[oneshot] stay close, don't go
Title: stay close, don't go
Pairing: GTOP, CL/Seungho (if you squint)
Genre: futurefic, angst
Rating: PG13 (for ~mature themes~)
Author: gdgdbaby
Beta: lovelyable
Notes: if you dislike angst, please turn back now. you have been warned D: Crossposted at bigbang_fanfic &g_top & yokshim .
and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
- - the great gatsby, f. scott fitzgerald
There was a car accident, they say, and for one sickening second, that is all he knows.
He lurches out of his self-imposed trance when sajangnim tells them that Jiyong’s in the ICU and is going into surgery any minute now. He doesn’t understand how something like this could have happened to them, to him-Jiyong is Mr. Perfect and Infallible, and a car crash is most definitely not on his list of Things To Do.
Seungho, they say, had been driving, coming back from a late night out, a little bit drunk and a lot of stupid. Dead on arrival, DOA, and they say Jiyong is lucky to be alive, they fucking say Jiyong is lucky.
It feels like every nerve ending in his body is firing all at once - his mind gives away to raw emotion, and he can only stagger behind Youngbae in disbelief, trudging through the snow that’s packed and melting on the sidewalk towards their van.
- -
He’s in a coma, they say, due to blood loss and heart failure, brain starved of oxygen for those few vital minutes.
No, no, no, no is the mantra repeating in his mind over and over and over again. Youngbae nearly faints, and the two dongsaengs’ faces are a ghastly pale color. Daesung sits down hard in a hospital chair, rubs at his nose in agitation, pads of his fingers tracing where it was fractured a year ago. The doctors reassure them, say they’re bringing in the experts and state-of-the-art equipment, the best of the best.
Seunghyun doesn’t care what they do as long as they bring Jiyong back.
- -
Vegetable, they say, after hours and hours, and Seunghyun loses it.
He goes at the nurse that brought them this news, but two pairs of strong arms lock around his and hold him back, and he hears Youngbae’s voice shouting from somewhere far off. All he can pay attention to is the ringing in his ears that keeps getting louder, like a train that’s coming into the station and running him over on the tracks.
He hears a loud, drawn-out cry, and only after a minute does he realize that the anguished sound is coming out of his own mouth. Something wet is dripping down his face but nothing is processing, nothing is making sense to him anymore.
White, pure white, explodes behind his eyes when someone (probably Daesung, he thinks dazedly) hits him hard on the head, and then the whole world fades to black.
- -
The fangirls know better than to try and search out Jiyong’s private hospital. These days, they’re fairly quiet, and Seunghyun figures it’s just as well that they’ve been on group hiatus because he doesn’t think he’d be able to deal with screaming VIPs in this state.
He hates the sympathetic, pitying looks their manager gives him, but he puts up with it because he’s the one always driving Seunghyun to visit, even after hours. At first, the others always clamber into the vehicle behind him, but the weeks pass, slowly but surely as they are wont to do, and Seungri needs to start practicing for his next musical and Daesung’s solo album is coming out soon.
Sometimes he catches glimpses of their sunbaes and hoobaes, shadows cast long and dark around sharp corners of hallways and lobbies. CL takes it the hardest out of the 2NE1 girls, grief lining her young face; it seems like they’d shared a brain, those two, the female version of G-Dragon. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers that Yanggaeng had been their stylist, that Yanggaeng had been the one who’d accompanied her on every trip abroad, and for a moment, he feels a sense of kinship with her.
He doesn’t know what to say whenever Jiyong’s family bumps into him at the hospital. Murmurs brief hellos and I’m sorrys and yes, I’m feeling alrights. They always leave a bad aftertaste in his mouth, like the ones he gets with hangovers.
When he steps in with Youngbae one night, it’s the first time he’s seen Yang Goon cry - in some other time, some other place, some other life, he would have been scared, but now all he feels is numb.
Sajangnim excuses himself abruptly, fresh tears still drying on his face, slipping out the door, and the two of them approach the bed, take their usual places like they’re rehearsing for the next hit drama.
With peaceful eyes and a quiet voice, Youngbae tells their leader about life, reads him books and poems and Bible verses. Seunghyun just sits in the corner and stares at the white walls and the white cabinets and the white window drapes for two hours, not saying a word.
- -
The first time he speaks to Jiyong is when even Youngbae stops visiting regularly.
“You little fucker,” he manages to croak out. “I’m the only rapper now.”
He swears he can see eyes dart towards the source of sound underneath Jiyong’s translucent eyelids, doesn’t care if the movement is just all in his head.
“Sajangnim,” his voice comes easier this time, “Sajangnim says this will be our last album. He found your notes, Ji. The ones all crumpled up in your sheets. You were always a genius.”
Pause. Breathe. Grab his cold hand for the first time in months. “He wants me to go see a counselor. Hyeyoung’s worried too. All I do is sit around and drink and smoke and sleep.”
“It’s all your fault, you know.” He squeezes his dry eyes shut, hopes beyond hope that he’s not just imagining the twitch underneath his palm, the subtle movement of fingers.
After that, he makes sure that the doctors run brain scans every month, give him the reports the next time he comes, maybe deliver them to the Kwons, if they want.
