Title: Too Weak for Love

Rating: PG

Pairing(s): G-RI

Length: 1,186

Summary: Jiyong has fallen in love countless times, but he's never loved anything as much as the stage. 

 

 

Jiyong looks forward to falling in love. The kind of love where he falls head over heels for the pretty girl he can never seem to keep onto for too long. He’ll send perfumes and expensive designer jewelry without batting an eyelash, because he’s just that interested. Jiyong yearns and smothers and gives maybe a little too much, and his girls with the pretty eyes and prettier smiles always seem to leave. Jiyong will be heartbroken, as always. He’ll lock himself away in a room for hours and no one will dare disturb him. He’ll forget to eat anything, and drink so much coffee he swears all his blood is now is caffeine. The pens he uses to write will stain the ivory of his fingers while he stares at the sloppily written Hangeul letters in front of him until he can’t distinguish them. Jiyong always did say his songs were written from experience, didn’t he? 

 

But then Jiyong comes back with better songs. He dies his hair obscene shades that make his mother shake her head in exasperation. He raps low and rough into the mic in front of a stadium full of screaming fans and forgets the rest of the world, for a moment. The stage lights are blinding in his eyes, melting the make-up off his face but he doesn’t care, not when he has the whole world at his fingertips.  Because in that moment all that really matters is his voice filling the ears of Seoul, Korea, Asia, and the World. When he is all everyone can see, because it all he’s dreamed of doing this his whole life.

 

Later, when the stadium is empty, and G-Dragon has left, Jiyong remains, still obscene, still too wild and young, but maybe a little tired, too. When the sweat has run into his eyes and the runny eyeliner burns the back of his eyelids. When he can barely stand from the exhaustion and the only thing keeping him up at this point is the Red Bull he downed two hours ago. Jiyong likes falling in love, just like he likes buying the thousand dollar rings that adorn his fingers, or putting on his favorite pair of beaten up sneakers. But there’s nothing he loves quite as much as the stage. The limelight. 

 

It’s not that difficult to see, and Jiyong has never made a show of hiding it. Maybe that’s why he can never keep his love too long. Jiyong loves like a child, intensely, shamelessly, but selfishly and needy. And, at a moment’s notice, ready to throw it away. Jiyong knows what is to be in love then, when the butterflies in his stomach don’t stop until he feels like throwing up and he blushes and laughs like some kind of school girl. He knows what that feels like, slips it on like an old, long-loved sweater. Jiyong will lose sleep over it, fantasize and smile and plan and obsess over it, because that’s what he likes to do.

 

But Jiyong has never really loved someone. Not like that. Because Jiyong, he’s in love with the idea of being in love.  So Jiyong doesn’t really mind falling in love with Seungri. He should, really. Jiyong is the eldest and the elder and should not be kissing maknaes who act much older than they appear. But Seungri has always been the one to look at Jiyong with stars in his eyes. Like Jiyong is the sun and he’s Icarus, always so close and yet never quite close enough to catch up. It’s enough of a distance that Jiyong doesn’t worry about Seungri catching up, ever. It’s one of those rules that no one speaks of but that everyone knows.

 

Jiyong will continue getting his heart broken, write songs that will sell thousands and get him banned from the radio, and Seungri, well Seungri will always be the one whose there for his leader, be it Jiyong or G-Dragon. And really, that’s the way it was supposed to stay. That’s the way Jiyong had wanted it to stay, because falling in love with Suengri had been easy. 

 

Jiyong had been born to be a musician, but what came naturally was being in the limelight. And out of all of the stages in the world, the most interesting to behold was the one that Lee Seunghyun presented. Jiyong never had to fight to be first, to be the best, to shine the brightest. No matter what happened, the lights in Seungri’s eyes never seemed to dim. When Seungri whispered ‘I love yous’ into Jiyong’s neck, it was like a heady spell that never really seemed to leave.  When Jiyong was angry, when his songs were criticized for being too ‘superficial’ and not ‘real’ enough, Seungri was the ing lamb offered for slaughter. And Jiyong would have hesitated, maybe, if it wasn’t Seungri offering himself up, and open for Jiyong’s to break open and crush the inside.

 

And Jiyong liked to see Seungri bleeding, because he looked so pretty, invisible cuts and bruises on his body because Jiyong’s words could cut deeper than the sharpest knife. But in the end Seungri always came back, the acceptance and love in his eyes that Jiyong has never felt. He tells himself he does love Seungri. Tell himself that if he doesn’t fracture the person that is Lee Seunghyun then Seungri won’t be able to make it in the world that loves them one second and wants them dead the next. Jiyong doesn’t see that every time he loves, he takes a little piece of Seungri, and one day there won’t be anything left to take. 

 

But sometimes Jiyong slips, for a moment he isn’t the rapper or leader or musician. He’s just Jiyong, the boy whose dreams were too big for his head. And it’s those moments Seungri steals into, offers his comfort and acceptance. And maybe for once Jiyong doesn’t pay attention to the stars in his eyes but the love that’s written across the slopes of his brows. So that for a moment, Jiyong thinks he’s in love with Seungri. Where maybe laying with him at his side would be enough for both of them. Except that it scares Jiyong, because he doesn’t know if he could ever be strong enough for someone to take his heart. For all the songs about heartbreak Jiyong writes, Jiyong doesn’t want to find out what it means to want to throw away everything for someone. 

 

So in his weakness Jiyong leaves, because in Seungri’s arms the fame and stages didn’t seem as big, as important. And Jiyong doesn’t think he’s strong enough to face that. He doesn’t know what he would be without his music. So when he wakes up in the middle of the night, reaching for a body that smells of jasmine instead of Seungri’s favorite fabric softener, he ignores the stab of pain that sparks, however small, inside him. 

 

I'm so sorry but I love you, they are all lies, whatever I said they are all lies. 

 

But she believed. 

 

I love you more, more.