“First place again! Yeah, go blue team!” Seungri breaks out into a mini celebratory dance, the same one as he’d done to celebrate his past twenty-two 1^st places.

“Shut up,” Jiyong snaps.

It’s their day off, and Jiyong and Seungri are sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV after having come to the unanimous decision to play all 32 courses of Mario Kart on the Wii, because why the hell not.

Jiyong blinks at the screen in front of him. 8^th place. Hey, at least 8 is his lucky number. And it’s better than 9^th place. Or 12^th.

“Hyung, are you okay? You seem to particularly at Mario Kart today,” Seungri says as he reaches a hand into the bag of Honey Butter chips between them.

It isn’t Jiyong’s fault, really. He blames Seungri for distracting him while playing. Well, Seungri hasn’t been directly distracting him, but the thought of Seungri has been driving Jiyong crazy. For some reason, Jiyong is hyperaware of Seungri’s presence today, and he sorta hasn’t been able to concentrate on the game, which is obviously all Seungri’s fault.

Seungri crunches on the chips loudly beside him and Jiyong’s eye twitches.

“There’s n-nothing wrong with me!” Jiyong blurts, glancing at Seungri for a moment before whipping his head back to the screen. “I-it’s just that the stupid Wario bot on my team keeps coming last and is making the Red Team fall behind on points! A-and I swear that all the bots on your team are on 5000CC or something!”

“Hyuung, yeah sure, blame the game for your iness,” Seungri whines. “Are you letting me win on purpose? Because that’s lame. Come on, play properly!”

“I‒” Jiyong is cut off.

“Oops, race started!” Seungri turns to the screen and speeds ahead while Jiyong’s kart is left behind in a cloud of smoke.

Jiyong tries – he really tries – to catch up to Seungri who is obviously in the lead again. But he is too busy worrying about whether Seungri has completely seen through him and whether Seungri is going to for being so unreasonably on edge today. He steals glances at Seungri and smiles to himself when he sees Seungri, eyebrows furrowed, lost in concentration.

“Hyung, I know I’m y and all but you have to keep your eyes on the screen if you want to win,” Seungri says.

Jiyong grimaces. “Shut up. You staring at a screen with wide eyes and mouth hanging open is not y at all, trust me.”

“I’ve been told that I look hot when concentrating,” Seungri brags. “Actually, I’ve been told that I look hot no matter what I do.”

“Yeah, and lemme guess… the person who told you that was you,” Jiyong deadpans.

Seungri shakes his head. “Actually, it was you.”

Jiyong’s heart sorta trips over itself a little bit. “What?! When did I ever?!”

“Last week in our interview. You said, ‘Maknae looks good doing anything.’” Seungri smiles to himself in satisfaction after doing his stupid impersonation of Jiyong.

Jiyong mentally smashes his own head against a brick wall. “I was just being nice! And that was marketing; I didn’t necessarily mean it, okay? Seriously, I say the smallest nice thing about you and you make such a big deal out of it all the time.”

“Yeah yeah, I get it. You’re secretly in love with me.” Seungri’s tone is light, but something sounds kinda off, however, Jiyong is too absorbed in his own inner panic to notice. “And I‒ Did you just launch that blue Koopa shell? OH HELL NO.”

“That’s what you get for not shutting up,” Jiyong says.

“Well, I’m way ahead of everyone else anyway so it doesn’t really matter. Oh look, I already won,” Seungri says matter-of-factly and proceeds into his celebratory dance.

Jiyong is still racing when the game cuts him off because he’s taking too long to reach the finish line.

12^th place. At least that’s better than‒ no, there’s nothing worse than 12^th place.

Except being driven insane by Seungri.

“Now you really can’t blame Wario for letting your team down,” Seungri singsong teasingly.

“Shut up,” Jiyong says. “You were annoying me. Are annoying me, I should say.”

“Blue Team wins!” Seungri points a finger at the screen where the victory music plays and virtual confetti is thrown over the Blue Team’s racers. “And to the victor goes the spoils!"