All the money’s coming out of the endless abyss of Jiyong’s pocket, anyway. They could probably keep him alive off his bank account for three lifetimes over.
- -
“So I went to that counselor Yang Goon hired.” He draws circles and squares aimlessly across Jiyong’s cool skin, traces the tattoos on his arms. Plants his lips on Jiyong’s palm and wrinkles his nose at the smell of antiseptic. Outside, autumn leaves rain against shuttered glass panes.
“I gave her the clinical answers she wanted, and she giggled like a schoolgirl.” Seunghyun’s forehead is burning, and he puts it against the metal bar on the side of the gurney. “Turns out she was a fan or something. Wanted my autograph. Sajangnim made me hightail it outta there.”
His voice gets raspy, just a little bit. “Wanted to know if you were alright, too. Everyone’s waiting on you, Jiyong.”
He clears his throat awkwardly, the sound jarring in the absolute silence. “We’ll always wait for you.”
- -
“I finally got a driver’s license, Ji,” he walks in one day, brandishing the clean plastic card.
Crisp fall sunlight streams in and blankets the room in response.
His voice cracks, “I got it so that I can visit you whenever I want now.”
He swears off drinking because now, now he has to drive.
- -
Suddenly, YG forces them into a flurry of promotions and interviews the next spring. Seunghyun thinks he’s trying to snap him out of it, get him back on track. “It’s been over a year,” he says, “focus on real life and not the disinfected corners of a hospital room full of lost dreams.”
When he gets the chance to go back and visit, dusty blinds are drawn across the window, but a light from within casts the clear shadow of an outstretched arm, swishing through the air.
He gets into the room almost as if he’d teleported inside, heart in his throat because oh my God is Jiyong moving?
And then he realizes that hard plastic is attached to Jiyong’s wrists, ankles, waist, and this behemoth of a machine is moving him around so that his muscles stay alright, don’t atrophy in case he ever snaps out of it.
Seunghyun turns around as fast as he came in, legs pumping and carrying him to God knows where. He doesn’t stop until his chest is heaving and his breath is coming out in hot pants, hands clenched so tight that he can’t feel his fingers anymore.
He punches a brick wall and revels in the blood running down his fist - fuck them for getting his hopes up.
- -
He gets home, red liquid still dripping down his right hand to pool on the floor just inside their dorm.
Youngbae’s sitting on the living room couch, awake and waiting for him. He doesn’t bat an eyelash when he sees the sorry state of his knuckles, just brings out the first-aid kit and starts wrapping thin gauze over the chafed skin.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?” he asks.
Youngbae fixes him with that look of his, the one that makes Seunghyun feel like he can see right through him. “I always know where you’ve been; heck, everyone knows where you’ve been.”
His eyes, usually curved up into upside-down u’s, are a little too shiny in the dim light. “You’re killing yourself, hyung. Jiyong’s not-he’s not coming back.”
Seunghyun recoils harshly, the involuntary spasm jerking his hand out of the cool ones that were bandaging them. “Et tu, Youngbae? I thought at least that you would keep the hope alive.” He speaks in monotone, the statement not worthy of any inflection, any effort on his part.
The vocalist shakes his head, hands closing the first-aid kit with more force than necessary. “It’s your life, Seunghyun. You can choose to throw it away if you want to.”
- -
“It was our last concert, Jiyong. You would’ve liked to have been there.”
Seunghyun’s wearing a thick Heartbreaker hoodie despite the warm summer weather, smelling of champagne and icing and silly-string. “Everyone was bawling like a baby. Even I was crying my eyes out, and I haven’t cried since… well, yeah.”
He’s used to the silence by now, but that doesn’t make it any less unnatural. “We did a remix of all of your solo album songs, just for you. Yeah, cheesy as hell, but whatever. It’s the thought that counts.”
He stands up, stretches, prepares to leave. “We ended with Lies. We’ve always ended with Lies.” He rolls his head around to loosen the stiff muscles in his neck. “You always said that was the song you were the most proud of.”
- -
“Maknae’s doing solo stuff with M.Net. You know, now that Big Bang is over.” His lips quirk upward just a tad. “Daesung always calls him a sellout whenever we get together, drives him batshit insane. The Christmas party blow-up was pretty amazing - you had to have been there, though.”
Seunghyun’s sunglasses paint the room in shades of dark gray as he surveys the half-dead potted plant on the low cabinet next to him, the intravenous tubes that slide in and out of freshly changed hospital clothes.
“They want me to write raps for Minji,” he sighs. “Since I’m still with the company and they expect me to compose like you did. Earn my keep.”
He reaches underneath the shades to rub at tired, puffy-red eyes. “I’ll never be as good as you were, though. Goddamn, those half-assed rhymes I used to come up with…”
- -
Senior management always has to go through these long, boring meetings, and Seunghyun doesn’t even know how he made it into A&R because he sure as hell hasn’t been contributing his share.
CL’s here too, and the realization dawns on him slowly that they’ll be partners, they’ll be the ones training the next YG Entertainment idol group.
Fuck, he doesn’t have time for this shit.
“Youngbae,” he calls out after the meeting, in which he’d been folding origami cranes and tortoises to Minsuk’s faint amusement and dismay.
