“Hyung, why aren’t you sleeping?”

Seungri rubbed his eyes and sat down on the concrete next to Jiyong. Remnants of cigarette smoke clung onto the air. A few beer cans were littered by his feet.

Without turning to acknowledge him, Jiyong took a swig of beer. The summer breeze drifted between them and lightly tousled his loose singlet. From the rooftop, the black sky seemed to melt together with the grey skyline. Distantly below, cicadas hummed in trees.

“Are you not tired?” Seungri tried again.

“No.” Jiyong’s tone was curt. “I don’t sleep.”

“That’s not good for you…”

“Then what about you? Why aren’t you in bed? Kids need to sleep a lot to grow up properly.” He bordered between sardonic and indifferent.  

“I… was wondering where you were,” Seungri muttered.

“Now you know. Go to bed.”

But lately, Seungri was used to Jiyong blowing him hot and cold and was used to having to swallow the lump in his throat.

“I don’t want to! If you’re going to stay awake…”

Seungri looked down and fiddled with his fingers.

Jiyong sighed, the weight of the world seeming to tumble out with it. In the ensuing silence, Seungri thought he was going to tell him to go away again, but instead he turned to him for the first time tonight.

“Here.” Jiyong offered the can with an expressionless face. “Want some?”

“I-I’m underage, hyung. Did you forget?”

“I know.” He shrugged. “I’m your hyung, so I’m basically your guardian. Take the opportunity since I’m allowing it.”

“Okay.”

He accepted the drink with hesitant hands and took a sip. The bitter taste burned its way down his throat but he swallowed it like an obedient child, fighting against the grimace tugging at his features.

Jiyong seemed to sense it anyway. “It’s about the feeling, not the taste.”

Seungri nodded, feeling a tingling warmth pool in his stomach already. They drank in silence, passing the can between them. Seungri’s insides were fidgeting. Was that a normal effect of drinking? Was it because they were too close? Or was it because he needed to be closer?

The urge to say something pressed at his tongue but he couldn’t collect his thoughts into words. He didn’t want to bore Jiyong with his wordless presence, but at the same time he figured that since Jiyong was here alone in the first place, he was seeking the silence.

Still, the minutes dragged on and Seungri needed to say something to distract himself from how stifling the air was and from the weird stirring in his stomach. Naturally, the first thing that slipped out of his mouth was not the most delightful topic.

“Hyung… when are you going to start taking care of your health? You can’t function without enough sleep. It’s not good for you, and it makes me really–”

“I didn’t come here to hear you lecture me, maknae.” Jiyong glanced at him with his upper lip curled in distaste.

“Sorry.” Seungri’s chin dropped and he stared at his lap.

The concrete was hard underneath his bottom and it dug into his tailbone. His eyes searched around him, hoping to pluck words from the air like flowers from a garden. Gazing at the faraway sleeping buildings, he let his musings tumble out.

“Wonder what kind of lives those people are living. It’s all so small from here.” His eyes traced the yellow-lit streets and the edges of apartment blocks. “Aren’t you glad our lives are like this? Big Bang is getting fa-mous, yeah~”

He waved his arms in a dance in hopes to crack a smile from Jiyong. The latter didn’t even flinch, so Seungri let his arms flop down.

“Glad?” Jiyong’s gaze was wistful and Seungri felt like he was viewing something private. “The more I have, the more I realise I’m losing. I can have anything I want, yet the things I yearn for I can’t have. At least as an ordinary person it’d be easier to have those things.”

Seungri struggled to grasp at the fringes of Jiyong’s thoughts, but he felt that deep down he knew the feeling the elder was talking about, just something that fleets by on the off day, a vague, shapeless longing he never let himself ponder over.

Instead he liked to channel his thoughts into positive paths. It was the only way to stay sane anyway.

“Well, I’m grateful for my life.” Seungri turned his head to him and stretched his mouth into a big grin. “Because I got to meet hyung.”

Jiyong looked at him, lips falling open. A lopsided smile slowly spread across his face and he lifted a hand towards the younger’s head. But then, like an injured snake, his arm retracted before touching. As much as Jiyong might hope he didn’t see, Seungri saw it all through the dark and his smile wilted – just for a moment – before he chuckled through closed lips. He wondered what was so filthy about him that Jiyong refused to touch him nowadays.

