Jiyong doesn’t know how it happens when it happens.

He doesn’t remember anything before the few lucid seconds of sobriety he manages to blink in from underneath the familiar body, until the heat of an open mouth engulfs him again.

The sweet nothings probably sit in the back of his head somewhere, recollected only in the most maudlin lyrics he writes into his journal but never gets to singing. Their texture is all rust and decay on his tongue, like they’ve been left to rot away inside him since some night he can’t recall. They sound more filthy than romantic once they’re out in the open. He tries not to write a song about why, but then he has his mind stuck on the word ‘crooked’, and it happens anyway.

Sometimes he finds evidence. Like symptoms of a sickness. They’re in the little bruises on his hips, in the teeth marks across his neck, in the soreness of his muscles. If he doesn’t stop himself there, he also catches the ache in his gut from phantom arms still wrapped around his waist. But he always wakes up alone, and always pads into the bathroom alone, invariably with a throbbing headache and a foolish hope that someone would be in the shower. Fortunately, the physical pain in his temples curbs the shame that would otherwise wash over him. He never fails to be disappointed because he never learns. He’ll refuse to learn as long as he needs to.

The few days he waits for the lingering scent of foreign skin and expensive cologne to fade from his bedclothes are the same days he can be sure to not receive a single call or text from Choi Seunghyun. If there’s an association, a correlation, or a flat-out causation there, he denies it with sangfroid, because logic has no place in their relationship, after all.

No, there isn’t much logic behind the way Jiyong lets Seunghyun rest his head on his shoulder, or lie in his lap, or hold on to his arm, but his hands only meet stiffening muscles if he so much as touches the small of Seunghyun’s back any longer than what can be interpreted as perfunctory, or any lower than what can be called brotherly. There’s nothing rational in how he knows he can hear the truth in Seunghyun’s “I love you”s when they’re drunk out of their minds, draped across each other in the neon-illuminated VIP booths of clubs, and then the strain in the words when there isn’t a drop of alcohol in their systems. There is no reason in being ed through the night and abandoned the next morning, knowing deep down that it will always be that way, and yet letting the cycle repeat.

It almost feels like the universe is telling him he can’t have too much at once, so the wraith of a Seunghyun that loved him yesterday and a Seunghyun that loves him today can’t be anything but mutually exclusive. You would think he'd say “ it” and drop their iffy, enigmatic, capricious thing by the time Seunghyun avoids him for a month, after telling him the previous night he wishes they could be together, and then giving him the messiest and hottest he’s ever received in his life. He’s not the best at dating or romantic relationships, but he knows that giving someone a shot of what peace and pleasure feels like, before allowing them to weep over you for the next few weeks, isn’t something healthy couples do.

It doesn’t stop him from seeking peace and pleasure in Seunghyun over and over again, of course. The worst part about being wrapped around somebody’s finger is that hope always trumps fear. He finds romance in the veracity of that adage. Youngbae finds it ing disturbing.

Jiyong doesn’t tell anyone about him and Seunghyun exactly, as much as he would like to. He guesses it might reify them. But the look that crosses Seunghyun’s face when anyone so little as mentions their names in the same sentence is enough of an inhibition. The only reason Youngbae finds out about his situation is because human eyes just have to swell after three days of crying (even make-up couldn't save ) and Youngbae doesn't let anything go if it involves his best friend getting hurt.

“Who is this guy? Is it someone I know too? I could find out where he is if you like. Hell, I could even beat the out of him if you want. Jiyong, that’s messed up, what he’s doing to you.”

That’s enough for him to know not to ever tell Youngbae it’s Seunghyun. It would ruin them — the whole band. That would be inconsiderate. Childish. Selfish. They’ve all worked too hard to get to where they are for his stupid little crush to send them crumbling.

“It’s okay. You don’t know him.”

Maybe he isn't lying. There’s a part of Seunghyun only he knows about, he thinks. It doesn’t come from the novelty of and intimacy. It comes from the late nights of their early years, when they’d stayed up to make music and talk. Even though the both of them were, in theory, the most likely pair to get distracted in the middle of work (Seungri and Daesung would never dare go off track in front of him, and Youngbae is too focused to be talked out of work), somehow everything they’d laughed and cried about in those nights had led back to their music. Both of them have always worn their hearts on their sleeves, except to extend the metaphor more accurately, Seunghyun wears his on the inside, and it takes a little more music for his heart fall out. Jiyong has always been there to watch it happen.

The venture into film and art is a way to get away from music, i.e. the one thing he’d tainted. Not that Seunghyun doesn’t have genuine passions for both of those things (because the millions he’s spent on art so far would say different), but they’re triggered by a desire to seek something out by himself, for himself. Thespianism tends to strip him down to his bare bones. YG enjoys wringing his bones. He comes back from filming to be informed that GD&TOP are releasing an album next, and that’s when he realises he can’t write raps when his thoughts and emotions stop coming to him in the form of witticisms, but in waves of pure feeling. Art is his salvation. So it starts turning from mere experimentation to deep interest after Iris the Movie. Which is also around the time he and Jiyong sleep together for the first time.

They trudge up to their shared hotel room after one of their GD&TOP concert after-parties, blood still buzzing from the eighteen shots they’d split, and sprawl over their individual beds. Seunghyun won’t stop babbling about something that sounds like it's supposed to be a funny anecdote, because he's too high to have any restraint whatsoever. Which means Jiyong is giggling uncontrollably, because everything Seunghyun does or says is comedic genius. It's autumn, so it isn’t as warm without air conditioning as warm can get, but the alcohol and giddy laughter makes the stuffy room feel several degrees higher than it actually is. The search for the air conditioning remote control becomes Seunghyun’s seven-minute quest, during which he picks a tittering Jiyong up from his bed to look underneath, to the younger man’s delight and amazement.

“How are you carrying me so easily? You’re completely -faced right now!”

“You’re light as a feather,” comes the equally gleeful reply. Then, in a murmur, “I’ve also been working out more.”