Seunghyun shifts from one foot to another as Youngbae pins him with a stare. “Yes, hyung?”
“Cover for me, will you?”
The other man’s eyes are too blank to not know what he’s referring to. “What are you talking about?”
“Shit, Youngbae, you know what I’m talking-you, don’t you understand how I feel? I can’t work, not when Jiyong’s like this.”
“How could you ask that? How could you ask whether or not I understand how you-” Youngbae crosses his arms, a cue that Seunghyun has learned over the years to mean defensive, angry, pained. “You’re not the only one who loved him, okay?”
You’re not the only one, you’re not the only one - the words bounce crazily inside his head and he has to get out of here, has to see him, even if the complete lack of anything but the barest of Jiyong’s vital signs cuts deep through his skin and bone. Seunghyun thinks he might be going mad.
- -
“Remember that time we planned to escape after filming a CF?” Seunghyun’s feeling nostalgic tonight, and it’s been years and years since he’s talked about the past.
“And that time we all went and got drunk on Seungri’s birthday because he’d just turned legal? He was always so butthurt about those Hite commercials we’d done before.”
In the background, sensitive instruments whirr and click in time to the beating of Jiyong’s heart. “Remember those tickets we got Youngbae so he could bring some chicks he liked to our concert? And of course he had to go invite our noonas, because that wasn’t awkward at all, especially since we’d had to dress up as fucking ballerinas or something.”
"Remember how we'd sneak out in the middle of the night, go to the park when no one was around? We'd just lie there, roll around on the grass and gaze up, up at the stars. And on good days, when we could see eternity stretched out in front of us, I'd teach you about the constellations."
He aims chapped lips upward to blow at his hair, messing up carefully styled bangs. “Remember,” he nearly stutters when he gets here, “remember when I kissed you? Held you? When we made sweet love? You looked so beautiful, you still look so beautiful - just, just beautifully broken. That’s all. Beautifully broken.”
He keeps talking and talking, like he’ll never stop, like the breath will never leave him, talks so much that he doesn’t notice when he passes the line between reality and his dreams.
- -
The next morning, Teddy grabs him by the shoulder, shakes him awake from where’s he fallen asleep in the hospital chair. Tells him that the Kwons want to pull the plug, cut off life support.
There are literally five seconds of choked silence before he can find it in himself to speak. “But he’s getting his brain scanned today,” Seunghyun protests, and he’s glad he’s sitting down, because he would have collapsed for sure if he wasn’t. “Some new technology that’s hot shit in the states right now.”
Teddy’s fed up, exasperated, shakes his head. “Are you stupid, Seunghyun? He’s not waking up, he’s a fucking vegetable. Get over it, move on. We all have, and we’re tired of waiting for you to get off your fat ass.” He swallows hard. “Jiyong wouldn’t have wanted to live like this.”
Seunghyun barely resists the urge to punch him, because Teddy’s still the one producing and composing for the company, and YG would have his head.
Then, sharp fingernails are digging into his palm and it takes him a while to process the fact that they’re not his fingernails.
Teddy glances down at his hand the same time Seunghyun does. He loosens his grasp but the vice-like hold doesn’t slacken - Teddy hits the red button next to Jiyong’s head and the next moments are filled with sound and alarms and loud voices, calls of get the GCS chart and plug it in and flip the power switch pinging back and forth through the air. He and Teddy get shunted out of the small room, his sunbae’s eyes widened in hopeful skepticism.
Seunghyun’s hands are shaking violently, and Teddy’s strong grip on his shoulder is the only thing that’s keeping him grounded, keeping him from somehow spontaneously combusting.
They bring the machine in, large and white with smooth edges, plastic glinting under the harsh hospital light. Seunghyun watches them hook Jiyong up through the thick glass, apprehension heightening with every second that ticks by. A Caucasian doctor rushes past them, and a hush falls as his critical eyes monitor the movements on the screen.
Seunghyun stares down in amazement at the little crescent prints lined up neatly on his left palm, the proof that he hadn’t been dreaming, wasn’t going crazy-
“His brain has been fully functioning,” the doctor declares after what seems like centuries, and even though Seunghyun still can barely understand English, the look on Teddy’s face tells him everything he needs to know.
- -
The room goes from deathly silent to bursting at the seams over the span of an hour. The doctors, annoyed, are trying to hook up speech synthesizers around the mob of YG family that streams out into the hallway.
In the end, they give up, and just attach the sensors on Jiyong’s shaved head and the pads of his fingers to a text-only screen mounted to the side of the hospital bed.
Well, don’t you all look damn chipper at 5AM in the morning.
CL screams and throws herself at a surprised Jinu, who happens to be the one standing the closest to her.
- -
“You’re like fucking Stephen Hawking now,” and the muscles of his mouth turn up almost painfully, so rusty they are from disuse.
Dumbass, Steve Hawking’s machine speaks for him. I type.
Seunghyun waves this off with a dismissive hand. “You know the staff would hook you up with a synthesized voice in a heartbeat, if you only asked.”
I’d like you all to recall my real voice when you see me, not some fake plastic sound from off those lame documentaries or whatever.
Seunghyun cocks his head to side, can't stop looking into those eyes he hasn’t seen open in so long. “Fair point.”
