A/N: Well, this is the last chapter. It's a pretty open ending, I gotta say, but I suppose it makes sense, considering my inspiration for these characters are real people, and their lives go way past this story. Anyway, if anyone stuck around until now, thank you so much for reading, I appreciate it :)

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2019 and forward

I need you. After just a short time, he’d learned those three simple words could have many different meanings altogether; and, with that, he’d also learned to distinguish the correct meaning they had every time they popped up on his phone screen, at the most unexpected hours of the day and the night. He didn’t know if he’d always been like that or all that time apart had changed him, but he’d realised that he couldn’t help himself and always ran to Seunghyun every time he called, no matter what the situation was, he just couldn’t stay away from him.
 
And the fact that he used the words I need you didn’t help him at all; he couldn’t ignore him then, less than he’d ever been able to. Maybe he knew that he needed him as well, that they needed each other, and he hated the idea of leaving him alone, he’d always had. There was something about him you couldn’t escape, he had some sort of aura around him that lured you in and made you extremely desperate to, just, be seen. Something he knew and had always known about him, something that he had never overlooked himself, either, was that he was a complete mess; he could’ve tried to make it romantic, but it wasn’t, it couldn’t be.
 
Choi Seunghyun was a disaster, his mind was an utter confusion, with debris falling around, a dark and lost place; that didn’t necessarily make him a bad person, it just made him difficult to understand. He was dead honest, when he could be, when he succeeded in understanding himself what was going on in his own head; sometimes you would find him looking into the distance, barely blinking, basically a statue, and if you asked him what he was doing he would just snap out of it and look at you with a puzzled expression on his face, because he didn’t really know.

You kind of had to be careful and not let him get lost in his own thoughts, or he would fall into himself and treat everybody like garbage for a week straight, before returning to his normal self as if nothing had ever happened. It had taken a while for everybody to get used to his strange behaviour and his sudden mood swings, and now you could say that at least the four of them had learned how to handle him in those situations.
 
He could hide that part of himself being just plain weird, as he always did on stage, with the fans; that wasn’t just a façade, either, that was actually how he was, really, it was only the brighter, happier and relaxed side of him, the one that could. pretend everything was fine. If there was something he hated, was actively and intentionally lying: if he could say things for how they were, he would; it wasn’t that difficult to get something out of him; he’d noticed that when people asked him something under his mainly nonsense Instagram posts, instead of saying something just to mess up people’s mind (which was something he would’ve definitely have done if his name was T.O.P; or if he had Instagram to begin with), he answered with the truth, because, was what even the point of saying a lie?
 
Another thing about him, was that he completely destroyed himself when he loved something –somebody. He probably didn’t even know, never seemed to notice anything about that, maybe he didn’t even want to accept it, but it was the sheer truth.

He loved art, every kind of art, more than he loved himself, he was willing to waste all the money he had on paintings, chairs and similar things (and that was something he would never understand, he just didn’t see the point, but, whatever); yet, that were material things, and, even if it might seem strange, that wasn’t all he cared about.

He cared about people, too, and that wasn’t all that obvious, because maybe, he would’ve preferred not to care at all. But everybody knew that he loved his family and them, his four dongsaengs, more than anything, more than his own life, even when he was cold, even when he tried to push them away as a defence mechanism, even when he pretended he didn’t. His heart could give in for the strength of his feelings, leaving him with nothing but empty pieces of his soul.
 
So, yeah, there definitely was something to him you couldn’t just ignore and go on with your life as if it wasn’t there; he wasn’t all that beautiful and charming on the inside as he was on the outside, he had some damaged and dark spots, but, after all, he was just human, and no one’s perfect.

And it was weird, because people always used to say that when you love somebody, you see them as flawless, you tend to idolize them and forget they’re just like you are; but by now he’d seen and felt enough to be sure that wasn’t true.

The truth was that, if you really care about somebody, you learn to accept them for who they are, with all their problems, their fears and ugly scars, and that was the only way it was supposed to be; and that was why he kept running back to him every time he called him. Because, after all, he was a total mess, too, but, he was a liar, and a pretty good one (and people didn’t know; for them, he was an angel, but he’d never felt like one). 
 
I need you. Sometimes the message had an angry undertone, he could somehow feel it, even without hearing him say it; those were the times when Seunghyun would grab his arm the moment he walked through the door and push him against the wall, pinning him down with his stare and his lips, before he even had time to protest (not that he actually wanted to, but he preferred when he talked to him about what was bothering him). It would always end with them both lying breathlessly on the floor, asking themselves what they were doing this for, asking themselves what they were so desperate for, with him always wondering if he should say something, ask what was wrong, and always keeping silent, because it was clear that he hadn’t called him to talk. Those times he would feel nothing but useless and empty, because it felt like what they used to be was gone for good and now, all they did was –that.
 
I need you. Sometimes the words seemed almost neutral, slightly cheery, calm; again, walking through the door, he would find himself being grabbed by the arm, and dragged to the couch, where Seunghyun would shove a pile of magazines in his lap and immediately start to show him the paintings he wanted to buy, the temporary exhibitions he wanted to visit and the new up-and-coming artists in the area and not. He kept on rambling for hours, looking up for pictures on the internet and searching the artist profiles, and Daesung just kept listening, sure he looked kind of puzzled and unsure what to answer, felling honestly ignorant; but those were the times when he felt at ease, because he was important enough for him to share his interests with him, knowing that, even if he didn’t understand anything, he would listen to him, because it was what he loved. It always felt like nothing had changed at all.
 
I need you. Sometimes he would feel the drastic sadness and sorrow behind the words and he would get to his door with his heart in his throat; he would always find himself with his arms full of Seunghyun before having the time to step into the house. The older would let himself cry until he didn’t have tears anymore, until the look in his eyes would seem empty and emotionless, and, afterwards, he would stay curled up close to him on the couch, looking into the void, his head resting on his shoulder, asking him why the world had to be so unfair, and why at the end it was always the good people who got hurt. He never had the answer, but he always wished he had, because he needed to know as well, he wanted to tell Seunghyun that everything would be fine, but he wanted to believe it as well, and sometimes it was hard to do. Those times he was sure nothing had changed at all, even if it wasn’t the truth; he was happy to be there for him without any ulterior motive, like they’d always been there for each other, through the years.
 
I need you. Sometimes there was something almost melancholic mixed with a sort of quietness in the message; he never knew what to expect when that happened, never quite understood what it meant, and maybe it scared him a little bit. Seunghyun would sit him down at his table and put all possible kinds of food in front of him, pouring him a glass of some precious and expensive wine and he would just gape at him the whole time, wondering why he was trying so hard to do something, well, romantic, when they weren’t even in a relationship to begin with.

It wasn’t all in the dinner, it was always in the way he found him almost staring at him with a soft smile on his face every time he glanced at him, and he thought there was something in his eyes he couldn’t identify. It was in the way they would kiss afterwards, not like it was the prelude of something more, it never was a feverish and hungry kiss, it was delicate and comfortable, and, somehow, it felt like it was exactly how it was supposed to be all along. And it was the most terrifying feeling ever and it always made him think that maybe the three words Seunghyun had meant to say back then weren’t ‘I want you’; he never knew what it meant for them, never knew what to do. Those were the times when he understood that they had changed, but not as much as he’d first thought; they weren’t what they used to be, yet, they weren’t completely different people, their relationship wasn’t upside-down.
 
They still needed each other, after all, and maybe it didn’t matter what it meant

-FIN-