It’s not that funny, or funny at all, but obviously Jiyong cackles. “Can I feel them?” he asks, trying not to look as bashful as he sounds.

“Feel what?”

“Your muscles.”

He snorts as he puts Jiyong back down. If Seunghyun is blushing, Jiyong can't tell, because he’s turned away to look inside a bedside drawer, and the warm light of the bedroom is too dim for his eyes to focus on anything more than five inches away. There's a glimmer of longing in that moment for Seunghyun to be much less than five inches away from him. So he rolls over closer as if in a trance, until Seunghyun’s jaw is a hairsbreadth away from his lips, and presses into the warm skin there.

“What’d you do that for?!”

Jiyong pulls away with as much composure as he can muster when he hears the exclamation, already prepared to spend the rest of the night in silence and sleeping with their backs resolutely facing each other. But the wolfish grin on Seunghyun’s face is too wide to miss, even in the dim light. He really wants the air conditioning to start up then, because he's sure his pounding heartbeat can be heard reverberating around the room.  He doesn’t answer Seunghyun, because he isn’t high enough to forget he shouldn’t be saying things like, “Because I like you a lot.”

Naturally, of course, his brain decides it's still acceptable to say, “I wanted to know what it’s like to kiss you.”

There's a beat as the air goes still.

“Don’t you already know?” Seunghyun murmurs through a spreading smile. “Or is my kissing so bland it’s forgettable?”

Jiyong spends a good minute trying to figure out what the hell he's talking about, because he's pretty certain he’d remember making out with Seunghyun if he ever got the chance, until he realises what Seunghyun is referring to. “Ah, that parody we did doesn’t count.”

“Why not?” Jiyong can almost hear the offence in his voice. “Are you saying I’m a bad actor? Wasn’t it realistic enough?”

“It’s acting, so it doesn’t count,” Jiyong laughs.

“You know, people bare their souls when they act. It was as real as it could get.” Seunghyun pouts.

“It doesn’t count because you’re not a big-shot CEO and I’m not a girl you’re in love with. You might kiss differently as Choi Seunghyun. I’d kiss back as Kwon Jiyong. You know, I didn’t even get to kiss back that time.” Jiyong doesn't know why he's still rambling, but he figures they'll forget about this conversation by tomorrow. Besides, if he punctuates his words with enough giggling, he could make it out like he isn’t being completely serious.

“You could have,” Seunghyun mumbles. Then an inscrutable look crosses his face and he rises from his kneeling position, suddenly fixated on beating off the invisible dust on his trousers. It isn’t long before he's holding his head in his hands, complaining about seeing stars from standing up too quickly. “Ah, I think I should go to bed.”

Jiyong just smiles at the sight and hums in agreement. What a dork.

His eyelids are heavy and dry from the long day, and they flutter shut every few seconds before he forces them open again, because he doesn't want to fall asleep yet. It isn’t that he expected or even hoped that Seunghyun would turn back at some point to say, “How about we kiss right now?” and climb into bed with him, like in one of his silly fantasies. He's just happy. It isn’t every day that a concert would go so well, and that he’d actually attend a phenomenal after-party instead of sulking alone in a hotel room so excessively large it's frightening. He even has eye candy in his hotel room this time. It's a bonus that this eye candy happens to be someone he loves. Of course he's going to stretch the feeling out for as long as he can. 

He feels himself falling into the opiate warmth of his thoughts again and pushes himself to blink his eyes open. This is when he realises there's a Statue of David standing in their hotel room.

“God, why is it so hot in here?” the Statue of David groans, and Jiyong blinks harder this time.

A hand combs through the white hair, and Jiyong’s eyes follow the sinews on the arm it's attached to, then down to the bare, cut chest and the rows of chiseled abs. Holy . Choi Seunghyun was topless. He’d taken his shirt off. He never takes his shirt off. He's supposed to be insecure about his body. Holy , how is he insecure about that body? It’s fantastic.

“Fantastic body.”

“Huh?”

It's a good thing Jiyong is too drowsy to move, or he would leap off the balcony right now. He settles on letting his hand go to his face in embarrassment and laughing breathily through his fingers. “Nothing. I just said your body is fantastic.”

“Thanks.” It's Seunghyun’s turn to get flustered.

“Seriously, if I had a body like yours, I’d show it off at every opportunity.” Jiyong doesn’t even bother masking the seriousness behind his statement.

“You punk, you already walk around half- all the time.”

That gets a hoot out of Jiyong.

“Hey, I’m the one fully clothed right now!” he retorts.

“We’ll see about that!”

Maybe it's how much he's laughing, or how sleepy he really is, or the vodka still at work, but everything is a blur between Seunghyun charging towards him, hands out ready to tickle, and Seunghyun lying on top of his bare skin where the shirt buttons have come undone. He feels like his brain has short-circuited. All it can process is how warm the fire in his chest has gotten and how good it feels to have a sweat-slicked Seunghyun straddling him like this, so before he knows it, he’s buried his fingers in the mop of white hair and pulled the man down to kiss him.

Seunghyun’s lips are as soft and welcoming as Jiyong remembers, but everything about this kiss is different. He's almost taken aback by how different. Even in its close-lipped beginning, it's deep, needy and wanting. When he slips but a sliver of tongue into the greedy mouth, a low moan escapes from Seunghyun's throat, and that is all it takes for them to realise there's no turning back. Not tonight, or ever again. It's fingernails in flesh and teeth against trembling thighs from there. When they together that night, Jiyong sees nothing but white.

The next morning blows in as a biting breeze. Jiyong wakes up to the sight of an open window and the sound of pacing. He's and sore. He peers over the duvet to watch Seunghyun, back to donning his turtleneck and ankle-grazing jeans, shuffling around the room in what are probably shin-high socks.

“Hyung?”

Seunghyun stops pacing for a moment to glance over. That's when Jiyong notices the ashen colour of the man’s face, and how its features are frozen in the perfect sunlessness. There he is again, the Statue of David.