Seungri shook those thoughts away like clearing smoke from his mind. He was content just feeling the elder’s warmth radiate by his side; it sated parts of his needy heart.

Jiyong downed the last drop of alcohol and cracked another can open. Seungri bit back the urge to stop him. At least they didn’t have an early morning schedule tomorrow, or Jiyong would be suffering through the whole thing with a hangover.

“I wrote another song,” Jiyong said, words slurring slightly.  

“Ooh, is it for your solo album? How many songs do you have now? Can I hear it?”

Seungri bounced in excitement but it was as if his words died before reaching the elder’s ears.

“I think it’ll suit your voice so well. Your voice was all I could hear when writing it.”

Seungri stilled. “You wrote a solo song for me?”

“But, I’m not giving it to you.” Jiyong fingers gripped the can in his hand. “The world can’t hear it.”

“Can’t you at least give it to me? Or let me hear it?” Seungri blinked his puppy eyes at him and if he had a tail, it’d be wagging uncontrollably.

“No. You can’t.” Jiyong squeezed his eyes shut as if physically pained. “Even I don’t want to hear it. It makes my skin crawl.”

Seungri’s heart sank. “Why, why? What’s wrong? I’m sure it’s amazing.”

“You’re only a baby.”

Did Jiyong think he was not ready for a solo? He performed Next Day by himself and he thought he handled it pretty well.

“But I’m tough! I’ll be an adult next year.”

Jiyong opened his eyes and smiled a cracked smile, but it was a smile nonetheless and Seungri stored every one Jiyong gave him because they were so far and few lately.

“Yes, that’s right. You’re a strong baby.”

Heat that wasn’t the alcohol bloomed in Seungri’s cheeks. It wasn’t the summer temperatures either.

Strong baby?

The light breeze had stopped now, and sweat was beading at his collar. His head was swirling a little. His tongue was heavy and bitter with beer and his stomach was warm. Everything was warm but it still felt like there was a permanent sheet of ice separating Jiyong.

“There’s a strange feeling in the air I get with every turn of the season.” Jiyong dragged his words like he did whenever contemplating out loud, setting down the beer. Seungri tuned in, ready to absorb and cling onto every word he spoke. “Like when the air is hot and stuffy for the first time in months. Or when the air is cold and still after a period of sweltering heat. It’s like… the air holds the scent of another time. Maybe it reminds me of how quickly the time has passed. One summer, after the other… The days all start to blur together until we just stop for a moment to look back, huh?”

Seungri nodded even though the words rattled loosely in his mind. The air felt tighter suddenly, like it was closing in on him.

“It makes me think of previous summer days. Summer days where eomma, appa, Dami noona and I would go on a long drive to the beach and collect seashells. Summer days where I sweated my arse off in the training room with Youngbae picking up water bottles for our sunbaes. Summer days where…” He his lips. “Where you and I sat by the ty box TV on our rare lazy days and cried over dramas.”

Summer days where you would still hug me tight despite the sweat pooling between us. Summer days where you smiled with your teeth and gums and it shone under the sunlight. Summer days where you danced on the street so carefree and dragged me by the hand…

The memories were clogging Seungri’s throat that he couldn’t breathe, so he carefully stashed them away to let consume him another time. 

“Maybe I’m just exaggerating. That was only a year ago. And one summer at that.” Jiyong laughed breathily. “But why does everything feel like a lifetime ago?”

Seungri didn’t have an answer. Or, maybe he had too many.

“Times change.” The words scraped his throat. “But we keep living.”

Jiyong’s voice dropped. “Things may change on the outside… but on the inside, it’s a different story.”

Seungri’s heart stuttered a strange rhythm of hope. His brain was jumbled, but his body always reacted so automatically to everything Jiyong said.

Before he could continue to tug at the thread of the conversation, Jiyong spoke again, voice picking its bite back up.

“It’s so hot. It’s so damn warm even up here on the rooftop.” He grabbed his own collar to air himself. “I feel like I’ve forgotten what heat feels like until now.”

Seungri felt the heat press against his temples. But was it from outside or inside?

“I guess hot air rises.” Yeap, he was tipsy. He didn’t know what he was saying.

