i guess this is growing up
i guess this is growing up
gen, ft. top and seungri (top/seungri if you squint really hard. or have a magnifying glass handy).
rated pg
3,677 words
top needs an interpreter.
“You,” he says, “are going to help me today.”
Seungri pokes his head out of the blankets. Seunghyun is sitting on his legs, so he can’t move, and he’s older, so he has to sit there and take it. “With what?” he asks, drawling each syllable out until Seunghyun throws the comforter back over his face.
“Daesung’s birthday present.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because I can’t speak Japanese. Now get up, maknae.”
“You’re sitting on me.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah.” He stands and the pins and needles move from Seungri's thighs to his legs. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“My legs are asleep!” The prickling sensation is almost a tickle and he works at rubbing them out of the muscle, the way Youngbae had taught him to. “Jeez, if you hadn’t squished me this would’ve...”
“What?”
“What?”
“Squished you?”
“I mean...” he offers up a conciliatory smile that Seunghyun ignores. “I can’t get up yet.”
“Twenty minutes, then.”
---
When Seungri emerges from his bedroom, Jiyong chokes on his coffee.
“What?”
“Nice outfit,” he says, collapsing onto the sofa. He nudges Seunghyun, who looks up from his cell phone with a snort.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing,” Seunghyun says, “if you’re a mannequin at Dior Homme.” His two hyungs being to laugh amongst themselves and Seungri just rolls his eyes, opening the closet to find his Dior -- no, Pierre Hardy -- no, Galliano -- sneakers.
“At least I’m not wearing a Spongebob t-shirt,” He mutters, knotting the lace on his right shoe with an angry snap. “And orange pants.” Left shoe now; he makes sure to tuck his jeans behind the tongue. “And a brown jacket.”
“They’re complimentary colors,” Seunghyun explains, and this time Jiyong laughs at them both.
“You’re hopeless too.”
“Okay, Shirley Temple.”
The flash of Jiyong’s eyes makes Seungri’s laugh stop in his throat, although Seunghyun chuckles enough for the both of them. Then he zips up the ugly brown jacket and slips his sunglasses on.
“Come on, let’s go.”
---
“So,” Seunghyun says after twenty minutes in the van. “No schedules today?”
Obviously not, Seungri wants to say, but out loud he says “nope. And I needed to get Daesung hyung a present, too, so.”
Silence settles in again. It would be comfortable if it were Youngbae, and non-existent if it were Jiyong. He wouldn’t even be here if it were Daesung, but Seunghyun fidgets and plays with his jacket buttons and shifts around in his seat. Seungri crosses arms over his chest and stares at himself in the rear view mirror. Then he looks out of the window, at his cell phone, at the mochi wrapper someone’d left in the armrest tray, anything.
“Is that yours?” he finally asks, gesturing to the sticky plastic wrapper.
Seunghyun cuts eyes at him. “You know I’m not allowed to eat that stuff.”
“Sorry,” he grumbles, and they tumble into silence again.
He stays quiet until the van stops somewhere in Urahara. Seungri clambers out after his hyung and they spend another ten minutes winding their way through streets that Seunghyun seems to know. As they make their way down a line of boutiques by designers Seungri’s never heard of before, their footsteps slow.
“Um,” Seungri says, “I thought we were shopping for Daesung-hyung?”
Seunghyun tears his eyes away from the figurine in the window and stares at him.
He clears his throat. “I mean, not that they’re not...” tacky and expensive, “cool-looking or anything, just, I don’t know if they’re really hyung’s thing.”
“True,” he admits, and they walk on. Seungri lets out a breath. “How would you know the kind of stuff he likes, anyway?” Seunghyun asks as they stop at an intersection. “You guys aren’t that close.”
“We are,” Seungri insists, but the smirk curling up one corner of Seunghyun’s mouth makes him shrug. “Kind of? When you live in the same room with someone for a long time you get to know stuff about them. Daesung likes movies now. He watches them all the time.”
“Oh.” As they cross the street, Seunghyun keeps his body stiff, arms shrinking in on themselves at the press of bodies that swarm around them. He has to raise his voice to be heard, and the rasp startles several people. “We lived together though.”
“What?”
“When we were all in the same room,” Seunghyun amends. “I don’t really...” he falls silent again and Seungri’s learning how to ride this now, the peaks and valleys that are conversation with his oldest groupmate. “I don’t know anything about you.”
Seungri opens his mouth to speak but he turns a look on him that’s searching and a little confused. His stomach flops over at it, so he snaps his jaw shut, hand going to his midsection instead. Maybe they should stop to eat.
“I mean, your family and stuff, whatever. But... what do you do for fun?”
“Stuff,” he replies and then they’re quiet. Again.
The next store sells clothing, thankfully, but Seunghyun follows him through the racks, more preoccupied with his thoughts than the various shirts and jackets Seungri holds up for his inspection. “Hyung,” he says finally, a whine creeping into his voice, “you’re not even looking.”