“Hyung, are you okay?”

And suddenly the marmoreal effigy melts into flesh again, so the rigid jaw can move, and the lips can part to murmur, “Yeah. I think I just need some air.”

That's the first time he leaves Jiyong. Maybe it isn’t as dramatic as hopping into a taxi without his luggage and speeding back home, never to be seen or heard from for the next hundred days. But it's running out the door and returning an hour later a different person. This new Seunghyun can’t bear to look at Jiyong in the eyes, and flinches when he is so little as grazed. If it had only been that one night that they’d been together, Jiyong probably would’ve been able to convince himself for the rest of his life that it had just been a dream.

But it keeps happening for years. It’s frequent enough for Jiyong to know it means something, but interspersed enough for it to hurt. For the first year or so, he’s determined to pluck a confession, or a promise — anything absolute enough to be enduring — out of Seunghyun. All that endures, however, is the understanding that there will always be pain involved. From the requisite shots of tequila he throws back that burn his throat, to the excruciating ride home where he aches for the man mouthing at his neck, and the mornings of waking up in an apartment too big and too hollow.

Funnily enough, Jiyong realises, the emptier his own house feels over time, the more full Seunghyun’s house becomes. By the third year of their sporadic midnight trysts, Seunghyun’s house can be easily mistaken for a gallery. More than half the art he’s bought is stored away in a warehouse, but his villa is still overflowing. When they’re invited over to his house and Seungri bumps into his sculptures at least a dozen times throughout the visit, Seunghyun is genuinely livid. He’s also declared his love for paintings at least ten more times than he ever has for Jiyong. Not that anyone’s keeping track of the number.

Jiyong sees the intent behind the art Seunghyun favours. When they get to visit museums and exhibits together, Jiyong’s looking at him as much as the pieces. He can pick out the glints of interest, the bored skims, the critiquing gazes, and his favourite: the long looks of awe, intermingled with tranquillity. There isn’t a specific style or period that these works are from, but the pattern is their order. The geometric, the rectilinear, the helical. Even when it’s a mess of oils or charcoal on a weatherbeaten canvas, there’s order there, in the middle of the bold-coloured chaos.

“Do you want a painting?” Seunghyun asks him one day, when they’ve all just sat down for dinner after a concert rehearsal. They haven’t slept together since three months ago, so that typically means they’re on talking terms. In fact, this might be the friendliest they’ve been for a while. Sometimes Jiyong thinks he should be happy about their relationship staying out of the grey area of intimacy.

“Why? You want to get me one?” Jiyong chuckles, combing his blue hair out of his face.

“We go to museums a lot, don’t we?” Seunghyun says. “I was just thinking it’s weird that I haven’t gifted you any art before. I like buying people things. And at least I’d know you’d be able to appreciate it.”

Jiyong knows why he hasn’t gotten any art from him yet. It’d be a step too far in realising the fact that Jiyong, like bubblegum on concrete, is stuck everywhere inside him, from music to art. Everything Seunghyun could pour his heart into, he would find Jiyong there already, waiting at the periphery. Like he belongs there.

“Well, I’ll be waiting for my present,” he replies with a smile.

But they have drinks that night. And before they know it, they’re ordering shot after glass after shot; and sitting across from each other at the restaurant table means an hour of indolent gazing, behind both their eyes the mutual knowledge that they won’t be speaking for a while again after tonight. So Jiyong doesn’t get his present any time soon. And if they stop going to museums together as often after that, he tries not to pinpoint this as the time Seunghyun realises he’s let Jiyong in too much again.

There’s a period of time when he does wonder to himself if it’s all really worth it, the constant sadness and forlorn yearning. He wonders if Seunghyun is really worth it. Even if he could list a thousand reasons to love the man the way he does, he wonders if any of that makes a difference. In the end, love isn’t actually enough for love.

So when he gets time to himself in Japan for a week, he calls up Kiko Mizuhara to ask if she wants to meet up and have dinner one day, because he’s tired and lonely, and she’s funny and beautiful. He doesn’t tell her that last part, obviously.

She always has stories to tell and her voice is liquid sunshine, even when she’s sometimes stumbling over translating Japanese to English or Korean. She has the kind of smile that makes her easy to love. But he doesn’t love her. At least not in the way he wishes he could. Still, there’s no harm in hanging out with someone whose company he enjoys. She clears her schedule and takes him around Tokyo for two nights, and then up to Saitama for a day. He’s almost scared by how good she is to him, even though this is only the third time they’ve met up in person.

At some point he must have let something slip, because he finds himself in a Warabi pub at 1am, telling Kiko about how ed up he feels. It isn’t just Seunghyun. It’s the weight of everything the world thinks of him, tipping against the bleakness that his life has really become.

“Why do you think your life is bleak?” she asks him.

“Well, maybe it isn’t totally bleak. I definitely have little to complain about. I mean, I’m not starving, right?” he says, stirring his scotch absently with a ringed finger. “Just compared to what everyone thinks, it’s really ing bleak.”

“Then you should stop comparing your life to other people’s expectations,” she huffs. “I model and act, but I don’t stop being a human being when the cameras are gone. You know what I mean?”

Jiyong looks up at her from his drink.

“You rap and sing. You dance. You make people happy. None of that means you should be immune to getting hurt.” She puts her hand over his on the table, and gives him one of her warm beams. “You’re a sensitive person. You’re going to feel empty every once in a while, and then full of joy at other times.”

He can’t help but smile back at her.

“Thanks, Kiko,” he says. He tries to focus on her hand caressing his instead of the face that’s been plaguing his mind since the start of this conversation.

“And think about whether people who hurt you are worth being in pain over.” He sees a look of moue harden her soft features.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I should probably do that.”

Naturally, the answer he comes down to is nothing short of ambiguous.

