XII

          Seunghyun couldn’t decide whether the day had elapsed quickly or taken no time at all.

          He was so anxious to make something actually happen that time dragged, and yet when he realized that he was so scared for something to actually happen, he was scrambling, wondering where the day had gone and what he’d been doing anyway and how he was supposed to get himself together in time.

          As soon as he was sure Youngbae had retired to his room, Seunghyun exited his own. He didn’t want Youngbae to know that he was going to fix things like he’d suggested. Even though he knew he’d be supportive and happy, Seunghyun got all worked up whenever he thought about Youngbae and his advice.

          But even Seungri had noticed something was up.
          And that meant the problem was nowhere near between just him and Jiyong now. And it couldn’t be ignored.

          He sat in the living room, picking a magazine off of the coffee table, scanning it absentmindedly. He was too nervous about compiling what he was going to say and too on edge about anyone coming in the room to really focus on anything, and it’s really no wonder that as soon as he heard the first light footstep at the end of the hallway, his throat closed up and he was ready to curl up in a ball and cry.

          Jiyong heard the way Seunghyun in his breath as he closed his door, saw the way his head raised resolutely. He didn’t want to get his hopes up about this finally being the time where he’d have to take back his feelings for Seunghyun and give him up altogether, but despite his efforts, his heart thudded dully as he walked forward.

          He fought the impulse to turn back.
          He was desperate. Even if it would be another silent night, it would better than nothing.

          He just wanted Seunghyun to look him in the eye again. Make him laugh again. At least a smile. Something.

          God knows he could use it, too.

          He perched himself on the farthest corner of the couch, lowering his head and not even pretending to do anything but wait.

          And Seunghyun saw him there, holding his breath, not moving a single muscle, waiting. He almost folded up the magazine and put it away, but he didn’t, and the result was a sort of flinch. His best friend was sitting there, his best friend who loved him, his best friend who he’d known forever, and he didn’t even have a single idea of where to start to talk to him.

          But he had to talk to him.

          Jiyong got sick of this game after ten minutes, and raised his head, looking intently at Seunghyun.

          It’s just not enough for him to wait anymore.

          Without even looking up Seunghyun felt Jiyong’s gaze, and he exhaled, throwing the magazine onto the table. He bent in half and ran his hands down from his hair, holding his hands over his face, and Jiyong could just barely make out what he said.

          “I’m sorry.”
          Jiyong swallowed. “For what? You haven’t –“

          As Seunghyun found himself speaking, he had to keep speaking, and he cut Jiyong off. “For not talking to you. It’s been too long.”

          Jiyong looked down at his hands and his lips into his mouth. “I’m just glad you’re talking to me now, that’s all.”

          “Yeah.”

          The next silence wasn’t as pregnant.

***

          When Seunghyun came out the next night, Jiyong was already waiting for him. He was sitting in his spot on the couch, looking nervous despite trying to act casual. Seunghyun got his drink and sat down in his armchair, examining the fibers of the carpet.

          Jiyong seemed to be spacing out, too – he had his knees tucked into his chest and he was picking at his feet, staying uncharacteristically silent with the excuse of giving Seunghyun time to think.

          Seunghyun moved on from the carpet fibers to counting the cracks in the wood on the coffee table, trying to force up something to say. But he didn’t know what would be appropriate in a time like this. He wanted to tell some sort of joke to make the other man laugh, something that would alleviate the tension between them.

          But that wouldn’t be right; it wouldn’t be helpful at all.

          He didn’t know what to say and he felt awful about it, knowing that he was even worse than a normal broken record; instead of repeating the same thing over and over, he kept repeating the perpetual nothing as if it was going to help anything, as if he was going to be fixed soon. At least five minutes passed, but he wasn’t really paying attention to the clock.

          “I know what you mean,” Jiyong said suddenly.

          “What?” Seunghyun asked cautiously, raising his head to see Jiyong’s piercing scrutiny.

          “I know what you meant before. When you said your head was empty.” Seunghyun must have pulled some sort of shame-face, because Jiyong continued quickly. “I don’t know. I just – I know why you couldn’t sleep well before. And why you wanted to clean. Hell, I even tried that,” he scoffed at himself and lowered his gaze back to his toes. “It didn’t work very well for me. But I’m just saying… I know the feeling.”

          Seunghyun wanted him to elaborate, but Jiyong stayed fixated on his feet.

