do for the new album and stages to plan for the 15-year-anniversary shows. By November, he seems to be functioning as well as he can under the circumstances.
Jiyong wishes he could do the same. It's his lack of remorse, really, that worries him. Prosecution didn't indict him, and frankly, Korea's stance on marijuana is bullshit, but it's not as if he can call it out. Too much shit is riding on him, too many people are counting on him to keep his head down and take it, and he's already caused enough trouble for everyone.
That doesn't make it any easier.
He feeds them the party line about the investigation on Healing Camp. It ends up being harder to talk about Daesung's situation than his own, but the absurd difference in gravity seems magnified tenfold in his mind during the show. Daesung is the one dealing with real problems-the only one Jiyong has is that he has to put up a demure front for the press so that the public continues to take them seriously and don't decide to pitchfork him to death. It is not that he feels blameless or sorry for himself. If he peels away the layers of defensive indignation, then mostly he's just exhausted, and having to sweet-talk his way through everything is not Jiyong's idea of a good time.
They go back to headquarters afterwards. Jiyong can't focus. He's tired but he doesn't want to sleep, tense but doesn't know how to relax. Even before the scandal, he was never the greatest at calming down from the compulsive fervor of day-to-day work. This, along with the new solo album in the works, compounds it so much that he feels like he's thrumming out of his own skin with negative energy.
Seunghyun is the one who steers him out of the studio and back home.
"What are you doing?" Jiyong asks when Seunghyun pushes him into his room. "There's work to do, I can't sleep, it's the middle of the day-" He's still holding his notepad, a stubby pencil dangling loosely in his right hand. He waves the paper in Seunghyun's face. "Can't sing or rap without lyrics."
Seunghyun takes it gently from him and scans the page it's flipped to. "You just wrote variations of the word fuck on this," he says, voice dry.
"It could work," Jiyong argues, but he's sinking down onto the edge of the bed.
"Get some sleep," Seunghyun says. He hooks his finger under the bridge of Jiyong's glasses and takes them off, sets them on the nightstand. "I'll make your excuses with management. Don't run yourself into the ground before the comeback."
"I'm not running myself into the ground," he snaps angrily, standing up again. "I'm so fucking tired of having to defend myself to everyone when I didn't even do anything wrong-"
"Hey," and Seunghyun's palming his elbow, grip encircling his upper arm. Jiyong blinks. "Stop fighting me."
"I'm not fighting-"
"Jiyong," he interrupts again, slow and even. "Jiyong. Listen."
"What?"
Seunghyun's lips curl up at the corners. "We're on your side."
Jiyong exhales. He runs a hand through the half of hair that's still there and closes his eyes. "Yeah, I know."
"Do you?"
He frowns and opens his mouth to rebut, but catches the look on Seunghyun's face as it dissolves into amusement. "You're an asshole."
"I know," Seunghyun says indulgently.
"Don't patronize me," he says, but there's no heat behind it. "Now get out of my room so I can sleep."
They fly to fucking freezing New York City a week later to film the Bad Boy music video. Budget has them staying in a two-room suite across the hall from the rest of the staff. Jiyong takes the couch the first night and then switches out with Youngbae, who switches with Seunghyun on the last night.
He's perched on the armrest trying to fit strings of words together when Seunghyun shuffles out of the bathroom, hair faintly teal in the low light.
Seunghyun peels his hoodie off and slips under the crisp comforter, toes nudging at Jiyong's leg. "What are you writing?"
"Nothing." Seunghyun raises a disbelieving eyebrow and Jiyong rolls his eyes. "Stupid shit. It's not important."
"Okay."
There's a minute of companionable silence. Then: "Feels good to be doing something again."
"It's hard work," Seunghyun points out.
"You're just lazy," Jiyong teases, laughing a little when Seunghyun sticks his tongue out at him.
"I'm selectively ambitious," he counters. "It's a skill."
"I'm sure."
"You should try it out some time."
"I'll keep it in mind."
Jiyong flips to the next page in his notebook. Seunghyun turns over so that he's facing the tiny television set on the far side of the sitting room. "How are you?" he asks, squinting at him.
Good, Jiyong wants to say, but that's not the whole truth, and he owes Seunghyun at least that. "I'll be fine." He's surprised to find that he believes it.
"Yeah?"