Back in his hotel room, he takes to his songwriting journal and pens down the anger that’s begun to lap at the walls of his gut. Suddenly he’s realising how used his body is. He’s a rag. A toy. A dog kicked into the street that keeps crawling back. But for once, the indignation is spilling outwards. Because it’s Seunghyun who uses him. Seunghyun, who has to cling on to the love Jiyong gives, and who is probably too ashamed to look at himself when he’s done. He’s the pathetic one, Jiyong tells himself, and he scratches the words into his journal. They come like wildfire, as quickly as his mind is racing. He’s a word into the chorus when something drips onto the paper, blotting the ink there. He almost smiles over how stupid he feels for crying now.

From there, he keeps his face half-buried in the arm of his hoodie, the anger burning out into a muted bitterness. “I hate being sober / I can’t fall asleep without you” makes its way onto the page without him even having to think about it. He has half a mind to title this song “The 5 Stages of Grief”, given how many emotions he’s overcome by with every minute. He settles on “Sober” instead, and has to drag his sleeve over his eyes to wipe away the tears pricking behind them.

Suddenly, he remembers he has to delineate T.O.P.’s rap verse somewhere, and quickly makes a note of that. When he realises what he’s doing, he puts his pen down and buries his head in his hands to laugh and laugh and laugh, because he doesn’t think there’s anything else he can do.

When it finally comes down to presenting the lyrics to Teddy and Seunghyun a few weeks later, his heart flip-flops in his chest non-stop, like he’s just slipped a love confession into his elementary school crush’s backpack and he’s waiting for a reaction.

“I like it,” Teddy declares. “We can try this out on the track I let you listen to the other day.”

Seunghyun is still reading, tight-lipped and indecipherable.

“Seunghyun?” Teddy nudges him.

“Uh,” he falters and blinks a few times behind his glasses. “Yeah. Okay.”

“That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, man,” Teddy chuckles.

“No, it’s good,” Seunghyun quickly chirps, and looks over at Jiyong to offer what seems like is supposed to be a smile, but is turning out more like a grimace. Jiyong feels his face burning.

“We’ll wait for you to write your part and then send it over to Hyunsuk?” he says.

“Yeah.”

The next two and a half hours are painful, especially in the last ten minutes when Teddy takes a bathroom break and leaves the two of them alone in the studio, trying their best to pretend to be working. Jiyong thinks Seunghyun might’ve swivelled his chair around for a second to look over, but he can’t be too sure with his eyes glued to the computer screen in front of him. This must be what the phrase ‘deafening silence’ means, he thinks.

When Teddy comes back, Seunghyun rises from his end of the table to a sheet of lyrics into his hands. “Finished!” he warbles.

Teddy hands the sheet back to him with a grin and scoffs. “Go ahead and rap it, then.”

Jiyong turns around to watch Seunghyun, who laughs out of what might be shyness before performing his rap. Jiyong can’t hold back his smile at the mix of humour in its melancholy tone. It’s so Seunghyun. It’s so perfect—

“Get drunk, get drunk, go to heaven. After I wake, I’m in hell, I don’t last long.”

And there it is. The answer to a question Jiyong doesn’t even know he asked.

Maybe it’s just how hungry he is for some kind of acknowledgment that he means anything to Seunghyun. Maybe Seunghyun always felt like crap after a night of drinking, whether or not with Jiyong is involved. Maybe Jiyong is only a hundredth of the reason for those lyrics. But he grabs the possibility with both hands anyway, and stores it deep within his already b heart.

So he’s both heaven and hell. Yeah. He’s okay with being Seunghyun’s liminal space. He’s fine with being purgatory. Or being the one to receive a fallen angel — whichever direction the goddamned cycle was moving.

“It’s good,” he hears himself say, and sees the flicker of sorrow in Seunghyun’s eyes when he smiles at Jiyong.

This is enough. Hieroglyphic lyrics and brief moments of contrition. This is all he can have and all he needs.

Suddenly the song takes a different tone in his head and he’s telling a dismayed Teddy to scrap what they’ve done so far, because now he wants it against blaring music with an upbeat rhythm and clashing cymbals. He wants it blithe and uncomplaining.

But there is no drastic turn in their relationship after this. They don’t get together that night and profess their undying love for each other. They go back to their individual homes and try to fall asleep sober. When morning comes, they return to the recording studio and pretend it means nothing that they’re exchanging looks through the glass as they record their parts.

Over the next few months, Jiyong makes it a point to see Kiko whenever they’re in the same country. At first it’s only when they’re in the same city, out of serendipitous work schedules, but it becomes obvious to him that that would give them maybe five chances to meet in a year. He’s not sure if he’s doing this with a subconscious desire to gradually drop Seunghyun, but the two of them like each other enough to actually want to meet, so it happens anyway without much need for contemplation.

Jiyong likes it this way. Perhaps this is what healthy relationships are supposed to be like. There isn’t a need for brooding or trepidation over whether the other person is going to want you around yet, because you haven’t fulfilled the mandatory week of post- silence. There’s something eerily Pavlovian in the way he finds himself surprised by Kiko’s texts only an hour after they’ve parted ways. Maybe Youngbae was right. His hope-trumps-fear, absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder philosophy has been kind of harrowing.

She’s enamoured of Jiyong in the most genuine way, beyond all the glitz and glamour that drips off of him. She listens to his most vapid stories and most reckless thoughts like there’s nothing else she’d rather be hearing. She wants him to choose where to take her every alternate date so she can see what he likes, even though she’s a walking Google directory for quaint cafe-bars and indie galleries in any given city. He feels warmed by the light she gives off, and sometimes it seems like she lights up because of him.

So he lets it happen when she slips her hand into his as they’re walking along a street in Seoul one night, and smiles when she plants a kiss on his cheek. He doesn’t stop her from leaning into him at a concert, and he doesn’t have to think too hard about wrapping his arms around her waist either.