***
          The next night, Jiyong decided to do some experimenting.

Before the awkward subject they’d have to come to one day or another popped up, he wanted to know what Seunghyun was thinking. What he thought about him being attracted to him. How uncomfortable he really was.
          To figure this out, Jiyong made sure to get to the living room first and sat on the middle cushion of the couch.

          Closer to the armchair.

          And he waited.

          Seunghyun came in, and Jiyong heard him pause, trying to figure out the change in the atmosphere of the room. When he started moving again, Jiyong didn’t know if he’d figured it out or not. He was moderately surprised -and definitely relieved - when Seunghyun’s footsteps got closer and didn’t retreat down the hall, and he tried his best to conceal his slight smirk of victory.

          There was hardly a pause between Seunghyun sitting down and when he talked, which Jiyong wasn’t expecting straightaway. “You’re getting the headaches?”

          His mouth opened and closed delicately a few times. “Yeah… I mean, I don’t know if they were exactly the same as what you were feeling before, but I get the whole… Emptiness thing. And why you were trying to avoid it before.”

          “I wish I hadn’t.”

          “What?”

          “Avoided it. It just got worse, and it still came around eventually.” Seunghyun shook his head to clear it, not wanting to think about things other than Jiyong, and in particular not wanting to focus on himself. “So you actually tried cleaning?” He scoffed slightly and attempted a smile. “The same Kwon Jiyong who practically ordered me to sort out his closet?”

          Jiyong had the decency to cover his mouth to spare Seunghyun the fact that he could, as usual, break out into his signature full-face grin at any given moment. “Yah! I actually completely finished organizing it the other day!” He protested, bobbling his head. “And that was just because you were already being a little housewife. Might as well have gotten in on my share of it while I still could.”

          Seunghyun saw the corners of Jiyong’s mouth past the sleeve of his hoodie and his mood brightened considerably. He found himself smiling as well, with no given effort on his part. “You really did clean your closet?” He raised his eyebrows skeptically.

          “Well, it’s kind of thrown itself up from then… But I had everything all put away nicely for a day or two.” Jiyong mumbled, wanting to stick his tongue out. “I don’t know why cleaning was so good for you. It kind of made things worse for me.” He looked down to avoid Seunghyun’s inquisitive look. “Though, if you say avoiding the emptiness by cleaning and stuff made things worse… Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing.”

***

          If Jiyong was sitting as close to Seunghyun’s armchair on the first night as he was tonight, Seunghyun knew he would have left as soon as he’d come. Jiyong was back in his original spot, the opposite corner of where he’d started, the side of the couch that shared a side-table with Seunghyun’s armchair. He kept his legs up on the couch so his knees wouldn’t brush Seunghyun’s like they usually did.

          Seunghyun measured this distance before sitting down, gnawing on the inside of his lower lip. Maybe he wasn’t ready to be this close to Jiyong again.

          In a matter of maybe two minutes he got over it.

          Of course he was ready.

          “As much as the emptiness hurt my head…” He started, tilting his glass around to think about what exactly he was going to reveal. “It was much better than what I keep thinking about now.”

          Jiyong didn’t want to seem too anxious, so he just nodded slowly, hopefully in an encouraging way, hoping for Seunghyun to make the choice to elaborate on his own.

          “I mean… Okay, I don’t know.” Seunghyun started and stopped, fidgeting around in his seat and reaching around the back of his neck to try to squeeze out some answers. “It sounds really bad. Which makes it worse, but…” He cringed, trying to bring up his hate of his life as a celebrity in a way that included as little of him sounding like he was whining as possible.

          After all, this was Kwon Jiyong.

          The leader of BIGBANG, the one who’d definitely put the most hours and dedication in to his life’s work than anyone Seunghyun had ever known.

          Next to him, Seunghyun definitely felt like he was being whiny, and childish, and snobby.

          But the leader of BIGBANG was his friend, too. And he could only hope that part of Kwon Jiyong came first.

          “The first feeling I recognized was being bored.” He decided he might as well start off by being blunt. ‘I just… There are points in our schedules, that, I just feel like I can’t anymore. Do you… Do you understand me?” He raised his head up from the ground slowly, ready for his leader’s perfectionist side to come out and tell him to work harder.

          “I don’t know.” Jiyong’s face was different than Seunghyun expected; he actually looked like he was trying desperately to understand. He’d tilted his head to the side, and Seunghyun felt exceedingly guilty for not understanding that of course Jiyong would listen to him.

          That’s who Jiyong was.

          “I don’t think I quite know what you mean…” Jiyong said, and Seunghyun started scraping his thoughts together again.

