[oneshot] the path to heaven runs through miles of clouded hell
Title: the path to heaven runs through miles of clouded hell
Pairing: ot5 (with a focus on gtop)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing, depression
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: five trips gd and top never went on (and one they did). adapted from a prompt that pause left for me way back in 2010 that she probably doesn't even remember anymore, but that's okay! most of this is unconscionable, self-indulgent sap and for that i am truly sorry. 1,890 words.
1. They become friends when Jiyong's in his first year of middle school, and only just beginning to replace oxygen with hip-hop as his life's blood.
At twelve, a year's age gap feels more like a decade. Seunghyun is thirteen and immediately cool because he skips class and raps underground, knows people who let them into the seedy clubs in Hongdae, where they breathe in the heavy smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol and music. Seunghyun seems to have the answers to every question Jiyong throws at him, as if the slow, methodical cadence of his voice is an accurate measure of wisdom.
"Have you ever thought about running away?" Seunghyun asks once, when they're at his house blasting Biggie and Wu-Tang over the crappy speakers of his CD player.
Jiyong thinks about sweeping grimy practice room floors and delivering water at YG headquarters day in and day out, and shakes his head.
"Liar," he says, grinning. "I can see it written all over your face."
Jiyong snorts, but scrubs at his cheek when Seunghyun turns back to the messy sprawl of CDs on the bed.
Two weeks before final exams, Seunghyun invites him to a family outing over winter break. "Your parents and your sister can come too," he offers, eyes alight with undisguised excitement. "We'll go skiing and sledding and drink all the hot chocolate we could ever want."
It's a simple request that seems somehow burdened with intent. His parents say yes, and Jiyong floats through the next two weeks of school and trainee duties in an anticipatory stupor. His parents say yes-but then they say no, because a few days after fall term ends is when they move away for good, to a new apartment building in a new district, and his parents have no time to even think about going on trips, let alone help arrange them.
At thirteen, the other side of the city feels half a world away.
2. Japan is weeks on end of people Seunghyun can't understand and a language Seunghyun can't speak. In March, after several sleepless nights of shooting beer commercials in Seoul and trying to ram more Japanese into his head, he mentions running away in a fit of pique.
Somehow, the throwaway remark becomes a self-perpetuating behemoth. Even Jiyong, eyes hanging with exhaustion, seems more amenable than usual. Japan's been rough for him too, on top of everything else he's had to deal with-and by dawn the next morning they've laid out detailed plans to divert managers and handlers, steal maps and cars. Daesung volunteers to drive because he's the only one who actually has a license. If Seunghyun weren't so out of it, he'd laugh at the absurdity-four grown-ass men who barely possess the ability to take care of themselves, skipping town on the company dollar.
But the snapshot in Seunghyun's mind's eye beckons: the idea of riding shotgun for hours, his legs propped up on the dashboard and the wind in his hair, Daesung's arm dangling out the window as he drives, Jiyong and Youngbae keeping up a low hum of conversation in the back. The destination could be terrible for all he cares-it's the trip he wants to savor, the smell of early spring riding in with the breeze, the sun hot as it beams through the windshield.
It all goes to shit when they tell Seungri, like these things are wont to do. Jiyong gets called in for a super secret meeting with Yang-goon after filming's over and comes back to the dorm in a daze.
"What happened?" Youngbae asks.
Jiyong sinks into the couch and stares at them. "We're getting two months off."
"What?" Daesung sputters. "When? Where?"
It's off to Europe for Jiyong, as it turns out. The rest of them receive some well-deserved downtime at home. It's still a vacation, of course, and Seunghyun is grateful. It just isn't the one they'd wanted.
3. Sometimes Jiyong feels like nothing more than an amalgamation of every piece of art he's ever loved, a slipshod collection of other people's words and songs and images rattling around inside a shell of a person. The whole is not greater than the sum of his parts. He is a product of everything that's ever resonated with him, even if he can't quite remember when or where it happened, or even the specifics of what it was.
If he's being honest with himself, he isn't surprised when the plagiarism accusations for Heartbreaker start rolling in. Not because Jiyong doesn't think they're absurd, because he does. Nobody lives in a vacuum, and if the netizens want to get technical about it, nothing is original anymore. No-he isn't surprised because this always happens, and it will probably always happen, and he's not sure he'll ever have thick enough skin to deal with it.
Everyone walks around him as if on tenterhooks for a couple of days, until Seunghyun folds his arms, leans against the frame of Jiyong's bedroom door and, eyebrows raised, asks him if he wants to get out of the dorm for a while.
"No," Jiyong says, and his voice comes out harsher than he'd intended. "No," he tries again, quieter. He rolls over and pulls the Laura half of his crumpled sheets up to his chin. "Thanks, though."