Grabbing the bag of chips, he brings it to his face and tips the rest of it into his mouth. Jiyong rolls his eyes as he selects his character and kart for the last set of 8 courses.

“Anyway, can you pleeease play better? I’m getting sooo bored of winning all the time.” Flecks of chips fly out of Seungri’s mouth while he speaks and Jiyong seriously questions why he even chose to hang out with Seungri today.

But then he looks into Seungri’s brown eyes, framed lazily by strands of his tousled blond hair. Seungri’s gaze is playful but soft, honest, and, unlike the rest of the world, it’s devoid of judgment. And Jiyong is reminded of why he finds blankets of comfort in his maknae.

Seungri’s face contorts into a frown. “Are you sure you’re okay, hyung? Seriously, what’s wrong?”

What’s wrong?

Jiyong clenches his jaw as he tries to not let his eyes wander over Seungri’s tank top-clad torso and tries not to think about the curves and dips of Seungri’s exposed muscle definition.

He does anyway. What’s wrong, huh?

Jiyong doesn’t know what to make of his heart finding Seungri attractive-ish today. Well, Jiyong has always known Seungri as dashingly handsome, but Jiyong has recently been finding Seungri sorta-especially-attractive-ish for no apparent reason at all.

And Jiyong kinda wants to kiss him.

Gazing at Seungri’s lips, Jiyong can’t stop himself from leaning in just a tad bit. His heart is screaming closer, closer, go closer! while pounding its fists relentlessly against his chest. Seungri is watching him silently, a questioning look painted on his face.

Jiyong reaches out a hand to touch Seungri's face and softly brushes Seungri’s upper lip with the pad of his thumb.

Oh darnit, he can’t do this.

“Your face pisses me off,” Jiyong grumbles, shattering the magic spell, and retracts his hand quickly. “You’ve got crumbs all over.”

Seungri pulls a playful scowl and sloppily wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “There, all better.”

“Slob,” Jiyong says, but the rapid beating of his heart doesn’t quite spell relief.

“Neat-freak,” Seungri counters.

“Glutton,” Jiyong retorts.

“Speaking of which, let me go get more food. I’ll be right back, so don’t you dare start without me.” Seungri stands, brushes crumbs off his shirt, and leaves for the kitchen. “Unless you’re really that desperate to win!” he calls out.

Jiyong deeply breathes iiiiiin and ouuut in an attempt to calm himself down. He lifts his hands slowly and curls his fingers into loose fists – they’re trembling so much and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Oh gosh. He still kinda wants to kiss Seungri.

He coulda kissed him.

He woulda kissed him.

He shoulda kissed him.

…And he will kiss him.

Seungri returns munching on a bag of onion ring chips and takes his seat on the floor. He wipes his greasy hands on his pants and picks up the Wii controller. Jiyong intently follows Seungri’s every move with his eyes.

“What?” Seungri turns to him.

“Seungri-yah.”

And that is all the warning Jiyong gives Seungri before leaning in to ki‒

“Whoops, the race started again!” Seungri swiftly dodges Jiyong’s advances and is immediately absorbed in the game again.

Jiyong can only gape at him, incredulous, unmoving.

What just happened?

He burns from the neck up and burns in the heart. His pride has been unexpectedly ripped away from him and he’s left feeling lost, and utterly embarrassed.

Seungri must have pressed the ‘Start race’ button as an excuse to avoid him.

Why did Jiyong even try to kiss him in the first place? All because he ‘kinda’ wanted to? Because of some stupid ‘maybe-feelings’?

Everything’s ruined now. Everything will be so awkward now. It’s too late to take it back now.

Idiot idiot idiot.

But then he sees the deep red colouring Seungri’s face, sees Seungri’s white-knuckled grip on the Wii remote, sees that Seungri’s normally animated eyes are glazed over and unfocused, sees that Seungri is sloppily falling behind into 12^th place, and deduces that Seungri must indeed be very flustered.

And Jiyong thinks that perhaps… Seungri feels the same ‘maybe-feelings’ as Jiyong does too?

So without a second thought, Jiyong seals his lips over Seungri’s.