“Do you really read all those self-help books?” he asks.
“Of course I do,” Seungri says, setting a sweater back onto the rack. “I wouldn’t buy them if I didn’t.”
“They seem like pretty dull reading.”
Seungri’s brows lift. “You like to read?”
“Uh-huh.” Seunghyun frowns when he finally looks up, into the store’s interior. “Where the hell... let’s get out of here.” He steers the both of them out, fingers wrapped around Seungri’s elbow. Seungri stares down at the big gemstones and metal shapes that make up the ring on his hand.
“How do you hold stuff with a ring that goes on all your fingers?”
“What?” The wind nearly blows Seunghyun’s hat from his head and he pulls away, clapping that hand over it. “I thought we were talking about books.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He searches the stores around them, checking his watch. The sun is high into the sky by now. “Um, my grandfather was a writer and we always had books around the house, so I just picked them up, I guess.”
“I thought you didn’t do well in school.”
Seunghyun snorts. “Who told you that?”
“And you just slept through all your classes.”
“Who told you that?”
“Jiyong hyung,” Seungri says, and then stops. “I mean it wasn’t him, it was Hyunjoong-sshi, and he was really drunk too, so I asked him first and then --”
“Fuckin’ Jiyong.” He shakes his head even as a smile creeps onto his face. “But anyway, just ‘cause I didn’t like school doesn’t mean I don’t like to read.”
“How’d you get into college, though?”
Seunghyun’s eyes smooth out as his grin slips. “You really want to know?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“You want to stop for coffee?” He gestures to the Starbucks looming ahead of them. “It’s a long story.”
---
Seungri fidgets over his frappucino. Sitting at a two-person table with just Seunghyun is something new, something he doesn’t know how to charm his way through. He takes a slurp of his drink to distract himself, gulping when Seunghyun frowns at the noise. He unclamps his mouth from around the straw, annoyed at how closely his hyung watches him sit up straight again. “So, college?”
“Hmm, yeah.” Seunghyun rummages in his pockets for his lighter and his cigarette. “So I got bad grades, right, but management said I should go to school anyway.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So they bribed the admin.”
Seungri chokes on a mouthful of whipped cream. “Really?”
He nods, eyes intense over the glow of his lighter. He takes the time to light his cigarette before speaking again. “A lot of money.”
“Shit,” Seungri says.
“And you know, my grandpa. They had his book on the curriculum for some of the classes, so it was easy.”
Seunghyun slips his lighter back into his jacket pocket, smoke a plume of grey around him.
Seungri eyes him with something akin to awe. “That’s so cool.”
There’s a flicker of something in Seunghyun’s answering gaze. “I know, right?”
They pass the next few minutes in more companiable silence, Seungri stirring the rest of his whipped cream into his drink, Seunghyun smoking his way through a cup of coffee. “Your hyung’s pretty awesome, huh.”
“Don’t push it,” he grumbles. Then he freezes, fully expecting a stare full of annoyance or secondhand embarrassment or something. Instead he gets that weird stare again. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Seunghyun coughs into his hand, stubbing his cigarette out into the ashtray. “Nothing. You ready?”
“Wait.” Seungri stares into his face, blank except for the glint in his eyes that Seungri’s figured out is amusement. Then, “you were lying, huh.”
“About what?” he asks, even as he smirks.
“You didn’t bribe the school to get you in!”
Seunghyun begins to laugh, chair squeaking as he pushes it backwards. “Of course not, what the fuck.” He claps Seungri on the shoulder even as he squirms away.
“I never know when you’re joking or not,” he mutters, taking both their cups out of habit. Then he slaps Seunghyun’s back onto the table. “Get that yourself, hyung.”
“Disrespectful,” he says, amusement still lacing his voice. “I’m telling Jiyong about this later.”
“Well, I’ll tell him about what you said.”
He shrugs, tossing his cup into the trash bin. “What’s he gonna do? He’ll just laugh.”
Annoyance creeps into Seungri’s face, turning his mouth downwards. He searches for a smart answer, but what he gets is the knowledge that Seunghyun’s right, that the most he’ll see is the two of them commiserating over his misfortune. “Whatever.”
He doesn’t hold the door open or wait for his heavier footfalls on the sidewalk. It’s mean and immature, but Seungri starts to jog at a brisk pace, ignoring the call behind him, dodging pedestrians as he makes his way towards the subway. The signs are all in Japanese here, and the crowds are so large and so packed that it’d take a while for Seunghyun to pick his way through them. He digs into his pockets for change, shoving the prickle of guilt in his mind back behind the anger, and steps past the barrier and into the station.
Then the guard takes the ticket and he’s walking towards one of the trains. It’s jammed full of people but one of the attendants waves him on anyway, prepared to sandwich him in beside an elderly woman and a gaggle of schoolgirls. He recoils at the thought of being squashed in there for the long ride home and then thinks of Seunghyun, how he’d tucked his broad shoulders in at the comparatively sparse crowds, how he needed slips of paper and dictionaries to conjure up even requests for water at TV stations, and he swears under his breath.