The typing stops, the cutoff abrupt. Then-
I heard everything, you know.
Seunghyun doesn’t know what to say to this.
Everything you said. I don’t think I could have survived if you hadn’t kept on talking. Five years of silence, goddamn. Enough to drive me even more insane than I was before.
A slow grin spreads across Seunghyun’s face. “Maybe I should’ve read pornos to you, made things more interesting from time to time.”
God, I hate you. Also, for the record, I can’t believe Seungri copped out on us in favor of M.Net.
“I don’t know, Jiyong. Out of all of us, who would actually…”
Okay, well if you put it that way, then I guess it does make sense.
If words on a screen could appear wistful, then now was the time. Did he ever find some nice girl to marry and go make babies with?
Seunghyun laughs, really laughs for the first time in ages. “Are you kidding? This is maknae we’re talking about. It’d be more accurate to say he found a harem of nice girls, not to marry, but to make babies with.”
We always planned on taking him to a brothel when he turned 21…
- -
Seunghyun tries to visit him when everyone else is gone, knows Jiyong appreciates the privacy.
Tell them I want to donate my body to science, okay? When all of this is over…
Seunghyun thinks about it, wryly amused. “Fangirls might gauge their eyes out just so they could have yours, Jiyong.”
Don’t be ridiculous, idiot. I didn’t mean that kind of donation, I meant, you know, something cool like freezing my body and slicing it up into thin cross sections so they can study me.
He’s both horrified and intrigued by this idea. There’s a sudden vibration against Seunghyun’s leg, and he looks up sheepishly - it’s probably the newest trainees down at the studio waiting for him. Jiyong’s face is placid, as always.
Hey, before you go, I gotta tell you there’ll be a package for me coming in the mail soon. I ordered it online. Bring it here when you get it, yeah?
Confused, distracted, thinking about other things already, Seunghyun nods, leaves.
- -
The small box is innocuously wrapped in thick brown paper and labeled “Kwon Jiyong” in neat typeset letters. He nabs it before any of the others notice and speeds through three stop signs and two red lights to get to the hospital.
Jiyong’s sleeping when he gets there, for the first time since he woke up. The room is filled to the brim with flowers and cards, and colorful figurines line the window ledges, where the blinds are swept shut.
Slowly, he opens the package, and a brochure falls out, a thin, tubular syringe decorating the front. Seunghyun flips it open, starts reading: “Intravenous administration is the most reliable and rapid way to accomplish euthanasia. A coma is first induced by intravenous administration of-”
He can’t tear his eyes away from the pamphlet in his hands, even though the words are blurring and twisting. Standing up knocks the chair over with a loud crash, and when he snaps his gaze towards the bed, Jiyong is watching him, pupils dilated in the darkness.
“I never pegged you as a quitter, Jiyong.” His voice is impossibly tight, jaw clenched around each word he spits out.
I can’t live like this and you know it.
“You’re not critically ill-”
Like fuck I’m not critically ill. Do you know painful it is to sit here day after day, not doing anything?
“Why couldn’t you have just died when they were planning to pull life support, then?”
Nothing is typed out in reply, and it gives Seunghyun the courage to continue. “This makes it even worse, that you’re alive and well but now you want to die, you want to throw it all away.”
I did it, God did it, He made my fingers contract around your hand so that I could say goodbye on my own terms.
Seunghyun can’t take this anymore - the pressure in his head is building and giant crests of pure feeling crash against the backs of his eyes. He shoves the box into his jacket and stalks out of the room, wanting to be anywhere but here.
- -
He doesn’t know why he brings the injections with him the next day. All he knows is that he's so, so very tired, and the will to fight is gone. He feels like he's walking on clouds towards some immense pinnacle, only to find that the air is too thin for him to continue.
Letters form steadily on the monitor. I can’t eat, can’t speak, can’t rap, can’t sing. Can’t even smile, Seunghyun. Smile, for God’s sake.
He pushes back short, soft bangs and kisses a warm forehead one more time, traces his fingers around a high cheekbone so that he can memorize Jiyong’s face.
You know you have to do it. It has to be you.
Please.
So Seunghyun does. The thin needles pierce through his fragile skin too easily, too quickly.
Jiyong’s always been a selfish bastard.
- -
The last words that stutter across the screen-remember, back in the day?
“Goodbye,” he whispers into the stale air.
There is no feeling - no snarky comment, no deliberately cutting response, no simple smile or laughter like bells. After all, those are long gone.
There is no steady thump from his heart, no light in his eyes - they are half-open, cold and glassy like marbles, like the marbles they used to play with on cold winter nights when there were no promotions going on, the ones he swears he can hear now, jangling in his ears as they roll around in their hollow tin-can.
He crumples up the plastic wrapper and lets it drop to the cool, sterile linoleum. Tens of thousands of VIPs tomorrow will weep and wail, the public will whisper and gossip furiously, critics will shake their heads at the demise of someone so talented, so young, so full of potential.
He will reminisce, lost in memories.