"God, since when did you care so much?" It comes out a tad harsher than he means it to, but Seunghyun seems to understand.
He pokes at Jiyong's leg with his foot again. "Go away. I want to sleep at least a little bit before we leave tomorrow."
Jiyong shuts his notebook and drops it into the suitcase lying open next to the coffee table. "Night."
"See you in the morning."
Chaerin drags him shopping with her the day after they get back. It's a Thursday morning, which means Kush and Teddy are in the studio remastering individual songs and they don't have dance practice until late in the afternoon. Buying shit is mind-numbing enough to be better than loitering around HQ, and if the ability to splurge on things he likes is the only thing he can control, then he sure as hell is going to take advantage of it-no matter that the vast majority of things they're purchasing will probably be put into use for the comeback.
"Xin's coming back soon," she mentions casually over lunch.
"He's too old for you," he says without missing a beat. He takes a bite of his bulgogi and ignores the way she's watching him.
"You think military service fucked him up?"
Jiyong snorts. "It's Korean military service, not some underground cult. I think you'll be okay."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she says wryly.
Later, they're waiting by the corner of the street when a flashing sign scrolls through an advertisement for the new album.
"Excited?" Chaerin asks, glancing over at him.
Jiyong smiles, shrugs a little and pulls his shades on. "Should be good."
Chaerin's birthday is the last Sunday of the month and they go upstairs after her dinner with the girls to give her their present. "We bought it ourselves," Seungri says, eager to please.
"I hope you weren't the one who chose it," Chaerin says blandly. Jiyong laughs and hands the trussed up bag over.
It's Chanel's Collection Harmonie de Printemps, and she almost has an aneurysm when she pulls it out.
"Shut up," she says, throwing herself at Jiyong, who scrambles to catch her. Seunghyun is chuckling from somewhere behind and Seungri looks like he might die inside when she gives him a hug, which is really pathetic and just like him.
"Good luck with the comeback," she says after the others have filed downstairs again. "You'll be great."
"Yeah, I know," he says, tossing his hair back. She grins.
SBS gives them a fifty minute comeback concert and three stages on Inkigayo, which means they spend the last two weeks leading up to it in the dance rooms rehearsing choreography for everything day in and day out. It's fucking exhausting, but in a physical way that's better than any of the mental blows they've collectively sustained over the past three-quarters of a year. This-the people, the industry, the rush of nerves before a performance-this is something he knows like the back of his hand, and coming back to it is a little like coming home.
They win Take 7, and Daesung flashes him a sort of awed look before stepping forward to take a proffered microphone and the statue.
Jiyong knows better than to think of this victory as some sort of big fuck you to the world. So they won an award. It just feels good.
He grins. The stage lights are hot against the crown of his head. Daesung smiles, his eyes crinkling into slits, and starts talking.
fin
A/N: i'm not entirely sure how factually accurate parts of this are because i haven't been paying close attention to things like ygtv and the continuity of their schedules, so consider all deviations artistic license, i guess? a long time ago lovelyable and i talked about how trainwrecks by weezer is the perfect yge song, so it was nice to finally be able to use it in something ♥.
Pairing: jiyong-centric (gtop if you squint)
Rating: pg13 for language
Genre: slice-of-life
Warnings: swearing
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: post-scandal fic. really pointless! for underhand_glory because she is demanding as fuck and i love her. 1,890 words.
we fall but then we rise
that's the story of our lives
we are trainwrecks
( trainwrecks, weezer )
Youngbae is the one who finally gets Daesung to come out of hiding, which, in and of itself, is nothing new. They share rooms on tour, after all, and in times of great off-the-wall stress they've been known to cajole each other out of snits. Jiyong's too prickly, Seungri has no sense or tact, and Seunghyun prefers not to get involved unless it's absolutely necessary. Youngbae has always been the mother.
It's the way he does it that turns out to be oddly screwball. Jiyong guesses church, Seungri picks obligation, and Seunghyun, as usual, vows to stay out of it even though Daesung's silent stasis is killing them a little bit. It ends up being the gym, of all things. Youngbae kicks Master Hwang out of the workout room half a month before they have to fly out to New Zealand and drags Daesung down there for a couple of hours to lift weights or something.
They come back tired and dripping, and Daesung is still awfully quiet, but he's moving, at least.