"You sure?" Seunghyun asks. "You look like you could really use it."
Jiyong scrubs a hand over his eyes and sinks deeper into the mattress. "If you want to go out and buy me coffee or something, be my guest."
When he wakes up twenty hours later, a double dirty soy latte with almond milk and heavy cream is congealing on his bedside table. The sticky note on the cap reads: if you'd come with me, ass, it would've been warm enough for you to drink.
Jiyong blinks for a moment and then gulps it down anyway.
4. It's September, almost half a year since filming for the movie wrapped, and Seunghyun still can't sleep, the white flash of gunfire arcing beneath his eyelids every time they slide shut.
"If there's such a thing as getting post-traumatic stress disorder from acting," Jiyong says, "then you've got it in spades."
"If there's such a thing as an IV drip of wine," he mutters, staring down at the bottom of his empty glass, "do you think sajangnim would get me one?"
It's difficult enough to disentangle yourself from anybody you've shared headspace with for five months, and somehow even more so when the person in question is really just an extension of your own imagination, a historical figure someone else fleshed out so that you could step into his shoes and, for all intents and purposes, become him. No one ever taught Seunghyun how to make it stop. The wine helps him crash when he needs it; coffee keeps him awake long enough to put on a front of normalcy and get through the day intact.
Jiyong has an almost superhuman ability to bounce back from adversity. Things were a little touch and go at the beginning of 2009, but Yang-goon carted him off to Europe and the change of pace seemed to do him some good. In the past six months, Seunghyun has often wondered if a trip out of the country would benefit him as well, if Hyunsuk would ever let him visit London and Paris, if leaving would be of any help at all. What he's most afraid of would be to go and have his situation stay exactly the same, to still feel small and tired and scared. It is better to keep turning all the hypotheticals over in his mind than to take action and invariably be disappointed when nothing sticks.
They start working on Big Bang's next album in the coming weeks, their first comeback in Korea after a three-year hiatus, and just the thought of it sends him into a tailspin of mixed emotions. The end of 2008 had nearly broken them, but then so had 2009, the year that just wouldn't end-and yet here they all are, still pressing on: Jiyong perched on a chair in the studio, hands yanking at his scarf, Youngbae and Daesung across the hall experimenting with the vocalists' tracks, Seungri working hard on his solo song.
Perhaps they're more resilient than Seunghyun gives them credit for.
"Are you alright?" Jiyong asks, tentative, in between takes.
"No," he says honestly, fingers fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. "And I don't know if I will be."
"That's okay," Jiyong says, and turns back to the pale glow of the monitor. He doesn't say anything else-doesn't have to, really. For some reason, it makes Seunghyun feel a little better that someone else knows.
He leans back and lets the music flow.
5. "They're really going to throw me in jail this time, aren't they?" Jiyong says, voice dry. "Fuck, man. I don't even like weed."
He's sprawled across one of Seunghyun's Scandinavian sofas, legs tucked together over the armrest on one end, fingers playing with the frayed edges of his rug. "Nah, they won't," Seunghyun says. "These things have a way of sliding right off you."
"Would you help me escape if I ever had to go on the run?" he asks sharply, tilting his head back to find Seunghyun. "Right, stupid question. Of course you would. You used to do it all the time in middle school."
"What can I say?" he replies, rolling his eyes. "We were very troubled children."
"So I've heard." Jiyong scrubs a hand through his hair. "Anyway, I wouldn't be able to leave even if I wanted to. Not anymore. There's just-too much." Seunghyun watches as his gaze flickers, the gears in his head churning over Daesung's fallout and his own failures and what the hell it all means for the rest of them. "I mean, where would I go?"
"Mars," Seunghyun suggests. He grins when Jiyong lets out a strangled laugh. "You never know. The authorities might consider it acceptable house arrest."
"Build me a spaceship," he says wryly, "and we'll have a deal."
(6. They go to Japan and China and Thailand, to Indonesia and Taiwan and Manila, to London and Peru and the United States and all the way back again for seconds. They steal toiletries from every hotel they stay at and swim in so many outdoor pools that their hair smells permanently chlorinated. They give interviews and go to press conferences, revel in the oceans of people that come to see them every time, wave upon wave of crowned light-sticks that seem to stretch on out forever.
It's for work, to be sure, but it's also for them-and in the heat of the moment, hair wild and sweat soaked through every layer of clothing they're wearing, there is nothing better than to stand up and scream into a microphone, to sing and dance and perform in a way that must be coded into their very DNA by now, the culmination of everything they've worked for reflected back at them everywhere they look.
It's not perfect. Jiyong isn't sure it ever could be, knowing who they are and what they've gone through to get here-but it's theirs. The distinct sense of belonging fills them up and buoys them higher. They're exactly where they should be.)
fin
A/N: title from it's time by imagine dragons.