Seunghyun walks out the door, never looks back.
fin
A/N: fuck. this is the most depressing piece i have ever written in my entire life ;__; stay close, don't go is an indie rock song by secondhand serenade. the euthanasia info is from wikipedia. thanks to summer for looking this over for me, and melissa for putting up with my whining XD
Pairing: GTOP, CL/Seungho (if you squint)
Genre: futurefic, angst
Rating: PG13 (for ~mature themes~)
Author: gdgdbaby
Beta: lovelyable
Notes: if you dislike angst, please turn back now. you have been warned D: Crossposted at bigbang_fanfic &g_top & yokshim .
and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
- - the great gatsby, f. scott fitzgerald
There was a car accident, they say, and for one sickening second, that is all he knows.
He lurches out of his self-imposed trance when sajangnim tells them that Jiyong’s in the ICU and is going into surgery any minute now. He doesn’t understand how something like this could have happened to them, to him-Jiyong is Mr. Perfect and Infallible, and a car crash is most definitely not on his list of Things To Do.
Seungho, they say, had been driving, coming back from a late night out, a little bit drunk and a lot of stupid. Dead on arrival, DOA, and they say Jiyong is lucky to be alive, they fucking say Jiyong is lucky.
It feels like every nerve ending in his body is firing all at once - his mind gives away to raw emotion, and he can only stagger behind Youngbae in disbelief, trudging through the snow that’s packed and melting on the sidewalk towards their van.
- -
He’s in a coma, they say, due to blood loss and heart failure, brain starved of oxygen for those few vital minutes.
No, no, no, no is the mantra repeating in his mind over and over and over again. Youngbae nearly faints, and the two dongsaengs’ faces are a ghastly pale color. Daesung sits down hard in a hospital chair, rubs at his nose in agitation, pads of his fingers tracing where it was fractured a year ago. The doctors reassure them, say they’re bringing in the experts and state-of-the-art equipment, the best of the best.
Seunghyun doesn’t care what they do as long as they bring Jiyong back.
- -
Vegetable, they say, after hours and hours, and Seunghyun loses it.
He goes at the nurse that brought them this news, but two pairs of strong arms lock around his and hold him back, and he hears Youngbae’s voice shouting from somewhere far off. All he can pay attention to is the ringing in his ears that keeps getting louder, like a train that’s coming into the station and running him over on the tracks.
He hears a loud, drawn-out cry, and only after a minute does he realize that the anguished sound is coming out of his own mouth. Something wet is dripping down his face but nothing is processing, nothing is making sense to him anymore.
White, pure white, explodes behind his eyes when someone (probably Daesung, he thinks dazedly) hits him hard on the head, and then the whole world fades to black.
- -
The fangirls know better than to try and search out Jiyong’s private hospital. These days, they’re fairly quiet, and Seunghyun figures it’s just as well that they’ve been on group hiatus because he doesn’t think he’d be able to deal with screaming VIPs in this state.
He hates the sympathetic, pitying looks their manager gives him, but he puts up with it because he’s the one always driving Seunghyun to visit, even after hours. At first, the others always clamber into the vehicle behind him, but the weeks pass, slowly but surely as they are wont to do, and Seungri needs to start practicing for his next musical and Daesung’s solo album is coming out soon.
Sometimes he catches glimpses of their sunbaes and hoobaes, shadows cast long and dark around sharp corners of hallways and lobbies. CL takes it the hardest out of the 2NE1 girls, grief lining her young face; it seems like they’d shared a brain, those two, the female version of G-Dragon. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers that Yanggaeng had been their stylist, that Yanggaeng had been the one who’d accompanied her on every trip abroad, and for a moment, he feels a sense of kinship with her.
He doesn’t know what to say whenever Jiyong’s family bumps into him at the hospital. Murmurs brief hellos and I’m sorrys and yes, I’m feeling alrights. They always leave a bad aftertaste in his mouth, like the ones he gets with hangovers.
When he steps in with Youngbae one night, it’s the first time he’s seen Yang Goon cry - in some other time, some other place, some other life, he would have been scared, but now all he feels is numb.
Sajangnim excuses himself abruptly, fresh tears still drying on his face, slipping out the door, and the two of them approach the bed, take their usual places like they’re rehearsing for the next hit drama.
With peaceful eyes and a quiet voice, Youngbae tells their leader about life, reads him books and poems and Bible verses. Seunghyun just sits in the corner and stares at the white walls and the white cabinets and the white window drapes for two hours, not saying a word.
- -
The first time he speaks to Jiyong is when even Youngbae stops visiting regularly.
“You little fucker,” he manages to croak out. “I’m the only rapper now.”
He swears he can see eyes dart towards the source of sound underneath Jiyong’s translucent eyelids, doesn’t care if the movement is just all in his head.
“Sajangnim,” his voice comes easier this time, “Sajangnim says this will be our last album. He found your notes, Ji. The ones all crumpled up in your sheets. You were always a genius.”
Pause. Breathe. Grab his cold hand for the first time in months. “He wants me to go see a counselor. Hyeyoung’s worried too. All I do is sit around and drink and smoke and sleep.”
“It’s all your fault, you know.” He squeezes his dry eyes shut, hopes beyond hope that he’s not just imagining the twitch underneath his palm, the subtle movement of fingers.
After that, he makes sure that the doctors run brain scans every month, give him the reports the next time he comes, maybe deliver them to the Kwons, if they want.