“Sorry,” he says in Japanese, and backs away, back towards the mouth of the station.
---
Three calls and nothing. Seungri’s starting to panic now. What if he’d gotten lost? Mugged? Those colors, they made him a pretty easy target.
He’s backtracked to the Starbucks, the weird clothes store, the place where the van had dropped them off, even the toy store whose interior he could barely see with the last few rays of sun. “Hyungnim’s going to kill me,” he moans as he runs back up the street, feet aching from the back-and-forth of his trips.
After three hours his cell phone is dying and he slumps against the station’s wall, exhausted. He’d combed through most of the area already, fear for himself subsumed by fear for Seunghyun, who’d never been that good with directions anyway, let alone directions in a city whose language he could barely speak. Seungri eyes the screen of his cell phone worriedly, the flashing red of the battery symbol and the “no new messages” he gets when he swipes at the text button. Shoving it back into his pocket, he chews at his lip.
Maybe he can go back and get help, ask Youngbae or their manager instead of Jiyong. Maybe even Daesung would help: he and Seunghyun were close that way. Then again, he didn’t feel right leaving (like he’d done before, he notes, the guilt a large, heavy weight in his chest now), not without Seunghyun, who’d just wanted someone to go with him, with Jiyong busy making music and Daesung cooped up in his room and Youngbae exploring the city on his own. Seunghyun who’d taken pains to ask him questions for once, told him things about himself that were (mostly) the truth, who danced funny and did stupid shit to make them all laugh when they were tired, who let the sometimes condescending looks Seungri shot at him roll off his back, who was --
getting out of a taxi in front of the station, a shopping bag in one hand.
“Hyung,” he stutters. “You’re alive.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks.
Seungri laughs and aims a punch at his shoulder. “I thought you would’ve gotten mugged, I mean, your clothes are all colorful and you can’t speak Japanese and--”
Seunghyun just nods. He’s stiff; Seungri’s punch gets nothing in return. “I was fine.” He holds up the bag. “I got Daesung’s present.”
“Oh,” Seungri says.
The silence isn’t really silence this time: nightlife means more people and conversation flows around them, rising and falling in time with the din of cars and cell phone chimes. Seungri feels it anyway.
“We can go now, if you want.” Seunghyun shifts the bag from one hand to the other. “Or if you want to take the subway, I’ll just call the van.”
“No, um, I’ll go with you.”
“Do you not have money?” he asks. “I can loan you--”
“No, I want to go back in the van.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” Seunghyun says, a trace of annoyance in his voice.
“I just...” Seungri breathes out. “I’m sorry, jeez.”
Seunghyun just puts his phone to his ear and shrugs. “It’s fine, whatever.”
It goads him. That he’d spent so long trying to find him, that he still felt bad enough to apologize, that Seunghyun didn’t care one way or the other, they all mingle together until he reaches for the phone, mashing down buttons until the screen goes dark against Seunghyun’s face.
He turns, eyebrows raised. “... Did you change your mind?”
“No,” he says. “You piss me off, hyung.”
Seunghyun licks his lips. “That’s great, because I don’t care.” He goes to dial the number again and Seungri reaches for the keypad again. Seunghyun jerks away. “Are you trying to make me mad?” he asks. “I mean, you already have, so might as well make it twice in one day.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“You’re an asshole.” Seunghyun’s jaw works. “I felt like an idiot, standing there while you ran away and I had to ask for directions--”
“Maybe you wouldn’t feel like an idiot if you actually fucking studied the language,” Seungri spits. A passing couple stare at them as they walk by. “You think you’re better than us? You don’t have to even try?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Oh, sorry.” Seungri holds his hands up. “Maknae can’t say anything, right? Even when everyone’s making fun of me, even when the joke’s on me--”
“Oh, you talk a lot of shit,” Seunghyun growls. “Yeah, we totally want to include you, when you tattle on us to Hyunsuk and make jokes about it on national fucking TV, little Seunghyun. That really makes me want to be your friend.” He starts forward before he rears back again, fists clenched. “Was that fun for you? You get enough solo activities for ratting us out? You think your precious Jiyong hyungnim wouldn’t be pissed about that?”
Seungri blinks. Then he scoffs. “Is that what this is about? Are you mad because I take up all of his time?”
“No,” Seunghyun breathes. “I’m mad because Jiyong hadn’t had a vacation in years and you didn’t even think about that before you did what you did.”
Seungri is silent.
“Just like you didn’t think twice before leaving me here.” His phone goes off, then, and Seunghyun turns his back to him before he speaks into it. “Van’s coming,” he mutters as he hangs up.
“You know,” Seungri declares, anger and adrenaline still rushing in his veins, “I did think--”
“Why don’t you grow up?” Seunghyun says. “I’m done having this conversation with you.”
