AN: 'cuz I missed you guys. Do I need a reason? *goes back into hibernation*

It’s in the slips and falls and trips and walls that SeungRi always seems to walk into. It’s in his eerie smile and empty eyes, echoing laughs because there’s no one there to hear the joke. It’s in the way SeungRi ticks now; he goes ticktickticktick under his breath with suspicious eyes, his shaking body and fumbling fingers. It’s in the way his brushed hair is even messier than before and the weight loss, and the confusion, and the way SeungRi just stops listening once in a while.

It’s in the way SeungRi sneaks into JiYong’s room in the middle of the night and scares the living daylights out of JiYong, asking fearfully what his own name was, that JiYong thinks that there just might be something wrong with SeungRi.

∞

The doctor smiles and so does SeungRi, except the doctor’s eyes are filled with the grief of bad news and SeungRi’s eyes are hollow with a sense of uncanny calm and apprehension and waiting for the snap.

The members are asked to step out of the room; SeungRi’s eyes flare with alarm and beg for JiYong not to go, pleasedon’tleavemehyung, JiYong whispers that he’ll be right back and not to worry. Even so, SeungRi’s still crying from the other side of the door and JiYong can hear it, no matter how much he tries to tune it out.

The doctor speaks in rapid medical jargon and YoungBae is nodding as if he understands; JiYong just stands there and listens to the words disease, insanity, and dying running around in his mind like a chord progression he might dream up in the studio with Teddy-hyung. Except it’s a ballad, a heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, tear-spilling sad song, and JiYong hates sad songs, absolutely hates them.

∞

They take SeungRi home; everything’s too quiet because they think that if they were to speak the tears they’d been trying to repress would spill out and ruin everything. Because they’ve decided to keep their maknae oblivious, decided to placate him and spoil him and be utterly patient with him in his last few months of sanity. SeungRi comes home with a melting ice-cream cone in one hand, JiYong’s hand in the other, and a big huge grin on his face because everyone’s being so incredibly nice to him today. It makes JiYong want to break something, that smile on SeungRi’s face, but only because JiYong’s dreading the day where he won’t ever see it again. Happy thoughts, JiYong, happy thoughts. Keep it together. Just a few more months, a few more months until you can break down and cry and scream and do everything you wish you could do right now with SeungRi so vibrantly alive by your side.

∞

Days, months, seconds, weeks, they all go by so quickly, JiYong almost can’t keep up counting on his fingers. The fans are mourning like SeungRi’s already dead, JiYong’s writing like he already is too, and SeungRi wonders why he’s not allowed out of the dorm anymore.

“Hyung. Hyung, what are you doing?”

SeungRi asks this from JiYong’s bed (because JiYong doesn’t think he can stand the separation) and he stares up at JiYong’s plain ceiling because he’s not quite strong enough to lift his head right now.

“I'm writing a song, SeungRi.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about love.” And heartbreak, and of losing what’s still there, of no more Monday-night TV drama marathons and about no more sneaking away from meetings to go to the park instead.

“Is it a happy song, hyung? I like happy songs.”

“Yeah, it’s a happy song,” because SeungRi likes happy songs. In reality, though, it’s really anything but.

“Will you sing for me?” His voice is sleepy and quiet and childlike and so SeungRi and so dying-SeungRi.

“‘Course, maknae. I'll sing for you.” JiYong sings an old children’s lullaby with a trembling voice and tears trapped in his tight throat about an egg and a wall, about the king’s horses and the king’s men and how they couldn’t ever put Lee SeungRi back together again.

∞

SeungRi giggles and so does YoungBae as they sit on the living room floor assembling a thousand piece puzzle that JiYong’s sure they’ve lost half the pieces to. They giggle about the simplest things, like the colour of the clouds in the sky and the way the carpet feels against SeungRi’s frail fingertips. They laugh about things like the smell of pancakes and sounds birds make in the morning. JiYong watches them, feels every rip and tear with every laugh and giggle, knows that SeungRi doesn’t remember what the sun looks like or what birds are anymore.

SeungRi doesn’t remember a lot of things, though. It’s not only the trivial things; sometimes he forgets to zip up his pants and other times he forgets about pants altogether. There are times when SeungRi will wake up and think he’s got to get up and catch a plane to Japan for their upcoming concert and times when SeungRi will run into JiYong’s room and ask if he’s ever heard of the song Haru Haru, because hyung, it’s so beautiful and the singers sound so lovely. Do you know who they are?

One morning, though, SeungRi wakes up and screams because he doesn’t recognize JiYong sleeping beside him in his (their) bed.

JiYong is so scared, terrified, horrified that he runs out of the room and hides, crying and crying and hurting.

∞

“Say ‘ah’ for me, Seunghyunnie, open wide!” prompts JiYong, smiling gently and holding the spoonful of mashed potatoes to SeungRi’s dry, cracked lips. SeungRi opens obediently and closes his mouth around the food, on the verge of swallowing when he chokes and vomits into the bucket they’d installed by his hospital bed. The tears in SeungRi’s eyes, JiYong kisses them away, trying to soothe the frantic and distressed boy before he had to call the nurses in and cut his hours short (again).

He’s been at it for a few weeks now, refusing to give in the doctors’ advice, adamant that SeungRi did not need the damn IV line, that he was twenty-two years old and could eat food, thank you very much. And when SeungRi’s arms had started to fail him, JiYong had taken up the task of feeding SeungRi as much food as possible without SeungRi throwing it all back up again in the next hour. Now, though, SeungRi couldn’t even swallow so much as one spoonful.

It makes JiYong mad, looking at his maknae lying so goddamn helpless on the stark white sheets of the sterilized hospital bed. Thinking about how SeungRi should be outside and playing, or else in the studio like everybody else working on their goodbye album – not on the verge of death and completely unaware that he was dying in the first place.

∞

SeungRi dies on JiYong’s birthday, and JiYong wonders if anything could ever be more ironic.

∞

They bury SeungRi on a bed of roses, in satins and silks and SeungRi’s very best tux that he’d worn to his high school prom with the pretty girl from his mathematics class. SeungRi’s mother still has the pictures, shows them to JiYong and insists he keep them. JiYong almost says he doesn’t want them.

It’s a day for sadness and grief and JiYong feels like a horrible person for being happy. But he’s not blind, the birds are chirping and the sun is shining and SeungRi remembers everything now, remembers his name and JiYong’s face and the way JiYong had whispered ‘I love you’ to SeungRi that day in the hospital where SeungRi had asked for a fairytale and JiYong had told a story about two princes that were the very best of friends and had no evil godmothers whatsoever – none.