All the money’s coming out of the endless abyss of Jiyong’s pocket, anyway. They could probably keep him alive off his bank account for three lifetimes over.
- -
“So I went to that counselor Yang Goon hired.” He draws circles and squares aimlessly across Jiyong’s cool skin, traces the tattoos on his arms. Plants his lips on Jiyong’s palm and wrinkles his nose at the smell of antiseptic. Outside, autumn leaves rain against shuttered glass panes.
“I gave her the clinical answers she wanted, and she giggled like a schoolgirl.” Seunghyun’s forehead is burning, and he puts it against the metal bar on the side of the gurney. “Turns out she was a fan or something. Wanted my autograph. Sajangnim made me hightail it outta there.”
His voice gets raspy, just a little bit. “Wanted to know if you were alright, too. Everyone’s waiting on you, Jiyong.”
He clears his throat awkwardly, the sound jarring in the absolute silence. “We’ll always wait for you.”
- -
“I finally got a driver’s license, Ji,” he walks in one day, brandishing the clean plastic card.
Crisp fall sunlight streams in and blankets the room in response.
His voice cracks, “I got it so that I can visit you whenever I want now.”
He swears off drinking because now, now he has to drive.
- -
Suddenly, YG forces them into a flurry of promotions and interviews the next spring. Seunghyun thinks he’s trying to snap him out of it, get him back on track. “It’s been over a year,” he says, “focus on real life and not the disinfected corners of a hospital room full of lost dreams.”
When he gets the chance to go back and visit, dusty blinds are drawn across the window, but a light from within casts the clear shadow of an outstretched arm, swishing through the air.
He gets into the room almost as if he’d teleported inside, heart in his throat because oh my God is Jiyong moving?
And then he realizes that hard plastic is attached to Jiyong’s wrists, ankles, waist, and this behemoth of a machine is moving him around so that his muscles stay alright, don’t atrophy in case he ever snaps out of it.
Seunghyun turns around as fast as he came in, legs pumping and carrying him to God knows where. He doesn’t stop until his chest is heaving and his breath is coming out in hot pants, hands clenched so tight that he can’t feel his fingers anymore.
He punches a brick wall and revels in the blood running down his fist - fuck them for getting his hopes up.
- -
He gets home, red liquid still dripping down his right hand to pool on the floor just inside their dorm.
Youngbae’s sitting on the living room couch, awake and waiting for him. He doesn’t bat an eyelash when he sees the sorry state of his knuckles, just brings out the first-aid kit and starts wrapping thin gauze over the chafed skin.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?” he asks.
Youngbae fixes him with that look of his, the one that makes Seunghyun feel like he can see right through him. “I always know where you’ve been; heck, everyone knows where you’ve been.”
His eyes, usually curved up into upside-down u’s, are a little too shiny in the dim light. “You’re killing yourself, hyung. Jiyong’s not-he’s not coming back.”
Seunghyun recoils harshly, the involuntary spasm jerking his hand out of the cool ones that were bandaging them. “Et tu, Youngbae? I thought at least that you would keep the hope alive.” He speaks in monotone, the statement not worthy of any inflection, any effort on his part.
The vocalist shakes his head, hands closing the first-aid kit with more force than necessary. “It’s your life, Seunghyun. You can choose to throw it away if you want to.”
- -
“It was our last concert, Jiyong. You would’ve liked to have been there.”
Seunghyun’s wearing a thick Heartbreaker hoodie despite the warm summer weather, smelling of champagne and icing and silly-string. “Everyone was bawling like a baby. Even I was crying my eyes out, and I haven’t cried since… well, yeah.”
He’s used to the silence by now, but that doesn’t make it any less unnatural. “We did a remix of all of your solo album songs, just for you. Yeah, cheesy as hell, but whatever. It’s the thought that counts.”
He stands up, stretches, prepares to leave. “We ended with Lies. We’ve always ended with Lies.” He rolls his head around to loosen the stiff muscles in his neck. “You always said that was the song you were the most proud of.”
- -
“Maknae’s doing solo stuff with M.Net. You know, now that Big Bang is over.” His lips quirk upward just a tad. “Daesung always calls him a sellout whenever we get together, drives him batshit insane. The Christmas party blow-up was pretty amazing - you had to have been there, though.”
Seunghyun’s sunglasses paint the room in shades of dark gray as he surveys the half-dead potted plant on the low cabinet next to him, the intravenous tubes that slide in and out of freshly changed hospital clothes.
“They want me to write raps for Minji,” he sighs. “Since I’m still with the company and they expect me to compose like you did. Earn my keep.”
He reaches underneath the shades to rub at tired, puffy-red eyes. “I’ll never be as good as you were, though. Goddamn, those half-assed rhymes I used to come up with…”
- -
Senior management always has to go through these long, boring meetings, and Seunghyun doesn’t even know how he made it into A&R because he sure as hell hasn’t been contributing his share.
CL’s here too, and the realization dawns on him slowly that they’ll be partners, they’ll be the ones training the next YG Entertainment idol group.
Fuck, he doesn’t have time for this shit.
“Youngbae,” he calls out after the meeting, in which he’d been folding origami cranes and tortoises to Minsuk’s faint amusement and dismay.
Seunghyun shifts from one foot to another as Youngbae pins him with a stare. “Yes, hyung?”