After what seems like an eternity, the van pulls up. Now it’s Seunghyun who doesn’t wait as he climbs in, shutting the door. Seungri stares at the dark, tinted window before he finally gets into the passenger’s seat.
---
“Ah, now I don’t have to watch them on my laptop.” Daesung grins, knocking his shoulder against Seunghyun’s, wrapping paper torn open on his knees. He slides thumbs under the tape holding the box together, sliding the sleek Blu-Ray player out from inside of it. “This is great, hyung, thanks.”
Surprise keeps Seungri’s mouth shut, there on the couch across from them, Jiyong at his side. That, and the extra cloak of awkwardness that had fallen between him and Seunghyun. The next few weeks had seen them go to a new height of silence: even Jiyong had begun to give them looks. He figured it would blow over, like most little tiffs between the rest of them, but Seunghyun had kept to himself. Seungri didn’t know why, when he had Jiyong and all their friends to shop with here in Korea, Youngbae to bounce complaints off of, or Daesung to goof around with, or Gummy who doted on him, or all of his famous friends like--
“You didn’t get him anything, did you?”
Jiyong’s voice cuts through his thoughts.
“Typical Seungri.”
Daesung just shrugs. “It’s okay, maknae, don’t worry--”
“Oh, this is from both of us.” Seunghyun cuts in smoothly. “We went out and got it together in Japan.”
Seungri’s eyes, wide and a little embarrassed meet his. Then he recovers. “Yeah, hyung, and I was going to get you a gift certificate, but I didn’t know if we were going to be in Japan or Korea, so I figured I’d wait until we got home, but we had filming, so...” he shrugs. Jiyong pats at his shoulder.
“No, this is enough.” Daesung shoots him a friendly smile. “Thanks, Seungri.”
“It was his idea anyway.” Seunghyun nods over at him. He squirms. “He said you’ve started watching movies a lot.”
Daesung’s grin gets a little less wide and a little more confused as he glances from one of them to the other. “Thanks,” he says again.
“Open mine next,” Youngbae calls. Seunghyun settles back into the couch.
There’s a knock on the door.
“I’m not hungry, hyungnim.”
“It’s not Jiyong.”
Seungri stares at the book in his hands before he folds the page over, setting the text down on the desk. “Come in.”
Seunghyun shuts the door behind him. He looks around for somewhere to sit, eventually leaning against the wall instead. “You going out with us for Daesung’s birthday?”
He shrugs. “I think I’m going to stay in.” He thumbs at the cover his book, flipping through the pages. “I have class tomorrow, hyung.”
“Right.” Seunghyun shifts his weight onto his other foot, stuffing a hand into his jeans pocket. “Um... I think you should come anyway.”
Seungri doesn’t look up.
“Master Hwang can write you a doctor’s note.”
He puts the book back onto its neatly organized stack.
“Come on,” Seunghyun says.
“You guys don’t want me there anyway.”
He sighs. “I didn’t mean...” There’s empty air as he gropes for something to say. “Sometimes I forget that you’re just nineteen.” Straightening up, he steps forward, shuffling the pencils in their cup, next to the books. “I mean... not that I would’ve done some of the stuff you did, but--”
“But I’m an asshole.”
Seunghyun sighs again. The pencils rattle around in his hands. “No, I was going to say I wasn’t really famous when I was nineteen. Not that it makes it better,” he insists, “just... I don’t know. This is stupid.”
“It was nice of you to say that about the Blu-Ray player.”
“No problem.”
“And I’m sorry I left you at the Starbucks.”
“It’s okay.”
“And I’m sorry I told on you guys to Hyunsuk-hyung.”
Seunghyun’s eyes flicker up at him at that. “Make sure you tell everyone else that, too.”
Seungri swallows. “I think I’d need a drink first.”
“That’s why you’re coming with us, right? Tonight.”
“I don’t really think--”
“Stop thinking, just do it.”
---
“Hyung, I love you.”
Daesung’s cranes his neck as far as it will go, but Seungri clings onto him anyway, cheeks pink.
“You forgive me, right?”
Youngbae snorts into his glass as Seungri puffs his cheeks out, framing his eye with a victory sign.
“Right?”
Daesung frowns and shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “Yeah, maknae, sure. I forgive you.” He shoots Youngbae an imploring look. “Help, please?”
“Wasn’t my idea,” he says.
Seunghyun’s eyes are innocent over his drink.
“Since when did you guys become so friendly, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Daesung-ah.” Seunghyun sets the tumbler back onto its coaster. “But hey, Youngbae’s birthday is coming up soon. You guys should get him something together.”
author’s note: so i was thinking of a project where i wrote a fic for every pairing, and i thought i’d start with top/seungri... obviously this came out more gen than a pairing fic. hopefully it didn’t turn out boring or anything. ;~; concrit, suggestions on future pairings, and anything like that is very much welcome, because i felt kind of out of my depth writing this. title taken from a blink-182 song, haha.
gen, ft. top and seungri (top/seungri if you squint really hard. or have a magnifying glass handy).
rated pg
3,677 words
top needs an interpreter.