          “It sounds really bad when I say bored, right?” Seunghyun pushed his hair back and reclined into the armchair for a millisecond before popping back up agitatedly. “But it’s like that. I just don’t know what to do anymore. Every day is like the same routine. Or the same routine in a different disguise. It’s… I hate it. I know I should be thankful for being where I am, I know I need to keep working harder, but I’m so tired, Ji.”

          It was the first time Seunghyun had addressed Jiyong by his name since last week, and Seunghyun could almost feel a huge layer of dirt being shoveled back into the deep hole he’d dug for himself.

          Jiyong started nodding a bit faster but his eyebrows were still stitched together. “You’re saying you don’t want to be famous anymore. That you want out.”

          Seunghyun sighed. “Exactly.”

          Jiyong leaned back and scratched his chin, trying his hardest to conjure up the same feelings in himself to understand where Seunghyun was coming from.

          But Seunghyun could tell that was what he was doing, and he wanted it to stop immediately. “It doesn’t matter too much that you think the same way. I hate myself for it. I have what I have, but I’m still not satisfied. That’s my problem. I’m an awful person, and if I do think like that, I should be out of the business. I should just leave.”

          Jiyong sprung up and his legs went down from the couch, leaning forward. “No. Stop.” He really wanted to reach and grab Seunghyun’s face and shake it, or at the very least have some point of contact with him, but he held himself back. “You’re not a terrible person, okay? It’s hard. I wish I got to see you more than I do, sometimes I hate the fact that we’re not together…”

          Seunghyun didn’t care about the Jiyong that loved him at this point, he was only thinking of the one that was his best friend, and determinedly so.

          “And if you left, it would only get worse.”

          He was right, and it almost made something better.

          Jiyong understood.

          And once again Seunghyun was throttling himself for not running to him immediately.

***

          Though Seunghyun had slept well the last few nights because he’d seen Jiyong so much, he talked to him the next night about how before, he’d lie awake, thinking. That type of late-night thinking where he would contemplate his place in the universe, what people really thought about him, what he’d do in x amount of time, how he’d die, what he’d accomplish.

          Jiyong had this never-ending compassion for him that should have gotten old for someone like Seunghyun, but he had so much on his mind that he’d needed to expose to someone else that it was just relieving.

          When Jiyong asked about how he’d been doing lately as they stood in the kitchen, though, Seunghyun realized he had another part of his thinking (or his subconscious) that he needed to explain.

          “Better. So much better.” He said frankly.

          “That’s great. Do you know why?”

          Seunghyun ducked his head and chuckled awkwardly. “Uh… You.”

          “… Me?”

          “You.” The corners of Seunghyun’s mouth twitched up, even though he was trying to remain serious. “When I’m around you, I just don’t care about anything else. Seungri may make me laugh no matter what because he’s an idiot…” Seunghyun shook his head and dumped his glass of ice in the sink. “But you just… I don’t know. Even if I’m not always laughing when I’m with you… Being with you just makes everything better.”

          Jiyong resisted the urge to rub him on the back. “Hey… What are friends for?” He hated himself for the almost-sadness that cracked in his voice for being a friend. He’d just brought attention to the awkward part again. Yay, Jiyong.

But Seunghyun was clueless. “You know, everything got maybe a million times worse after… After we stopped talking. Last week. Last week was bad.” He avoided saying anything that would start the conversation about Jiyong… Loving him.

          “Oh.” Jiyong had noticed the pause, and knew the true meaning behind ‘when they stopped talking’.

          At this point Seunghyun heard the dejection in Jiyong’s voice, and knew it would be futile to ignore it any longer. “Look… I don’t know about this, Ji. But… I just hate how we’re acting all distant now. Awkward. I shouldn’t have run away after Strong Heart, I just – “

          “– No. I was the idiot, for thinking I couldn’t leave it alone…” His eyes gleamed and he ruffled his hair, breaking the strong gaze he’d been holding with Seunghyun. “I was the one who was stupid enough to ruin everything by bringing it up in the first place.”

          Seunghyun had been drying his hands and he laid the towel gently on the counter. “Stop,” he said softly, and he crossed the kitchen and got all the way to shutting the door of his room until Jiyong could feel his heart beating again.

A/N: Hey look, I actually ended the chapter where I wanted to this time!
Sorry this update was so late ._.
I just wrote a really fluffy oneshot, and it was hard for me to get out of the happy writing mood I got in from it xD
but now this is good. And things are finally getting better.
I'm thinking only a few more chapters before this thing will be done.
Thank you so much again for supporting and reading because you all are great.