But one day Kiko says the words “I love you”. It’s as sweet and easy to swallow as floral honey, except Jiyong chokes on his own words when he says it back. It’s not that he doesn’t mean it. He just knows the sentiments are off. She’s in love, and he’s still very, very out of love. He hasn’t slept with Seunghyun for almost a year now, but he catches his heart falling out of his chest every time they lock eyes in the middle of recording or a party or an interview with too-personal questions, and he doesn’t believe anyone else can make him feel that way. It wouldn’t be fair to her if he let her think she could.

“Hey Kiko?” he says, as he’s walking her out to her taxi that night. He unlaces his fingers from hers.

She turns around and her short curls bounce over her shoulders. “Hmm?” He wishes he could take a photograph of her in this moment. He really might have, if he’d known it’d be the last time he would see her looking at him that way.

“Let’s not… let’s not fall in love, okay?”

The worst thing about a pretty smile is that they’re the hardest to watch falling off someone’s face.

As the taxi pulls away into the street, he tries not to look at the silhouette by the window, because he knows a pair of wet brown eyes are staring back from the other side. He doesn’t think he can convey to them how sorry he is.

He tries calling her the next day, and the day after that, and over the course of the week. She doesn’t pick up, not even when he leaves a voicemail yelling for her to please pick up because his apartment is on fire and he’s going to die, as recommended by Daesung.

“You need to give her time. No one’s going to recover that quickly,” he tells Jiyong.

She never calls back, but she sends a short text message two weeks later.

He’s in a dance practice when his phone pings the special ringtone he’d set for Kiko’s number, and he stops in the middle of a good run to fish his phone out of his bag pocket. She starts the text with an apology (for what, Jiyong isn’t sure) and goes on to thank him for his companionship and support over the past few years. She ends the message with the words “thanks for the memories”, which he understands is break-up speak for “we’re not going to create anymore memories together”. He texts back to find his number has been blocked, because the message doesn't get delivered, and tosses his phone aside to slide down onto the sprung floor.

“Hey, what happened? What did she say?” Seungri calls over.

“I don’t think we’re friends anymore,” Jiyong mumbles.

“What? Can’t hear you!”

Someone turns the music off as Jiyong’s voice resounds around the room, “I DON’T THINK WE’RE FRIENDS ANYMORE!”

He’s too dejected to be embarrassed.

“Dude.” Youngbae comes over to sit next to him on the ground. “What are you gonna do about it?”

Jiyong shrugs. “She blocked me on everything, so.”

“You have mutual friends, right? You can still get through to her,” Seungri suggests.

“Ah, that’s totally overstepping my boundaries,” Jiyong says. He runs a hand through his sweaty mop of orange hair and sighs. “Besides, I wouldn’t know what to say to her. I don’t have anything worth saying. She has every right to feel upset.”

“What did you even do?” He hears Seunghyun’s baritone voice above him.

Jiyong forces out a snicker and turns his head up to peer at him.  “I led her on and then basically told her I wasn’t looking for anything serious,” he intones, gaze unfaltering.

Seunghyun just stares back with an obtuse look on his face.

“There goes another good friendship,” Jiyong mutters under his breath, looking away when he’s decided Seunghyun isn’t going to say anything. “For once I had something fun and healthy with someone, and I ed it up.”

Daesung tuts. “Don’t say that. It’s not like you can help that she ended up falling for you.”

“I could’ve not been so touchy-feely with her when I knew she had a thing for me,” he spits out. “Or just been clear with her right from the beginning. Y’know?”

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to hurt her,” Daesung says.

“Well, I hurt her anyway.”

Everyone in the room exchanges looks of concern.

“Hey, let’s just call it a day here, all right?” Youngbae finally breaks the silence. Jiyong feels his hand descend on his shoulder affectionately. “We’ll go for dinner and forget about this, okay?” He pauses uncertainly for a moment. “Or we can talk about it, too, if that’s what you want.”

Jiyong simply makes a sound of acknowledgment.

They all start packing up to hit the showers, each giving Jiyong a clap on the back or a gentle punch in the arm before they exit, as if the collective force might energise him. As he’s about to leave, he feels a large hand clasp over his wrist, and turns to see Seunghyun standing too close for him to remember how to breathe.

“Nnnmmuh?” The sound he manages is ever so eloquent.

Thankfully, Seunghyun is too anxious to care.

“It’s not like that with me,” he whispers, even though they’re the only ones in the dance studio now.

Jiyong takes a step back. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not like— I don’t— I was never trying to—” Seunghyun closes his mouth into a grim line. His eyes are darting around the room as he struggles to find words. He looks like he might give up, when finally he says, “I just want you to know that you do mean a lot to me. More than you think. More than I let on. And, um, I’m sorry for what happened. With Kiko."

He stares at Jiyong with something like expectancy, but the shorter man just looks back at him wordlessly with a tilted head and vacant eyes, and eventually pulls his arm away from the hand clutching on to it.

“Noted,” Jiyong says, and walks out without looking back.

Weary is what he is. He wishes it’d be as easy as walking out on Seunghyun forever, and never being hurt again by someone who couldn’t even accomplish a lucid expression of love. He wishes he had the will to hop on a plane to Japan, and knock on Kiko’s door with flowers, chocolate and a big fat diamond ring. But he doesn’t actually want to do either of those things. He’s just too exhausted to be shaking Seunghyun by his stupid muscular shoulders and screaming into his stupid handsome face that he wants to hear him say an unhesitating “I love you” for once. It’s then that Jiyong also realises it’s possible Kiko had felt the same way about him. And maybe he'd crushed her too. There’s a sour feeling in his gut when it dawns on him that he won’t be calling her up for two-hour long heart-to-heart talks again anytime soon.

The five of them have dinner at their favourite Japanese restaurant that night (Seungri chastises the rest of them for being insensitive but Jiyong tells him to stop being ridiculous), and Jiyong spends the first half of the night silently ruminating over his tonkotsu ramen and green tea.

Then he remembers saké exists, and it’s slurring and blubbering from there.