“You,” he says, “are going to help me today.”
Seungri pokes his head out of the blankets. Seunghyun is sitting on his legs, so he can’t move, and he’s older, so he has to sit there and take it. “With what?” he asks, drawling each syllable out until Seunghyun throws the comforter back over his face.
“Daesung’s birthday present.”
“Why can’t you do it?”
“Because I can’t speak Japanese. Now get up, maknae.”
“You’re sitting on me.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah.” He stands and the pins and needles move from Seungri's thighs to his legs. “You have fifteen minutes.”
“My legs are asleep!” The prickling sensation is almost a tickle and he works at rubbing them out of the muscle, the way Youngbae had taught him to. “Jeez, if you hadn’t squished me this would’ve...”
“What?”
“What?”
“Squished you?”
“I mean...” he offers up a conciliatory smile that Seunghyun ignores. “I can’t get up yet.”
“Twenty minutes, then.”
---
When Seungri emerges from his bedroom, Jiyong chokes on his coffee.
“What?”
“Nice outfit,” he says, collapsing onto the sofa. He nudges Seunghyun, who looks up from his cell phone with a snort.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Nothing,” Seunghyun says, “if you’re a mannequin at Dior Homme.” His two hyungs being to laugh amongst themselves and Seungri just rolls his eyes, opening the closet to find his Dior -- no, Pierre Hardy -- no, Galliano -- sneakers.
“At least I’m not wearing a Spongebob t-shirt,” He mutters, knotting the lace on his right shoe with an angry snap. “And orange pants.” Left shoe now; he makes sure to tuck his jeans behind the tongue. “And a brown jacket.”
“They’re complimentary colors,” Seunghyun explains, and this time Jiyong laughs at them both.
“You’re hopeless too.”
“Okay, Shirley Temple.”
The flash of Jiyong’s eyes makes Seungri’s laugh stop in his throat, although Seunghyun chuckles enough for the both of them. Then he zips up the ugly brown jacket and slips his sunglasses on.
“Come on, let’s go.”
---
“So,” Seunghyun says after twenty minutes in the van. “No schedules today?”
Obviously not, Seungri wants to say, but out loud he says “nope. And I needed to get Daesung hyung a present, too, so.”
Silence settles in again. It would be comfortable if it were Youngbae, and non-existent if it were Jiyong. He wouldn’t even be here if it were Daesung, but Seunghyun fidgets and plays with his jacket buttons and shifts around in his seat. Seungri crosses arms over his chest and stares at himself in the rear view mirror. Then he looks out of the window, at his cell phone, at the mochi wrapper someone’d left in the armrest tray, anything.
“Is that yours?” he finally asks, gesturing to the sticky plastic wrapper.
Seunghyun cuts eyes at him. “You know I’m not allowed to eat that stuff.”
“Sorry,” he grumbles, and they tumble into silence again.
He stays quiet until the van stops somewhere in Urahara. Seungri clambers out after his hyung and they spend another ten minutes winding their way through streets that Seunghyun seems to know. As they make their way down a line of boutiques by designers Seungri’s never heard of before, their footsteps slow.
“Um,” Seungri says, “I thought we were shopping for Daesung-hyung?”
Seunghyun tears his eyes away from the figurine in the window and stares at him.
He clears his throat. “I mean, not that they’re not...” tacky and expensive, “cool-looking or anything, just, I don’t know if they’re really hyung’s thing.”
“True,” he admits, and they walk on. Seungri lets out a breath. “How would you know the kind of stuff he likes, anyway?” Seunghyun asks as they stop at an intersection. “You guys aren’t that close.”
“We are,” Seungri insists, but the smirk curling up one corner of Seunghyun’s mouth makes him shrug. “Kind of? When you live in the same room with someone for a long time you get to know stuff about them. Daesung likes movies now. He watches them all the time.”
“Oh.” As they cross the street, Seunghyun keeps his body stiff, arms shrinking in on themselves at the press of bodies that swarm around them. He has to raise his voice to be heard, and the rasp startles several people. “We lived together though.”
“What?”
“When we were all in the same room,” Seunghyun amends. “I don’t really...” he falls silent again and Seungri’s learning how to ride this now, the peaks and valleys that are conversation with his oldest groupmate. “I don’t know anything about you.”
Seungri opens his mouth to speak but he turns a look on him that’s searching and a little confused. His stomach flops over at it, so he snaps his jaw shut, hand going to his midsection instead. Maybe they should stop to eat.
“I mean, your family and stuff, whatever. But... what do you do for fun?”
“Stuff,” he replies and then they’re quiet. Again.
The next store sells clothing, thankfully, but Seunghyun follows him through the racks, more preoccupied with his thoughts than the various shirts and jackets Seungri holds up for his inspection. “Hyung,” he says finally, a whine creeping into his voice, “you’re not even looking.”