Seungri is completely frozen for a second, or two, or three, and it’s not until Jiyong brings a hand up to cup his face that Seungri lets the Wii remote and nunchuck slip out of his hands and parts his lips to kiss Jiyong back.

Seungri tastes like honey butter chips and onion ring chips and tastes like pure deliciousness.

Jiyong doesn’t care if he’s being attacked by Chain Chomps, or being flattened by a Thwomp, or being blown up by a bob-omb, or being hit by a Koopa shell, or falling over the edge of the race course in the game. Because in real life, he’s free-falling just by kissing Seungri and is just falling for Seungri and is realising that he doesn’t ‘sorta-kinda’ like Seungri... he definitely does.

Jiyong breaks the kiss to gaze at Seungri’s face, and when Seungri slowly peels his eyes open, he looks absolutely dazed, like he’s just woken up from a dream, which Jiyong thinks is so so so cute.

Seungri begins. “I‒”

But Jiyong kisses him again, because Seungri talks too much and needs to learn to shut up sometimes.

Jiyong takes the opportunity to place his hands on Seungri’s toned shoulders and explore down his bare arms with an eager touch, eventually settling at his waist. Seungri’s fingers find their way into Jiyong’s hair, nestling within the black strands.

“Hyung,” Seungri breathes against Jiyong’s lips.

Jiyong pulls away, his heart bursting from happiness. He takes hold of Seungri’s hands, pulling them to his lap, and laces their fingers together. Seungri opens his mouth to speak, but shuts it again. Jiyong idly fiddles with Seungri’s fingers and studies his face, watching as Seungri’s expression flickers between hope and doubt and hope again.

“You know, there are other ways to stop me from winning the race. You didn’t have to resort to such drastic measures,” Seungri finally says.

Jiyong laughs. “I thought that this’d be the most effective method, and I was right.”

Seungri glimpses at the screen. “I still beat you anyway because your kart didn’t even move.”

Jiyong’s face falls a little. “Maknae. Can you shut up for once? Stop focusing on the game and instead look at me.”

Seungri dares a glance into Jiyong’s eyes before casting his eyes down. “I-I’m sorry… I… It… It’s just that… My heart is beating so fast right now and it's foreign for me to be lost for words so I was trying to find something, anything, to say because otherwise I'll feel weird and yeah…” He wrings his hands sheepishly.

Jiyong takes Seungri’s hand and places it over his own chest. “You feel this? My heart’s beating like crazy too. I… I kinda‒” He clears his throat and tries again. “I really like you. A lot. So don’t worry.”

“O-Okay.” Seungri meets his gaze and Jiyong sees the smile behind his eyes.

“You better get used to this. Because from now on, I’ll be kissing you a lot…” Jiyong smirks amusedly. “If that’s okay with you, that is.”

Seungri nods vigorously, but then cringes when he realises how overenthusiastic he seems. Clearing his throat, he mumbles, “Y-yeah, I mean, I could get used to it, I guess.”

Jiyong’s heart twirls and he squeezes the younger’s hands.

“Now my breath is always gonna to smell like the food you eat,” Jiyong complains, but the corners of his mouth curl up because really, he doesn’t mind. He likes it. He likes Seungri.

“Yeah, well, deal with it. It’s only a small price to pay.” Seungri rolls his eyes, holding back a laugh.

"Honey Butter Chips though?" Jiyong tuts disapprovingly. "That flavour was popular like, two years ago."

"G-Dragon though? That rapper was popular like, fifty years ago." Seungri shoves him on the arm playfully.

“Yeah, right. I'm forever popular in your heart though," Jiyong mutters under his breath.

Seungri sticks his face closer to him, eyebrows drawing up. "What was that?"

"Nothing. Shall we continue with Mario Kart?” Jiyong asks, keeping his eyes trained on Seungri, but the question is half-hearted. He knows what he really wants to do instead.

Seungri shakes his head slightly, and seems to know too.

Jiyong shrugs, eyes falling onto Seungri’s lips. “Well I guess I don’t feel like playing anymor‒”

This time it’s Seungri who kisses him.