Pairing: ot5 (with a focus on gtop)
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing, depression
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: five trips gd and top never went on (and one they did). adapted from a prompt that pause left for me way back in 2010 that she probably doesn't even remember anymore, but that's okay! most of this is unconscionable, self-indulgent sap and for that i am truly sorry. 1,890 words.
1. They become friends when Jiyong's in his first year of middle school, and only just beginning to replace oxygen with hip-hop as his life's blood.
At twelve, a year's age gap feels more like a decade. Seunghyun is thirteen and immediately cool because he skips class and raps underground, knows people who let them into the seedy clubs in Hongdae, where they breathe in the heavy smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol and music. Seunghyun seems to have the answers to every question Jiyong throws at him, as if the slow, methodical cadence of his voice is an accurate measure of wisdom.
"Have you ever thought about running away?" Seunghyun asks once, when they're at his house blasting Biggie and Wu-Tang over the crappy speakers of his CD player.
Jiyong thinks about sweeping grimy practice room floors and delivering water at YG headquarters day in and day out, and shakes his head.
"Liar," he says, grinning. "I can see it written all over your face."
Jiyong snorts, but scrubs at his cheek when Seunghyun turns back to the messy sprawl of CDs on the bed.
Two weeks before final exams, Seunghyun invites him to a family outing over winter break. "Your parents and your sister can come too," he offers, eyes alight with undisguised excitement. "We'll go skiing and sledding and drink all the hot chocolate we could ever want."
It's a simple request that seems somehow burdened with intent. His parents say yes, and Jiyong floats through the next two weeks of school and trainee duties in an anticipatory stupor. His parents say yes-but then they say no, because a few days after fall term ends is when they move away for good, to a new apartment building in a new district, and his parents have no time to even think about going on trips, let alone help arrange them.
At thirteen, the other side of the city feels half a world away.
2. Japan is weeks on end of people Seunghyun can't understand and a language Seunghyun can't speak. In March, after several sleepless nights of shooting beer commercials in Seoul and trying to ram more Japanese into his head, he mentions running away in a fit of pique.
Somehow, the throwaway remark becomes a self-perpetuating behemoth. Even Jiyong, eyes hanging with exhaustion, seems more amenable than usual. Japan's been rough for him too, on top of everything else he's had to deal with-and by dawn the next morning they've laid out detailed plans to divert managers and handlers, steal maps and cars. Daesung volunteers to drive because he's the only one who actually has a license. If Seunghyun weren't so out of it, he'd laugh at the absurdity-four grown-ass men who barely possess the ability to take care of themselves, skipping town on the company dollar.
But the snapshot in Seunghyun's mind's eye beckons: the idea of riding shotgun for hours, his legs propped up on the dashboard and the wind in his hair, Daesung's arm dangling out the window as he drives, Jiyong and Youngbae keeping up a low hum of conversation in the back. The destination could be terrible for all he cares-it's the trip he wants to savor, the smell of early spring riding in with the breeze, the sun hot as it beams through the windshield.
It all goes to shit when they tell Seungri, like these things are wont to do. Jiyong gets called in for a super secret meeting with Yang-goon after filming's over and comes back to the dorm in a daze.
"What happened?" Youngbae asks.
Jiyong sinks into the couch and stares at them. "We're getting two months off."
"What?" Daesung sputters. "When? Where?"
It's off to Europe for Jiyong, as it turns out. The rest of them receive some well-deserved downtime at home. It's still a vacation, of course, and Seunghyun is grateful. It just isn't the one they'd wanted.
3. Sometimes Jiyong feels like nothing more than an amalgamation of every piece of art he's ever loved, a slipshod collection of other people's words and songs and images rattling around inside a shell of a person. The whole is not greater than the sum of his parts. He is a product of everything that's ever resonated with him, even if he can't quite remember when or where it happened, or even the specifics of what it was.
If he's being honest with himself, he isn't surprised when the plagiarism accusations for Heartbreaker start rolling in. Not because Jiyong doesn't think they're absurd, because he does. Nobody lives in a vacuum, and if the netizens want to get technical about it, nothing is original anymore. No-he isn't surprised because this always happens, and it will probably always happen, and he's not sure he'll ever have thick enough skin to deal with it.
Everyone walks around him as if on tenterhooks for a couple of days, until Seunghyun folds his arms, leans against the frame of Jiyong's bedroom door and, eyebrows raised, asks him if he wants to get out of the dorm for a while.
"No," Jiyong says, and his voice comes out harsher than he'd intended. "No," he tries again, quieter. He rolls over and pulls the Laura half of his crumpled sheets up to his chin. "Thanks, though."
"You sure?" Seunghyun asks. "You look like you could really use it."