“Cover for me, will you?”
The other man’s eyes are too blank to not know what he’s referring to. “What are you talking about?”
“Shit, Youngbae, you know what I’m talking-you, don’t you understand how I feel? I can’t work, not when Jiyong’s like this.”
“How could you ask that? How could you ask whether or not I understand how you-” Youngbae crosses his arms, a cue that Seunghyun has learned over the years to mean defensive, angry, pained. “You’re not the only one who loved him, okay?”
You’re not the only one, you’re not the only one - the words bounce crazily inside his head and he has to get out of here, has to see him, even if the complete lack of anything but the barest of Jiyong’s vital signs cuts deep through his skin and bone. Seunghyun thinks he might be going mad.
- -
“Remember that time we planned to escape after filming a CF?” Seunghyun’s feeling nostalgic tonight, and it’s been years and years since he’s talked about the past.
“And that time we all went and got drunk on Seungri’s birthday because he’d just turned legal? He was always so butthurt about those Hite commercials we’d done before.”
In the background, sensitive instruments whirr and click in time to the beating of Jiyong’s heart. “Remember those tickets we got Youngbae so he could bring some chicks he liked to our concert? And of course he had to go invite our noonas, because that wasn’t awkward at all, especially since we’d had to dress up as fucking ballerinas or something.”
"Remember how we'd sneak out in the middle of the night, go to the park when no one was around? We'd just lie there, roll around on the grass and gaze up, up at the stars. And on good days, when we could see eternity stretched out in front of us, I'd teach you about the constellations."
He aims chapped lips upward to blow at his hair, messing up carefully styled bangs. “Remember,” he nearly stutters when he gets here, “remember when I kissed you? Held you? When we made sweet love? You looked so beautiful, you still look so beautiful - just, just beautifully broken. That’s all. Beautifully broken.”
He keeps talking and talking, like he’ll never stop, like the breath will never leave him, talks so much that he doesn’t notice when he passes the line between reality and his dreams.
- -
The next morning, Teddy grabs him by the shoulder, shakes him awake from where’s he fallen asleep in the hospital chair. Tells him that the Kwons want to pull the plug, cut off life support.
There are literally five seconds of choked silence before he can find it in himself to speak. “But he’s getting his brain scanned today,” Seunghyun protests, and he’s glad he’s sitting down, because he would have collapsed for sure if he wasn’t. “Some new technology that’s hot shit in the states right now.”
Teddy’s fed up, exasperated, shakes his head. “Are you stupid, Seunghyun? He’s not waking up, he’s a fucking vegetable. Get over it, move on. We all have, and we’re tired of waiting for you to get off your fat ass.” He swallows hard. “Jiyong wouldn’t have wanted to live like this.”
Seunghyun barely resists the urge to punch him, because Teddy’s still the one producing and composing for the company, and YG would have his head.
Then, sharp fingernails are digging into his palm and it takes him a while to process the fact that they’re not his fingernails.
Teddy glances down at his hand the same time Seunghyun does. He loosens his grasp but the vice-like hold doesn’t slacken - Teddy hits the red button next to Jiyong’s head and the next moments are filled with sound and alarms and loud voices, calls of get the GCS chart and plug it in and flip the power switch pinging back and forth through the air. He and Teddy get shunted out of the small room, his sunbae’s eyes widened in hopeful skepticism.
Seunghyun’s hands are shaking violently, and Teddy’s strong grip on his shoulder is the only thing that’s keeping him grounded, keeping him from somehow spontaneously combusting.
They bring the machine in, large and white with smooth edges, plastic glinting under the harsh hospital light. Seunghyun watches them hook Jiyong up through the thick glass, apprehension heightening with every second that ticks by. A Caucasian doctor rushes past them, and a hush falls as his critical eyes monitor the movements on the screen.
Seunghyun stares down in amazement at the little crescent prints lined up neatly on his left palm, the proof that he hadn’t been dreaming, wasn’t going crazy-
“His brain has been fully functioning,” the doctor declares after what seems like centuries, and even though Seunghyun still can barely understand English, the look on Teddy’s face tells him everything he needs to know.
- -
The room goes from deathly silent to bursting at the seams over the span of an hour. The doctors, annoyed, are trying to hook up speech synthesizers around the mob of YG family that streams out into the hallway.
In the end, they give up, and just attach the sensors on Jiyong’s shaved head and the pads of his fingers to a text-only screen mounted to the side of the hospital bed.
Well, don’t you all look damn chipper at 5AM in the morning.
CL screams and throws herself at a surprised Jinu, who happens to be the one standing the closest to her.
- -
“You’re like fucking Stephen Hawking now,” and the muscles of his mouth turn up almost painfully, so rusty they are from disuse.
Dumbass, Steve Hawking’s machine speaks for him. I type.
Seunghyun waves this off with a dismissive hand. “You know the staff would hook you up with a synthesized voice in a heartbeat, if you only asked.”
I’d like you all to recall my real voice when you see me, not some fake plastic sound from off those lame documentaries or whatever.
Seunghyun cocks his head to side, can't stop looking into those eyes he hasn’t seen open in so long. “Fair point.”
The typing stops, the cutoff abrupt. Then-
I heard everything, you know.