“She was so good to me, Bae! She was the sweetest girl I’d ever met!” He’s seized the front of Youngbae’s muscle tank in his fists. “Who the —hic—throws that kind of love away?!”

“Listen, you probably wouldn’t even have loved her the way she wanted,” Youngbae reasons, vaguely exasperated. “You say all this in retrospect, but you know it’s just your guilt talking.”

He squawks when Jiyong slaps him lazily across the face.

“How dare you! I love people very well! I’m a good person to love! I am!” Jiyong wails.

Daesung comes around the table to drag their red-faced leader off Youngbae. “I think you’ve had enough tonight,” he says, placing him back in his seat.

Jiyong slumps over the table on his elbows, knocking over a bowl of miso soup that Daesung scurries to catch, and points adoringly to Seunghyun. “Hey, are you drunk yet?”

Seunghyun hasn’t said much throughout dinner, and doesn’t say anything now either. But he’s a little pink in the cheeks, and the half-empty bottle of awamori in front of him says enough.

“Are you going to f-finish that?” Jiyong grins at him.

Seunghyun doesn’t respond. Just gazes slack-jawed across the table at the orange-haired ball of energy before him, who says, “You don’t need it, so I’ll take it.”

Jiyong’s wrist is caught by the large hand for the second time that evening. Seunghyun is gripping the base of his arm in one fist and clutching onto the awamori with the other. “No,” he grunts. He doesn’t let go of Jiyong. He holds on so tightly, Jiyong begins to think he’s trying to get a pulse. Suddenly he feels a brush of skin, and his gaze lowers to see Seunghyun’s fingers chafing the underside of his palm, so softly and discreetly he’s not sure if he’s imagining it.

Jiyong feels it when the heat starts to stir in his tear ducts. He stuffs his face into the crook of his left elbow for the rest of the night, all the while holding his right hand out for Seunghyun. No one thinks it’s weird that he’s shut up, because of course their level-headed hyung is capable of calming him down. And they’re right. Just not for the reason they probably think.

They sit like that for the next half an hour, until the rest of the guys have fed Jiyong enough water to feel like he’s at least sobered up enough to leave.

“I’ll take him home,” Seunghyun tells them.

“Are you sure, hyung? You’ve drunk quite a bit yourself,” Seungri points out.

“I’m fine,” Seunghyun declares. “I’ve drunk more than this before, come on.”

The three of them refuse to go home until they’ve sent Jiyong and Seunghyun off in a taxi together. The second Seunghyun has rolled up the tinted partition, Jiyong literally throws himself onto him. He doesn’t want to feel like anymore tonight, so this is his cure, his elixir. He’s going to drink Seunghyun up and feel good for once in this god forsaken year. He kisses him greedily, aching for the taste he almost but never did forget. There’s the tang of awamori on his tongue tonight, but just like every other time they’ve done this, he can pick out the vanilla sweetness amid the acrid flavour of alcohol. It’s been too long since he’s on those perfect lips between his teeth, or felt the velvet tongue behind them search his own craving mouth. All those months of thirst and want, of looking but never being able to touch.

Who the cares about the pain that comes after? This is the panacea he gets for waiting.

Jiyong shifts in the seats so he can straddle him, his denim-covered thighs pressing unapologetically into the nooks of Seunghyun’s hips. He ruts against the sizeable bulge that’s already grown in the front of Seunghyun’s trousers, and elicits a gasp from the man writhing underneath him. He’s missed feeling those large, manhandling hands fondle his , the crack through his jeans.

“I want to you gently—” Jiyong kisses all the way up his jaw until he’s a breath away from Seunghyun's ear. “—and then for the rest of the night—” He les on the lobe before moving down the slender neck to gnaw at the pulsating flesh. “I want you to me hard and rough.”

He grinds his hips down roughly for effect, and Seunghyun lets out a dirty moan.

The lustful sound is usually enough to give Jiyong goosebumps and a full hard-on, but this time he has to clasp a hand over Seunghyun’s open mouth in panic, because they’re in a taxi, and the partitions are about as soundproof as cardboard. They’re both paralysed and wide-eyed as they try to discern if the driver has heard them, even though there isn’t much of a way to tell, but the car doesn’t jerk to a stop and a knock on the partition doesn’t come, so they let out the breaths they’ve been holding and relax.  Jiyong’s hand is still clammy and plastered over Seunghyun’s mouth, and their alarm has deflated the mood of . He looks at Seunghyun look at him, and all of a sudden feels a grin breaking upon his face.

He’s giggling soundlessly, and finally withdraws his hand to cover his own face in embarrassment. Seunghyun starts to smile too and soon enough, they’re convulsing with mirth as they hold on to each other.

“Your eyes got so big, you looked like an actual deer in the headlights,” Seunghyun pants. He pulls away the slim hands covering Jiyong’s face and leans his head in closer to look into the downcast eyes. “They really are like deer’s eyes. So pretty.”

“Choi Seunghyun.”

“Yes?”

“I love you,” Jiyong breathes.

Seunghyun doesn’t answer right away. It’s nothing Jiyong doesn’t expect, because the buzz of alcohol is slowly but surely coming to a smoulder in their veins. He thinks he might actually be dropped off at home by himself tonight.

So when Seunghyun finally whispers, with nothing but tenderness in his voice, “I love you, too”, he swears his heart skips a beat.

They kiss each other gently one last time, before he climbs out of Seunghyun’s lap to sit next to him. Their hands never leave the other’s throughout the rest of the ride, and their fingers are interwoven as he leans on Seunghyun’s shoulder in silence. There’s something final about the mood. Like maybe this time something is going to change. Jiyong doesn’t know what the change will be for sure, but his insides have stopped churning from wishing something would, and that’s sufficient for him to take in everything that’s happening for once. The warm hand in his, the man he loves next to him. The man he loves who loves him back. If he could stop time here, he would.