“So are you saying my words will reach the higher-ups? Will heaven find out too?” Jiyong craned his neck to the sky. “I guess they know everything up there.”

A beat of silence.

“What?”

“Because I’m full of hot air.”

Seungri’s eyebrows drooped in confusion.

Jiyong’s sudden laugh punctured the silence.

Seungri managed to join him with an awkward chuckle.

It was silent again.

“Let me tell you a secret.” Jiyong leaned forward and Seungri was fixated by his red lips that were glistening with moisture under some distant light.

Jiyong raked his eyes over him, from each facial feature down his whole form. To Seungri his gaze felt like insects were crawling all over his skin in his clothes. Feeling . He shuddered.

“Sometimes the thing we want most in life is right in front of us yet we are unable to reach out.”

Seungri felt the need to whisper. “What’s stopping you?”

“Everything. Because everything is wrong.”

“You’ve come this far and pushed this hard to be where you are now, you know how to overcome any kind of fear, hyung.”

“It’s not me, I swear. If it was just me then I’d already have it clutched tight in my hands… It’s this world we live in… This world that spits on us and turns its back on us.”

Seungri’s chest was being wrapped in tightening rope. “What is it that you want anyway?”

“It’s a forbidden fruit. The epitome of temptation. Pure sin.” His gaze dropped and Seungri marvelled at how even his eyelashes were pretty.

“Like… like…?” he prompted, thoughts naturally wondering to valleys of burning bare flesh and choked sounds of pleasure before casting those images away.

“Satan is breathing down my neck.” Jiyong shivered.

Seungri decided not to push it.

“It can’t be wrong to want things.” He tried another angle and raised a teasing eyebrow. “I mean, unless you want to kill someone.” Laughter bubbled from his lips.

His chest clenched for a second when Jiyong didn’t laugh with him.  

“Sometimes…” But then Jiyong laughed, the sound dry like sandpaper.

Seungri waited for him to continue but he said no more. Sweat slid down the side of his face.

“You’re too young to understand,” Jiyong dismissed, looking away.

It irked him a little that Jiyong still treated him like a child. “I’m growing up, hyung.”

He heard the elder mumble something, sound dissipating like a breath in the air, but it took a few moments for the words to become clear in his brain.

“Yes, I’ve seen your body when you get out of the shower these days… It’s a problem.”

Seungri’s heart hammered hard enough to rattle his whole body.

“I didn’t know you still looked.”

Jiyong turned back to him and whispered so soft he was almost just mouthing the words.

“I never stopped.”

The air was out of Seungri’s lungs.

“Don’t.”

Jiyong reached a hand to his face and this time didn’t pull away.

“You’re so soft, maknae-yah.”

He his jaw with his fingertips and Seungri’s skin blazed.

“You need to keep being soft,” he continued. “For my sake. And for yours.”

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Seungri murmured and let his eyes slide shut.

Everything leapt in temperature with his eyes closed and his cells hummed underneath Jiyong’s touch.

“No, I can’t when you’re like this.” Jiyong draws back and Seungri presses down the hurt in his throat. “I can’t. You make me want to give up. Give in.”

“Give what up?” It was back to square one and Seungri held back a sigh. “Giving up is bad, hyung. Don’t give up.”

Jiyong shook his head. “No. Giving up is so good. It’s too good.”

“It is? Then give up!” Seungri honestly didn’t know what to say anymore. It was almost as if Jiyong wanted to taunt him by phrasing things in a way he would never understand.

“When you say it like that… you’re making it too easy…”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.” His eyes were a jungle of emotions. “Maybe we could play pretend.”

What Jiyong didn’t know was that his mask just slipped. Seungri was none the wiser.

“Whatever makes you happy.”

Seungri felt a dull ache from somewhere deep, maybe everywhere in his body. Jiyong shifted and lay his head in Seungri’s lap. The younger tried not to jolt in surprise and let the tension drain out of his muscles. Taking his hand, Jiyong brought it to his lips and kissed his fingers.

All words were stolen from Seungri’s mouth.

“Maybe I’ll let you sing that song…” Jiyong gazed up at him, looking at him as well as looking through him. “Cos it all. You’re a strong baby, aren’t you?”