Jiyong scrubs a hand over his eyes and sinks deeper into the mattress. "If you want to go out and buy me coffee or something, be my guest."
When he wakes up twenty hours later, a double dirty soy latte with almond milk and heavy cream is congealing on his bedside table. The sticky note on the cap reads: if you'd come with me, ass, it would've been warm enough for you to drink.
Jiyong blinks for a moment and then gulps it down anyway.
4. It's September, almost half a year since filming for the movie wrapped, and Seunghyun still can't sleep, the white flash of gunfire arcing beneath his eyelids every time they slide shut.
"If there's such a thing as getting post-traumatic stress disorder from acting," Jiyong says, "then you've got it in spades."
"If there's such a thing as an IV drip of wine," he mutters, staring down at the bottom of his empty glass, "do you think sajangnim would get me one?"
It's difficult enough to disentangle yourself from anybody you've shared headspace with for five months, and somehow even more so when the person in question is really just an extension of your own imagination, a historical figure someone else fleshed out so that you could step into his shoes and, for all intents and purposes, become him. No one ever taught Seunghyun how to make it stop. The wine helps him crash when he needs it; coffee keeps him awake long enough to put on a front of normalcy and get through the day intact.
Jiyong has an almost superhuman ability to bounce back from adversity. Things were a little touch and go at the beginning of 2009, but Yang-goon carted him off to Europe and the change of pace seemed to do him some good. In the past six months, Seunghyun has often wondered if a trip out of the country would benefit him as well, if Hyunsuk would ever let him visit London and Paris, if leaving would be of any help at all. What he's most afraid of would be to go and have his situation stay exactly the same, to still feel small and tired and scared. It is better to keep turning all the hypotheticals over in his mind than to take action and invariably be disappointed when nothing sticks.
They start working on Big Bang's next album in the coming weeks, their first comeback in Korea after a three-year hiatus, and just the thought of it sends him into a tailspin of mixed emotions. The end of 2008 had nearly broken them, but then so had 2009, the year that just wouldn't end-and yet here they all are, still pressing on: Jiyong perched on a chair in the studio, hands yanking at his scarf, Youngbae and Daesung across the hall experimenting with the vocalists' tracks, Seungri working hard on his solo song.
Perhaps they're more resilient than Seunghyun gives them credit for.
"Are you alright?" Jiyong asks, tentative, in between takes.
"No," he says honestly, fingers fiddling with the buttons on his jacket. "And I don't know if I will be."
"That's okay," Jiyong says, and turns back to the pale glow of the monitor. He doesn't say anything else-doesn't have to, really. For some reason, it makes Seunghyun feel a little better that someone else knows.
He leans back and lets the music flow.
5. "They're really going to throw me in jail this time, aren't they?" Jiyong says, voice dry. "Fuck, man. I don't even like weed."
He's sprawled across one of Seunghyun's Scandinavian sofas, legs tucked together over the armrest on one end, fingers playing with the frayed edges of his rug. "Nah, they won't," Seunghyun says. "These things have a way of sliding right off you."
"Would you help me escape if I ever had to go on the run?" he asks sharply, tilting his head back to find Seunghyun. "Right, stupid question. Of course you would. You used to do it all the time in middle school."
"What can I say?" he replies, rolling his eyes. "We were very troubled children."
"So I've heard." Jiyong scrubs a hand through his hair. "Anyway, I wouldn't be able to leave even if I wanted to. Not anymore. There's just-too much." Seunghyun watches as his gaze flickers, the gears in his head churning over Daesung's fallout and his own failures and what the hell it all means for the rest of them. "I mean, where would I go?"
"Mars," Seunghyun suggests. He grins when Jiyong lets out a strangled laugh. "You never know. The authorities might consider it acceptable house arrest."
"Build me a spaceship," he says wryly, "and we'll have a deal."
(6. They go to Japan and China and Thailand, to Indonesia and Taiwan and Manila, to London and Peru and the United States and all the way back again for seconds. They steal toiletries from every hotel they stay at and swim in so many outdoor pools that their hair smells permanently chlorinated. They give interviews and go to press conferences, revel in the oceans of people that come to see them every time, wave upon wave of crowned light-sticks that seem to stretch on out forever.
It's for work, to be sure, but it's also for them-and in the heat of the moment, hair wild and sweat soaked through every layer of clothing they're wearing, there is nothing better than to stand up and scream into a microphone, to sing and dance and perform in a way that must be coded into their very DNA by now, the culmination of everything they've worked for reflected back at them everywhere they look.
It's not perfect. Jiyong isn't sure it ever could be, knowing who they are and what they've gone through to get here-but it's theirs. The distinct sense of belonging fills them up and buoys them higher. They're exactly where they should be.)
fin
A/N: title from it's time by imagine dragons.