"This is definitely, like, something straight out of a porn," Seunghyun remarks idly, gesturing at the almost translucent material of Daesung's muscle shirt. It startles the first laugh they've heard out of him in weeks.
It's a start. It's something.
The funny thing is that Jiyong doesn't even like weed. It's more Hyuksoo and Yanggaeng's thing, so he does his duty and takes a couple of drags whenever he's out partying with the rest of Nuthang, but it's never been something he consciously seeks out for the high. There are other things that do the trick a lot better when he really needs it.
So he tries not to think anything of it when the police call him in for the tests. It's not until YG's PR people call him in the middle of the night and the news breaks the next morning that the full weight of it hits him like a blow to the chest.
And bam-Seungri's walking on eggshells around him, Boram's never sure what to say, and Bom brings him a fruit basket because she's Bom and that's what she does. Jiyong goes in for concert-related shit and sometimes he can barely breathe from all the awkward stares and long pauses in conversation.
"You're just imagining it," Chaerin tells him flatly. "No one here cares."
Which may be true, but it feels like the entire rest of the world cares too fucking much.
Daesung's better. He goes to church with Youngbae and jokes with Seunghyun. For a while after the verdict is passed down in August, Daesung almost slips back into that aberrant shell of reclusiveness and crushing guilt he'd cultivated since the end of May. This time it's obligation that snaps him out of it: there are recordings to do for the new album and stages to plan for the 15-year-anniversary shows. By November, he seems to be functioning as well as he can under the circumstances.
Jiyong wishes he could do the same. It's his lack of remorse, really, that worries him. Prosecution didn't indict him, and frankly, Korea's stance on marijuana is bullshit, but it's not as if he can call it out. Too much shit is riding on him, too many people are counting on him to keep his head down and take it, and he's already caused enough trouble for everyone.
That doesn't make it any easier.
He feeds them the party line about the investigation on Healing Camp. It ends up being harder to talk about Daesung's situation than his own, but the absurd difference in gravity seems magnified tenfold in his mind during the show. Daesung is the one dealing with real problems-the only one Jiyong has is that he has to put up a demure front for the press so that the public continues to take them seriously and don't decide to pitchfork him to death. It is not that he feels blameless or sorry for himself. If he peels away the layers of defensive indignation, then mostly he's just exhausted, and having to sweet-talk his way through everything is not Jiyong's idea of a good time.
They go back to headquarters afterwards. Jiyong can't focus. He's tired but he doesn't want to sleep, tense but doesn't know how to relax. Even before the scandal, he was never the greatest at calming down from the compulsive fervor of day-to-day work. This, along with the new solo album in the works, compounds it so much that he feels like he's thrumming out of his own skin with negative energy.
Seunghyun is the one who steers him out of the studio and back home.
"What are you doing?" Jiyong asks when Seunghyun pushes him into his room. "There's work to do, I can't sleep, it's the middle of the day-" He's still holding his notepad, a stubby pencil dangling loosely in his right hand. He waves the paper in Seunghyun's face. "Can't sing or rap without lyrics."
Seunghyun takes it gently from him and scans the page it's flipped to. "You just wrote variations of the word fuck on this," he says, voice dry.
"It could work," Jiyong argues, but he's sinking down onto the edge of the bed.
"Get some sleep," Seunghyun says. He hooks his finger under the bridge of Jiyong's glasses and takes them off, sets them on the nightstand. "I'll make your excuses with management. Don't run yourself into the ground before the comeback."
"I'm not running myself into the ground," he snaps angrily, standing up again. "I'm so fucking tired of having to defend myself to everyone when I didn't even do anything wrong-"
"Hey," and Seunghyun's palming his elbow, grip encircling his upper arm. Jiyong blinks. "Stop fighting me."
"I'm not fighting-"
"Jiyong," he interrupts again, slow and even. "Jiyong. Listen."
"What?"
Seunghyun's lips curl up at the corners. "We're on your side."
Jiyong exhales. He runs a hand through the half of hair that's still there and closes his eyes. "Yeah, I know."
"Do you?"
He frowns and opens his mouth to rebut, but catches the look on Seunghyun's face as it dissolves into amusement. "You're an asshole."
"I know," Seunghyun says indulgently.
"Don't patronize me," he says, but there's no heat behind it. "Now get out of my room so I can sleep."