When they eventually pull up in front of his apartment building, Jiyong pays the driver and tells him to keep the 35000 won change, because that’s totally enough to bribe him not to say anything if he’d actually heard the country’s biggest idols each other’s faces off in his taxi. The driver just thanks him and makes his way, so that was that.

“Shall we?” Jiyong asks, turning to Seunghyun. He realises then that Seunghyun looks like he’s about to hurl, and his eyes go wide. “Hyung, are you all right? Do you need to sit down for a bit?”

Seunghyun winces and shakes his head, but proceeds to squat down on the pavement. He holds his head in his hands, fingers going to clench the platinum roots of his hair. It doesn’t look like he’s going to throw up anymore, but his face still says something hurts.

Jiyong assumes a similar squatting position — of course Seunghyun looks a little more graceful when he does it, even when he looks like he’s about to tear his scalp off — and the tensed arm. “Seunghyun, what’s wrong?”

Seunghyun doesn’t respond for a good minute, but just sways quietly with his face between his diverging knees. Jiyong’s ears don’t even pick up the snivelling until he realises the arm in his grasp is shuddering. As soon as it registers in his head that Seunghyun is crying, he goes straight into full boyfriend mode and scrambles to simultaneously hug him while rubbing his back while peering from every angle to detect some physical evidence of pain.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong? What happened? Why are you crying? Are you okay?”

It’s a universal rule that you shouldn’t ask someone who’s trying to keep their crying noiseless if they’re okay, or they will start bawling.

“It’s all right, sweetheart, it’s all right,” Jiyong coos, planting profuse kisses his hair when Seunghyun slumps into him, wracked in sobs. They hold on to each other like that, Seunghyun’s fingers dug into Jiyong’s jacket, and Jiyong wanting nothing but to give himself to Seunghyun. He rocks him until he feels the shaking slowly cease.

Seunghyun says something then, but it comes out as a blubber.

“What was that? I’m sorry, babe, I can’t hear you.” Jiyong shifts slightly so Seunghyun’s face isn’t buried in his chest anymore.

“I’m so in love with you—” Seunghyun starts, and then bursts into tears again.

“Whoa! Hey! I’m in love with you, too, okay? Trust me, I’m very in love with you.” Jiyong goes back to holding him tight. “Really.”

Seunghyun makes a noise that sounds like words slurred together, and Jiyong pulls away so he can hear him again. “I can’t be in love with you. I don’t know how. But I don’t know how not to either.”

Jiyong smiles fondly and tries to wipe away the wetness on Seunghyun’s cheeks. “Did you rehearse this? You’re crying and spouting poetry.”

“Listen. I’m serious.” He untangles himself from Jiyong without loosening his grip on his jacket, so Seunghyun can look square at him. Jiyong has to stop himself from leaning in to kiss that heartbreaking face. “I don’t know how much longer we can do this. We can’t possibly last running around like this just to see each other. I don’t want to have to drink my wine cellar’s worth of alcohol just to touch you, and I don’t want you to hate me half the time because I’m not as brave or open-hearted as you can be.”

“I don’t hate you, Seunghyun. I could never hate you,” Jiyong says, and doesn’t wait any longer to lock his lips with Seunghyun’s. He feels the sweet, soft mouth begin to quiver against his, and tastes the salty tears that roll into the kiss.

“This,” Seunghyun whimpers without pulling away. His speech is punctuated only with light brushes of his lips against Jiyong’s skin. “This isn’t right. I could never do this in front of anyone. I make it out to be so filthy I can’t even look at myself when it’s over.”

The breath Jiyong takes in is sharp when the words sink in.

Seunghyun is terrified. In the back of his mind, Jiyong has always known there was an amount of fear behind his desires. It’s not repulsion or regret in the way that Jiyong sometimes catches him looking — it’s honest-to-goodness fear. He sees how it shackles Seunghyun, but for some reason, he’s never thought about this as why. Or maybe he has, but decided selfishly at some point to blame it on something more punishable, because it would be easier to stomach a fickle Seunghyun than a scared one.  But this is it. It’s as easy as boys-can’t-love-boys, and as difficult as Jiyong being a boy.

Jiyong hasn’t thought twice about his ual orientation since he was 18 and discovered The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and decided after his fifth time watching it with stars in his eyes that he was allowed to be whatever the he wanted and love whoever the he wanted. Besides, no one he kept close in his life would put him down for something like this. If anyone did, he wouldn’t be keeping them close. He realises how ty it is that it’s gone over his head that not everyone has the privilege to be unafraid.

He smooths Seunghyun’s hair out of his tear-streaked face and caresses the distraught features.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Seunghyun sniffs. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I never talked to you about any of this,” Jiyong says. “I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t see past my own nose. I couldn’t see beyond my own feelings, and I’m sorry I left you hurting alone.”

“That’s some serious nonsense. Don’t say that just to make me feel better,” Seunghyun rasps. “You were hurting too, I could see it.”

“Not like you.”

“Well, I hurt you anyway.” Jiyong hears the echo of his own words earlier that evening in Seunghyun’s statement and smiles gently.

“Then I forgive you,” he tells him.

Seunghyun sniffles again and nods solemnly for a moment, then goes to wipe his snot on the sleeve of his stupid expensive shirt. “Do you still love me after seeing me like this?”

Jiyong looks at the pink nose and large dewy eyes, and lets out a chortle. “I love you even more.”

They finally help each other up from their squatting positions, cringing and laughing from the soreness of their legs as they limp into the apartment building. “You chose a great position to have a breakdown in,” Jiyong joshes.

“Don’t act like I’ve never made you this sore before,” comes Seunghyun’s serene reply, and Jiyong yelps.

When they reach Jiyong’s loft, he’s too cold and tired to do anything but run a bath.

“Join me?” he asks Seunghyun coquettishly.

The man just smirks and lets himself be led into the bathroom.