“Do you really read all those self-help books?” he asks.
“Of course I do,” Seungri says, setting a sweater back onto the rack. “I wouldn’t buy them if I didn’t.”
“They seem like pretty dull reading.”
Seungri’s brows lift. “You like to read?”
“Uh-huh.” Seunghyun frowns when he finally looks up, into the store’s interior. “Where the hell... let’s get out of here.” He steers the both of them out, fingers wrapped around Seungri’s elbow. Seungri stares down at the big gemstones and metal shapes that make up the ring on his hand.
“How do you hold stuff with a ring that goes on all your fingers?”
“What?” The wind nearly blows Seunghyun’s hat from his head and he pulls away, clapping that hand over it. “I thought we were talking about books.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He searches the stores around them, checking his watch. The sun is high into the sky by now. “Um, my grandfather was a writer and we always had books around the house, so I just picked them up, I guess.”
“I thought you didn’t do well in school.”
Seunghyun snorts. “Who told you that?”
“And you just slept through all your classes.”
“Who told you that?”
“Jiyong hyung,” Seungri says, and then stops. “I mean it wasn’t him, it was Hyunjoong-sshi, and he was really drunk too, so I asked him first and then --”
“Fuckin’ Jiyong.” He shakes his head even as a smile creeps onto his face. “But anyway, just ‘cause I didn’t like school doesn’t mean I don’t like to read.”
“How’d you get into college, though?”
Seunghyun’s eyes smooth out as his grin slips. “You really want to know?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“You want to stop for coffee?” He gestures to the Starbucks looming ahead of them. “It’s a long story.”
---
Seungri fidgets over his frappucino. Sitting at a two-person table with just Seunghyun is something new, something he doesn’t know how to charm his way through. He takes a slurp of his drink to distract himself, gulping when Seunghyun frowns at the noise. He unclamps his mouth from around the straw, annoyed at how closely his hyung watches him sit up straight again. “So, college?”
“Hmm, yeah.” Seunghyun rummages in his pockets for his lighter and his cigarette. “So I got bad grades, right, but management said I should go to school anyway.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So they bribed the admin.”
Seungri chokes on a mouthful of whipped cream. “Really?”
He nods, eyes intense over the glow of his lighter. He takes the time to light his cigarette before speaking again. “A lot of money.”
“Shit,” Seungri says.
“And you know, my grandpa. They had his book on the curriculum for some of the classes, so it was easy.”
Seunghyun slips his lighter back into his jacket pocket, smoke a plume of grey around him.
Seungri eyes him with something akin to awe. “That’s so cool.”
There’s a flicker of something in Seunghyun’s answering gaze. “I know, right?”
They pass the next few minutes in more companiable silence, Seungri stirring the rest of his whipped cream into his drink, Seunghyun smoking his way through a cup of coffee. “Your hyung’s pretty awesome, huh.”
“Don’t push it,” he grumbles. Then he freezes, fully expecting a stare full of annoyance or secondhand embarrassment or something. Instead he gets that weird stare again. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Seunghyun coughs into his hand, stubbing his cigarette out into the ashtray. “Nothing. You ready?”
“Wait.” Seungri stares into his face, blank except for the glint in his eyes that Seungri’s figured out is amusement. Then, “you were lying, huh.”
“About what?” he asks, even as he smirks.
“You didn’t bribe the school to get you in!”
Seunghyun begins to laugh, chair squeaking as he pushes it backwards. “Of course not, what the fuck.” He claps Seungri on the shoulder even as he squirms away.
“I never know when you’re joking or not,” he mutters, taking both their cups out of habit. Then he slaps Seunghyun’s back onto the table. “Get that yourself, hyung.”
“Disrespectful,” he says, amusement still lacing his voice. “I’m telling Jiyong about this later.”
“Well, I’ll tell him about what you said.”
He shrugs, tossing his cup into the trash bin. “What’s he gonna do? He’ll just laugh.”
Annoyance creeps into Seungri’s face, turning his mouth downwards. He searches for a smart answer, but what he gets is the knowledge that Seunghyun’s right, that the most he’ll see is the two of them commiserating over his misfortune. “Whatever.”
He doesn’t hold the door open or wait for his heavier footfalls on the sidewalk. It’s mean and immature, but Seungri starts to jog at a brisk pace, ignoring the call behind him, dodging pedestrians as he makes his way towards the subway. The signs are all in Japanese here, and the crowds are so large and so packed that it’d take a while for Seunghyun to pick his way through them. He digs into his pockets for change, shoving the prickle of guilt in his mind back behind the anger, and steps past the barrier and into the station.
Then the guard takes the ticket and he’s walking towards one of the trains. It’s jammed full of people but one of the attendants waves him on anyway, prepared to sandwich him in beside an elderly woman and a gaggle of schoolgirls. He recoils at the thought of being squashed in there for the long ride home and then thinks of Seunghyun, how he’d tucked his broad shoulders in at the comparatively sparse crowds, how he needed slips of paper and dictionaries to conjure up even requests for water at TV stations, and he swears under his breath.