They fly to fucking freezing New York City a week later to film the Bad Boy music video. Budget has them staying in a two-room suite across the hall from the rest of the staff. Jiyong takes the couch the first night and then switches out with Youngbae, who switches with Seunghyun on the last night.
He's perched on the armrest trying to fit strings of words together when Seunghyun shuffles out of the bathroom, hair faintly teal in the low light.
Seunghyun peels his hoodie off and slips under the crisp comforter, toes nudging at Jiyong's leg. "What are you writing?"
"Nothing." Seunghyun raises a disbelieving eyebrow and Jiyong rolls his eyes. "Stupid shit. It's not important."
"Okay."
There's a minute of companionable silence. Then: "Feels good to be doing something again."
"It's hard work," Seunghyun points out.
"You're just lazy," Jiyong teases, laughing a little when Seunghyun sticks his tongue out at him.
"I'm selectively ambitious," he counters. "It's a skill."
"I'm sure."
"You should try it out some time."
"I'll keep it in mind."
Jiyong flips to the next page in his notebook. Seunghyun turns over so that he's facing the tiny television set on the far side of the sitting room. "How are you?" he asks, squinting at him.
Good, Jiyong wants to say, but that's not the whole truth, and he owes Seunghyun at least that. "I'll be fine." He's surprised to find that he believes it.
"Yeah?"
"God, since when did you care so much?" It comes out a tad harsher than he means it to, but Seunghyun seems to understand.
He pokes at Jiyong's leg with his foot again. "Go away. I want to sleep at least a little bit before we leave tomorrow."
Jiyong shuts his notebook and drops it into the suitcase lying open next to the coffee table. "Night."
"See you in the morning."
Chaerin drags him shopping with her the day after they get back. It's a Thursday morning, which means Kush and Teddy are in the studio remastering individual songs and they don't have dance practice until late in the afternoon. Buying shit is mind-numbing enough to be better than loitering around HQ, and if the ability to splurge on things he likes is the only thing he can control, then he sure as hell is going to take advantage of it-no matter that the vast majority of things they're purchasing will probably be put into use for the comeback.
"Xin's coming back soon," she mentions casually over lunch.
"He's too old for you," he says without missing a beat. He takes a bite of his bulgogi and ignores the way she's watching him.
"You think military service fucked him up?"
Jiyong snorts. "It's Korean military service, not some underground cult. I think you'll be okay."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she says wryly.
Later, they're waiting by the corner of the street when a flashing sign scrolls through an advertisement for the new album.
"Excited?" Chaerin asks, glancing over at him.
Jiyong smiles, shrugs a little and pulls his shades on. "Should be good."
Chaerin's birthday is the last Sunday of the month and they go upstairs after her dinner with the girls to give her their present. "We bought it ourselves," Seungri says, eager to please.
"I hope you weren't the one who chose it," Chaerin says blandly. Jiyong laughs and hands the trussed up bag over.
It's Chanel's Collection Harmonie de Printemps, and she almost has an aneurysm when she pulls it out.
"Shut up," she says, throwing herself at Jiyong, who scrambles to catch her. Seunghyun is chuckling from somewhere behind and Seungri looks like he might die inside when she gives him a hug, which is really pathetic and just like him.
"Good luck with the comeback," she says after the others have filed downstairs again. "You'll be great."
"Yeah, I know," he says, tossing his hair back. She grins.
SBS gives them a fifty minute comeback concert and three stages on Inkigayo, which means they spend the last two weeks leading up to it in the dance rooms rehearsing choreography for everything day in and day out. It's fucking exhausting, but in a physical way that's better than any of the mental blows they've collectively sustained over the past three-quarters of a year. This-the people, the industry, the rush of nerves before a performance-this is something he knows like the back of his hand, and coming back to it is a little like coming home.
They win Take 7, and Daesung flashes him a sort of awed look before stepping forward to take a proffered microphone and the statue.
Jiyong knows better than to think of this victory as some sort of big fuck you to the world. So they won an award. It just feels good.
He grins. The stage lights are hot against the crown of his head. Daesung smiles, his eyes crinkling into slits, and starts talking.
fin
A/N: i'm not entirely sure how factually accurate parts of this are because i haven't been paying close attention to things like ygtv and the continuity of their schedules, so consider all deviations artistic license, i guess? a long time ago lovelyable and i talked about how trainwrecks by weezer is the perfect yge song, so it was nice to finally be able to use it in something ♥.