The plane took off and Yongbae was practically vibrating. His lips were red from biting them, his eyes constantly flicking down to his cheap watch. Even Hunshik was a little disgusted by how happy he was.

"You need to calm down, man."

"I can't help it. I'm so excited."

"She'll be there. Just chill - you're freaking the others out."

Leewon huffed on the other side of the isle, casting them disgusted looks. "He's just happy he's going to wet his soon is all."

"I just want to hold her again." Yongbae sighed into the window, rosary tangled in his fingers. "I want to feel her in my arms again."

"The sentiment is sweet, it really is, but I've had to hear about it for the last week. Shut up." Hunshik punched him playfully in the arm. He pressed a button on the small screen in front of him and put in his headphones, silently offering one to Yongbae. 

Seungri and Seunghyun were working. Despite the fact it wasn't his interview and he could be helping them, some intuition told Jiyong that he needed to be there for Daesung's interview. 

The hosts exchanged pleasantries with her, asking obligatorily about her album and her inspirations for it.

"I wrote the songs at various stages, starting with First To Go, which was about TOP and his move into service. I wrote one for each of the members, even though Seungri hasn't gone yet and G-Dragon just got back."

"Why?"

She adjusted, Yongbae's thick chain necklace flashing under the spotlight. "A lot of the time, when a member just need someone to listen, they come to me and talk. The idea came to me because that's what Seunghyun-hyung did. Jiyong was a little different, because he doesn't like to talk about his feelings, like he betrays his role as leader by sharing his burden any and he struggles with that. After they left, Seungri and I became very close, and he told me of his reservations about his service, some of his worries. I live with Taeyang, so we talk all the time."

"Do you talk much since he's gone?"

"I don't have much time. Between all of the effort of making the album and my English studies in Canada, I've been too busy to talk to much of anyone."

"Are you busy or do you not want to talk to them?"

She pushed some hair out of her face, sending the host an assessing look while the cameras couldn't catch it. "It's difficult for anyone who's not an idol to understand how much work really goes into our work. Maybe I'm worse than others because I've learned by recording habits from our leader, but that doesn't make it any less valid."

"Are you and Taeyang still dating?"

This time, she didn't hide her suspicious gaze. "Of course. Is there a reason we wouldn't be?"

The female host looked to her speaking male counterpart, unsure of where he was taking the questioning. The man continued unhindered by her gaze. "If I were in his spot, I don't think I could trust a woman with such lusty rumours surrounding her."

She smiled, sweetly, charmingly, professionally, but said nothing. 

"Is that your way to saying its true, that you're cheating on Taeyang?"

Her response cracked across the room like a whip, her smile still in place. "Don't assume to put words in my mouth."

"Do you have nothing to say on it, then? They've been very strong ever since Taeyang left for his service."

Jiyong was shocked. Hosts could be pushy, and certainly they were known to harsh on sensitive topics, but this obviously wasn't something they planned on, if the way the female host was looking between the two. Daesung's smile was still in place.

"You're married, right?"

The male host blinked. "Yes, I am."

"Then tell me, just humour me: if you were in my position, how would you react if there were constantly false rumours being yelled all around you. Then, every time you go out in public, they're yelled at your face and you're accused of things you haven't, wouldn't dream of doing. Imagine then, that you come to this show to discuss your work and answer some questions for the fans, only to have someone you don't know very well the mantle of on you and try to force a false adminition of guilt from you. How would that make you feel?"

The host was silent.

"Humiliated, right? Embarrassed, unfriendly, horrified. Like someone was trying to tear away your dignity without any real reason to. Imagine all that, feel all of that, and you know what it's been like to be me for the last two years." She laughed, pretending she wasn't moments away from crying. 

All she did was smile.

"Who were you with, then?" The host questioned, voice much softer than before.

"My cousin." She tried, but the tears fell. She didn't stop to pat them away, just let them happen. Even the best of actors were only solid for so long. "I didn't want to pressure the other members with my own worries. Seunghyun had just come home, Seungri is afraid of his own entrance. Jiyong and Yongbae were both gone. So I met up with my cousin, a friend of mine since childhood, and stayed with him for a couple of weeks to try and sort myself out. We composed some songs together. Then he gave my number to a friend of his in Canada who could teach me English. Finally, I couldn't take the stress anymore and went to Canada for two months to focus on English and relax. Then I came back and I'm the of Korea."

She stood and straightened herself out, hair shielding her face from the camera's scrutiny.

"My relationship with Yongbae is the best thing that's ever happened to me, aside from getting into Bigbang, and it hurts to have both of those things taken from me in such a short time for such a long time. It's not been easy to not be able to kiss him or for him to be there when I come home. I've been lonely. Judge me for it if you want, but I never claimed to be anything more than human."

She strode off the stage, poised and dignified even if she didn't feel it. Jiyong was on his feet immediately.

Yongbae's nervous jittering only tripled after Daesung walked off the stage.

"Good thing Ji's there." Is all he managed to say. He looked nearly distraught, like if Daesung were to vanish off the face of the earth, he would no longer have a purpose to his life. 

"You need to calm down." Hunshik whispered. 

"You don't understand." Yongbae whispered back, eyes fixed out the window. 

"Look, I know she's upset, but she's a big girl."

"That's not the-" He ran his hands through his regrowing hair. "She never gets like that.You're a fan - you should know that she never lets you see something she doesn't want you to. Let alone see her cry-"

"Maybe it was a move to make the host feel bad."