“Sorry,” he says in Japanese, and backs away, back towards the mouth of the station.
---
Three calls and nothing. Seungri’s starting to panic now. What if he’d gotten lost? Mugged? Those colors, they made him a pretty easy target.
He’s backtracked to the Starbucks, the weird clothes store, the place where the van had dropped them off, even the toy store whose interior he could barely see with the last few rays of sun. “Hyungnim’s going to kill me,” he moans as he runs back up the street, feet aching from the back-and-forth of his trips.
After three hours his cell phone is dying and he slumps against the station’s wall, exhausted. He’d combed through most of the area already, fear for himself subsumed by fear for Seunghyun, who’d never been that good with directions anyway, let alone directions in a city whose language he could barely speak. Seungri eyes the screen of his cell phone worriedly, the flashing red of the battery symbol and the “no new messages” he gets when he swipes at the text button. Shoving it back into his pocket, he chews at his lip.
Maybe he can go back and get help, ask Youngbae or their manager instead of Jiyong. Maybe even Daesung would help: he and Seunghyun were close that way. Then again, he didn’t feel right leaving (like he’d done before, he notes, the guilt a large, heavy weight in his chest now), not without Seunghyun, who’d just wanted someone to go with him, with Jiyong busy making music and Daesung cooped up in his room and Youngbae exploring the city on his own. Seunghyun who’d taken pains to ask him questions for once, told him things about himself that were (mostly) the truth, who danced funny and did stupid shit to make them all laugh when they were tired, who let the sometimes condescending looks Seungri shot at him roll off his back, who was --
getting out of a taxi in front of the station, a shopping bag in one hand.
“Hyung,” he stutters. “You’re alive.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks.
Seungri laughs and aims a punch at his shoulder. “I thought you would’ve gotten mugged, I mean, your clothes are all colorful and you can’t speak Japanese and--”
Seunghyun just nods. He’s stiff; Seungri’s punch gets nothing in return. “I was fine.” He holds up the bag. “I got Daesung’s present.”
“Oh,” Seungri says.
The silence isn’t really silence this time: nightlife means more people and conversation flows around them, rising and falling in time with the din of cars and cell phone chimes. Seungri feels it anyway.
“We can go now, if you want.” Seunghyun shifts the bag from one hand to the other. “Or if you want to take the subway, I’ll just call the van.”
“No, um, I’ll go with you.”
“Do you not have money?” he asks. “I can loan you--”
“No, I want to go back in the van.”
“You don’t have to come with me,” Seunghyun says, a trace of annoyance in his voice.
“I just...” Seungri breathes out. “I’m sorry, jeez.”
Seunghyun just puts his phone to his ear and shrugs. “It’s fine, whatever.”
It goads him. That he’d spent so long trying to find him, that he still felt bad enough to apologize, that Seunghyun didn’t care one way or the other, they all mingle together until he reaches for the phone, mashing down buttons until the screen goes dark against Seunghyun’s face.
He turns, eyebrows raised. “... Did you change your mind?”
“No,” he says. “You piss me off, hyung.”
Seunghyun licks his lips. “That’s great, because I don’t care.” He goes to dial the number again and Seungri reaches for the keypad again. Seunghyun jerks away. “Are you trying to make me mad?” he asks. “I mean, you already have, so might as well make it twice in one day.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“You’re an asshole.” Seunghyun’s jaw works. “I felt like an idiot, standing there while you ran away and I had to ask for directions--”
“Maybe you wouldn’t feel like an idiot if you actually fucking studied the language,” Seungri spits. A passing couple stare at them as they walk by. “You think you’re better than us? You don’t have to even try?”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Oh, sorry.” Seungri holds his hands up. “Maknae can’t say anything, right? Even when everyone’s making fun of me, even when the joke’s on me--”
“Oh, you talk a lot of shit,” Seunghyun growls. “Yeah, we totally want to include you, when you tattle on us to Hyunsuk and make jokes about it on national fucking TV, little Seunghyun. That really makes me want to be your friend.” He starts forward before he rears back again, fists clenched. “Was that fun for you? You get enough solo activities for ratting us out? You think your precious Jiyong hyungnim wouldn’t be pissed about that?”
Seungri blinks. Then he scoffs. “Is that what this is about? Are you mad because I take up all of his time?”
“No,” Seunghyun breathes. “I’m mad because Jiyong hadn’t had a vacation in years and you didn’t even think about that before you did what you did.”
Seungri is silent.
“Just like you didn’t think twice before leaving me here.” His phone goes off, then, and Seunghyun turns his back to him before he speaks into it. “Van’s coming,” he mutters as he hangs up.
“You know,” Seungri declares, anger and adrenaline still rushing in his veins, “I did think--”
“Why don’t you grow up?” Seunghyun says. “I’m done having this conversation with you.”