Seunghyun doesn’t know what to say to this.
Everything you said. I don’t think I could have survived if you hadn’t kept on talking. Five years of silence, goddamn. Enough to drive me even more insane than I was before.
A slow grin spreads across Seunghyun’s face. “Maybe I should’ve read pornos to you, made things more interesting from time to time.”
God, I hate you. Also, for the record, I can’t believe Seungri copped out on us in favor of M.Net.
“I don’t know, Jiyong. Out of all of us, who would actually…”
Okay, well if you put it that way, then I guess it does make sense.
If words on a screen could appear wistful, then now was the time. Did he ever find some nice girl to marry and go make babies with?
Seunghyun laughs, really laughs for the first time in ages. “Are you kidding? This is maknae we’re talking about. It’d be more accurate to say he found a harem of nice girls, not to marry, but to make babies with.”
We always planned on taking him to a brothel when he turned 21…
- -
Seunghyun tries to visit him when everyone else is gone, knows Jiyong appreciates the privacy.
Tell them I want to donate my body to science, okay? When all of this is over…
Seunghyun thinks about it, wryly amused. “Fangirls might gauge their eyes out just so they could have yours, Jiyong.”
Don’t be ridiculous, idiot. I didn’t mean that kind of donation, I meant, you know, something cool like freezing my body and slicing it up into thin cross sections so they can study me.
He’s both horrified and intrigued by this idea. There’s a sudden vibration against Seunghyun’s leg, and he looks up sheepishly - it’s probably the newest trainees down at the studio waiting for him. Jiyong’s face is placid, as always.
Hey, before you go, I gotta tell you there’ll be a package for me coming in the mail soon. I ordered it online. Bring it here when you get it, yeah?
Confused, distracted, thinking about other things already, Seunghyun nods, leaves.
- -
The small box is innocuously wrapped in thick brown paper and labeled “Kwon Jiyong” in neat typeset letters. He nabs it before any of the others notice and speeds through three stop signs and two red lights to get to the hospital.
Jiyong’s sleeping when he gets there, for the first time since he woke up. The room is filled to the brim with flowers and cards, and colorful figurines line the window ledges, where the blinds are swept shut.
Slowly, he opens the package, and a brochure falls out, a thin, tubular syringe decorating the front. Seunghyun flips it open, starts reading: “Intravenous administration is the most reliable and rapid way to accomplish euthanasia. A coma is first induced by intravenous administration of-”
He can’t tear his eyes away from the pamphlet in his hands, even though the words are blurring and twisting. Standing up knocks the chair over with a loud crash, and when he snaps his gaze towards the bed, Jiyong is watching him, pupils dilated in the darkness.
“I never pegged you as a quitter, Jiyong.” His voice is impossibly tight, jaw clenched around each word he spits out.
I can’t live like this and you know it.
“You’re not critically ill-”
Like fuck I’m not critically ill. Do you know painful it is to sit here day after day, not doing anything?
“Why couldn’t you have just died when they were planning to pull life support, then?”
Nothing is typed out in reply, and it gives Seunghyun the courage to continue. “This makes it even worse, that you’re alive and well but now you want to die, you want to throw it all away.”
I did it, God did it, He made my fingers contract around your hand so that I could say goodbye on my own terms.
Seunghyun can’t take this anymore - the pressure in his head is building and giant crests of pure feeling crash against the backs of his eyes. He shoves the box into his jacket and stalks out of the room, wanting to be anywhere but here.
- -
He doesn’t know why he brings the injections with him the next day. All he knows is that he's so, so very tired, and the will to fight is gone. He feels like he's walking on clouds towards some immense pinnacle, only to find that the air is too thin for him to continue.
Letters form steadily on the monitor. I can’t eat, can’t speak, can’t rap, can’t sing. Can’t even smile, Seunghyun. Smile, for God’s sake.
He pushes back short, soft bangs and kisses a warm forehead one more time, traces his fingers around a high cheekbone so that he can memorize Jiyong’s face.
You know you have to do it. It has to be you.
Please.
So Seunghyun does. The thin needles pierce through his fragile skin too easily, too quickly.
Jiyong’s always been a selfish bastard.
- -
The last words that stutter across the screen-remember, back in the day?
“Goodbye,” he whispers into the stale air.
There is no feeling - no snarky comment, no deliberately cutting response, no simple smile or laughter like bells. After all, those are long gone.
There is no steady thump from his heart, no light in his eyes - they are half-open, cold and glassy like marbles, like the marbles they used to play with on cold winter nights when there were no promotions going on, the ones he swears he can hear now, jangling in his ears as they roll around in their hollow tin-can.
He crumples up the plastic wrapper and lets it drop to the cool, sterile linoleum. Tens of thousands of VIPs tomorrow will weep and wail, the public will whisper and gossip furiously, critics will shake their heads at the demise of someone so talented, so young, so full of potential.
He will reminisce, lost in memories.
Seunghyun walks out the door, never looks back.
fin
A/N: fuck. this is the most depressing piece i have ever written in my entire life ;__; stay close, don't go is an indie rock song by secondhand serenade. the euthanasia info is from wikipedia. thanks to summer for looking this over for me, and melissa for putting up with my whining XD