"She's not malicious like that."

"How do you know?" Leewon piped up. "You haven't seen her in two years."

"Because we've been side by side for twelve."

The first thing that hit him after he exited the airport was cameras, flashes and reporters yelling questions at him. He wouldn't have been able to process them, but even if he had of tried, he heard cheating and was immediately done with them. He managed to get past them, spotting Jiyong's newly hot pink hair from across the parking lot. 

"Yongbae, wait for me!" Hunshik called, wading through the reporters, Leewon trailing him.

Yongbae's focus narrowed down on the sleek black car and he was walking so fast over he might have been jogging. 

"Jiyong!"

The pink haired man looked up from his phone and immediately grinned, standing straight to give his friend a hug and take the duffel bag.

"Did Daesung come?"

Jiyong just laughed. "Hello to you too." He shook his head with a grin and pointed to the trunk of the car. 

He thanked his leader with a grin and rushed down.

A hand landed on her shoulder, pulling her up into a stand again and spinning her around. It felt like the breath was punched out of her when she was met with Yongbae's face again.

They both stared at each other for a long moment, like they might wake up from a dream and be back alone in their beds. Then, she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him into a bruising kiss. He was on her in seconds, one hand her hair and the other locked tightly around her waist, pulling her lean, muscled form tight to his. 

The reporters that followed them were fighting each other for shots, but neither noticed nor cared to. Two years of missed experiences and thousands of miles of distance were erased in a bare touch of skin, the way the trained strength in their muscles couldn't pull them any tighter. 

He backed her up, slamming the trunk back down into place and hoisting her up onto it, settling himself between her legs and wrapping them around him. She held his face, thought, not allowing him to escape her. With his arms free, he buried his hands in her hair, relishing the feeling of soft, thick locks tangled in his fingers once more, not the shaved stubble on his head. 

When they finally came up for air, they both breathed "I love you" at the same time, foreheads resting against one another. He gave a breathless chuckle, fingertips tracing the lines of her face; her eyes, her nose, her cheekbones, her lips. Those lips.

"Damn." 

The couple looked over, re-entering the world to the flashing of cameras, the scrambling of cameramen and reporters to see Jiyong grinning like mad. Hunshik was standing beside him in stunned silence and Leewon behind him, mouth hanging open in shock like his jaw was broken. Jiyong's grin only sharpened. 

"That was hot. Could we do that in the next music video? That needs to be on film."

"Agreed." Hunshik added, voice weak and throat dry. 

All four men watched the angelic light come back to Daesung as she threw her head back and laughed. Her legs squeezed Yongbae and he smiled at her, hands falling down to rub along her thighs. She was human radiance once more as she met her leader's eyes, pulling Yongbae in for a long, tight hug. "Definitely."

Seungri was annoyed. Very annoyed. Not only did his manager totally know that Yongbae was coming home today, but that Daesung would be mobbed by reporters once she got there. 

While he'd been one of her first accusers - and he wouldn't blame her if she held it against him until either she died or her relationship with Yongbae ended - he'd explained himself thoroughly, the way he had to Jiyong, and she had been forgiving, even so far as understanding. 

"I know why you'd think that. I get it. It's not uncommon for a girlfriend like me to pass off a Dear John letter and run away with someone new. I don't like it, but I understand." She took his hand, squeezing it tightly. "As long as we can still be friends."

He made sure to spend more time with her as a friend instead of a groupmate. He came to know her really well - at least, come to actually learn the things he thought he knew - and had shared secrets with her about himself in their quiet moments in exchange for hers. Long nights spent at his home, bottles split between them and exchanged histories, pasts which they wouldn't have come to understand otherwise, affection blooming where it was unable before. She was his noona in title before, but she was his true noona now, like an actual, loving older sister.

And that was why he was rankled now.

"Rumour has it you were one of Daesung's first accusers for her infidelity. Is it true?"

While it was, there was a time for truth and a time for protecting his ing family. "I approached her with concerns, yes, but she laid them to rest."

"So you don't believe she's cheating on Taeyang?"

"Nope. She doesn't have that kind of heart."

"What about this footage?" 

He watched some woman - possibly man, hard to tell - get down on her heavily-pixellated and grainy knees and start giving some indistinct man a .he shrugged when it finished. "What about it?"

"For many, this has sealed their opinion on Daesung's habit. Considering you were the only bandmate of hers to approach this subject, are you sure your opinion hasn't changed with all fot eh new evidence that's appeared?"

"Some on her knees with the same vague bodyshape and hair colour as Daesung is supposed to convince me she's sleeping around? Or any of the other hundreds of pictures of blurry, vague women having with various people is evidence?" He snorted. "Please. Daesung's signature clothing is all black, mostly denim and her hair is a muted, natural-lloking auburn. Sure, she's got quite a physique on her, but that doesn't mean when it's on ty footage like that."

" . . . I didn't mean to offend you, Seungri."

He laughed, eyes screaming murder. "Yes you did. You want me to say what you're thinking. Not gonna happen."

"No need to get defensive." The host backed off. He took the opportunity to step forward.

"Yes, there is. Daesung won't defend herself because she feels like that's admitting guilt. So I'm going to say it for her: She's not cheating on Taeyang! So take your accusations and belligerence against her and shove it up your own ." He stared the shocked host down. "No one outside of our group gets to back my noona into a corner. No one."