After what seems like an eternity, the van pulls up. Now it’s Seunghyun who doesn’t wait as he climbs in, shutting the door. Seungri stares at the dark, tinted window before he finally gets into the passenger’s seat.
---
“Ah, now I don’t have to watch them on my laptop.” Daesung grins, knocking his shoulder against Seunghyun’s, wrapping paper torn open on his knees. He slides thumbs under the tape holding the box together, sliding the sleek Blu-Ray player out from inside of it. “This is great, hyung, thanks.”
Surprise keeps Seungri’s mouth shut, there on the couch across from them, Jiyong at his side. That, and the extra cloak of awkwardness that had fallen between him and Seunghyun. The next few weeks had seen them go to a new height of silence: even Jiyong had begun to give them looks. He figured it would blow over, like most little tiffs between the rest of them, but Seunghyun had kept to himself. Seungri didn’t know why, when he had Jiyong and all their friends to shop with here in Korea, Youngbae to bounce complaints off of, or Daesung to goof around with, or Gummy who doted on him, or all of his famous friends like--
“You didn’t get him anything, did you?”
Jiyong’s voice cuts through his thoughts.
“Typical Seungri.”
Daesung just shrugs. “It’s okay, maknae, don’t worry--”
“Oh, this is from both of us.” Seunghyun cuts in smoothly. “We went out and got it together in Japan.”
Seungri’s eyes, wide and a little embarrassed meet his. Then he recovers. “Yeah, hyung, and I was going to get you a gift certificate, but I didn’t know if we were going to be in Japan or Korea, so I figured I’d wait until we got home, but we had filming, so...” he shrugs. Jiyong pats at his shoulder.
“No, this is enough.” Daesung shoots him a friendly smile. “Thanks, Seungri.”
“It was his idea anyway.” Seunghyun nods over at him. He squirms. “He said you’ve started watching movies a lot.”
Daesung’s grin gets a little less wide and a little more confused as he glances from one of them to the other. “Thanks,” he says again.
“Open mine next,” Youngbae calls. Seunghyun settles back into the couch.
There’s a knock on the door.
“I’m not hungry, hyungnim.”
“It’s not Jiyong.”
Seungri stares at the book in his hands before he folds the page over, setting the text down on the desk. “Come in.”
Seunghyun shuts the door behind him. He looks around for somewhere to sit, eventually leaning against the wall instead. “You going out with us for Daesung’s birthday?”
He shrugs. “I think I’m going to stay in.” He thumbs at the cover his book, flipping through the pages. “I have class tomorrow, hyung.”
“Right.” Seunghyun shifts his weight onto his other foot, stuffing a hand into his jeans pocket. “Um... I think you should come anyway.”
Seungri doesn’t look up.
“Master Hwang can write you a doctor’s note.”
He puts the book back onto its neatly organized stack.
“Come on,” Seunghyun says.
“You guys don’t want me there anyway.”
He sighs. “I didn’t mean...” There’s empty air as he gropes for something to say. “Sometimes I forget that you’re just nineteen.” Straightening up, he steps forward, shuffling the pencils in their cup, next to the books. “I mean... not that I would’ve done some of the stuff you did, but--”
“But I’m an asshole.”
Seunghyun sighs again. The pencils rattle around in his hands. “No, I was going to say I wasn’t really famous when I was nineteen. Not that it makes it better,” he insists, “just... I don’t know. This is stupid.”
“It was nice of you to say that about the Blu-Ray player.”
“No problem.”
“And I’m sorry I left you at the Starbucks.”
“It’s okay.”
“And I’m sorry I told on you guys to Hyunsuk-hyung.”
Seunghyun’s eyes flicker up at him at that. “Make sure you tell everyone else that, too.”
Seungri swallows. “I think I’d need a drink first.”
“That’s why you’re coming with us, right? Tonight.”
“I don’t really think--”
“Stop thinking, just do it.”
---
“Hyung, I love you.”
Daesung’s cranes his neck as far as it will go, but Seungri clings onto him anyway, cheeks pink.
“You forgive me, right?”
Youngbae snorts into his glass as Seungri puffs his cheeks out, framing his eye with a victory sign.
“Right?”
Daesung frowns and shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “Yeah, maknae, sure. I forgive you.” He shoots Youngbae an imploring look. “Help, please?”
“Wasn’t my idea,” he says.
Seunghyun’s eyes are innocent over his drink.
“Since when did you guys become so friendly, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Daesung-ah.” Seunghyun sets the tumbler back onto its coaster. “But hey, Youngbae’s birthday is coming up soon. You guys should get him something together.”
author’s note: so i was thinking of a project where i wrote a fic for every pairing, and i thought i’d start with top/seungri... obviously this came out more gen than a pairing fic. hopefully it didn’t turn out boring or anything. ;~; concrit, suggestions on future pairings, and anything like that is very much welcome, because i felt kind of out of my depth writing this. title taken from a blink-182 song, haha.