They sit in the alcove tub with Seunghyun’s arms wrapped around Jiyong, who leans into the bare length of torso supporting his back. They sit like that in a comfortable silence, curved into each other, thumbs delicately on skin. It’s the first time they’re both and not actually having . It’s the first time they’re both and not actually plastered. Jiyong is perfectly fine with both. He doesn’t feel desperate to fill their time together with hurried kisses and jumping at each other’s bones anymore. Even if Seunghyun runs off by dawn again, he wouldn’t regret having spent this time with him just like this.

A few minutes of shut-eyed breathing go by, and Jiyong says into the wet quiet air, “Seunghyun, you don’t have to let people know you love me. It’s enough that I know you’re here.”

He senses the rising tautness in the muscles pressed against his back.

“I don’t know if that’s fair,” Seunghyun replies.

“Who would it be unfair to?”

“You, of course.” The body behind him shifts gingerly. “It’s not just about keeping an image in the public. We can’t even get married or have kids.”

“Who said anything about marriage?” Jiyong turns his head to look at him in mock surprise.

Seunghyun gives a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and chuckles just a little too briefly.

“Hey.” Jiyong turns around fully this time to look at him. “I know there are things we still can’t do because the world won’t let us, but that’s not everything we are. We run and hide like we’re committing crimes, but we both know we have nothing but love and affection for each other. So don’t talk about it being unfair for me, because there is no fairness at all in this. We don’t get to have it fair.”

Seunghyun stares at him speechless.

“But I’ll still always love you,” Jiyong continues. “Even if you decide to marry a chick and settle down like any ordinary ahjussi, you will always have my heart. It would really ing hurt, I'm not gonna lie, but I just want you to know it doesn't change the way I feel about you. I promise.”

“Don’t you want a family?” Seunghyun asks, voice low. “You always talk about wanting children.”

“Seriously, are you planning to propose to me or something?” Jiyong laughs.

“The problem is I want to. One day,” Seunghyun croaks.

Jiyong wishes the universe would cave in right now and swallow them whole. He wants everything to end here, with a promise. He doesn’t want to tell Seunghyun that he knows it’s going to be a problem, that he’s only laughing or else it’ll hurt, and that he doesn’t have a clue what they should do so everybody wins and no one loses anything. But he’s done with reticence. They’d gone through so much unnecessary bull because they wouldn’t communicate from the start.

So he’s honest with Seunghyun this time, and tells him everything that’s racing through his mind.  When he’s done speaking, Seunghyun looks like he might cry again for the second time that night. But he just pulls Jiyong into a firm embrace and says, “Okay.”

“We can figure it out together,” Jiyong murmurs into the crook of his water-speckled neck. “If we have to, we’ll move to the Netherlands and get married there and grow old together.”

“We don’t know a word of Dutch.” Seunghyun laughs.

“We can figure that out together, too.”

They’d be lying if they said things stopped hurting from there. It gets easier, obviously, now that they understand they have each other no matter what. Jiyong wakes up next to Seunghyun all the time now, except for the few times Seunghyun flies out the door in the wee hours of the morning, screaming that he forgot he has somewhere to be that day. Other than that, his house doesn't feel so hollow anymore, and neither does his heart.

The air around them loses its tension. Seunghyun doesn’t recoil anymore when he's touched in a certain way, at least not as much as he used to. And Jiyong doesn’t hate himself anymore whenever it does happen, but just takes a stride back and understands it’s not about him. The relationship has its difficulties, but the love is pretty simple. He sees that now.

Pillow talk slips into their songs. One of the many great parts about being the main songwriters for majority of their songs is that they get to write their love out for the world to hear. Maybe people can see it or maybe they can’t, but the point is it’s out there, whether it’s a familiar phrase in a mere verse, or an entire song. Jiyong loves the irony of sending love songs to Seunghyun, out into the same world that doesn't let them love each other the way they want. It's like hiding in plain sight. Or brutal honesty. But he dedicates a heartfelt song to Kiko too, with the foolish words he’d last said to her. He just hopes she can hear his remorse, and the gratitude for everything she'd given him.

Jiyong also finally gets his art present from Seunghyun. He hands it to Jiyong a few days before Christmas, a red and green oil painting by Je Yeo Ran, double framed in white wood, and a multi-coloured gouache piece featuring a field of flowers. He hangs them in his bedroom so they’re the last thing he (or sometimes they) sees before he goes to bed and the first thing right after he wakes up. They give him a sense of peace. Sure, Seunghyun gifts Youngbae two equally stunning paintings that day too, but you can’t blame him for feeling like things had come full circle. Plus, they were gorgeous.

As Seunghyun’s military conscription draws closer, they spend more of their spare time together, if that were even possible. They spend New Year’s together even though it’s supposed to be a group countdown, but everyone else bails and leaves the two of them on their own to drink. Halfway into the night when he has to answer a call for five minutes, Seunghyun takes Jiyong’s coat and leaves the club without telling him, so he takes it as a note to go to Seunghyun’s house.

He finds a really haphazard-looking trail of rose petals leading up the driveway when he alights in the freezing cold, and follows it into the house, where it ends in a candle-lit bedroom. An underwear-clad Seunghyun is sprawled on the bed in what is probably meant to be a pose of fatal seduction, looking like he might’ve fallen asleep if Jiyong arrived any later. Jiyong laughs himself senseless and Seunghyun, in his drunken stupor, laughs along with him. He pulls Jiyong in to join him on the bed, where it’s warm and covered in too many rose petals, and they fall deep into each other for the rest of the night.

Jiyong’s head feels like it’s being hammered in when the sun rises in the morning, but he forgets about it as soon as he opens his eyes and sees Seunghyun gazing back.

“You looked like you were in pain for a while,” Seunghyun murmurs with a crinkle-eyed smile.

Jiyong rubs his eyes and smiles back.  “Mmm, yeah."

"Hangover?"

"Obviously,” Jiyong breathes a laugh. He blinks a few times until his vision settles lucidly on Seunghyun's face. "But it doesn't hurt anymore."