“Look at me, Seungri.” Youngbae spoke in a low monotone.

He’d been trying for what seemed like hours, but what was actually a few minutes trying to get Seungri to look at him. It failed. He shuffled closer and slowly unfolded Seungri’s clenched hands. “Look, you left red marks. That’ll hurt.” He sighed and rubbed Seungri’s palm with his fingers.

Seungri stayed unresponsive.

“Okay, I’m sorry about today. I’ve been in a weird mood and I didn’t mean to lash out, okay? So, please just accept my apology because I’m hurting right now.” Youngbae sighed in relief when Seungri turned to face him, but stopped when he saw tears in the small man’s eyes.

“If you’re hurting, how do you think Ji feels right now?” Seungri blurted out. “I’m not angry, Bae, okay? I’m not angry. I was a little upset but it doesn’t matter. We can’t contact Ji and what if he did something bad?!” Knowing what the latter meant, Youngbae pursed his lips and enveloped Seungri into a tight hug, feeling a sudden wetness on his shirt. He rubbed Seungri’s back soothingly.

“C’mon, you know Ji, he’d never do that, I promise. He’s the stubborn leader who never gives up.” He smiled at his words. “He just needs time to chill.”

“But this is the FIRST fight you’ve ever had!!” Seungri replied, sounding unnecessarily angry. And then Youngbae really did begin to feel bad. Jiyong was someone who reflected a lot, and like Youngbae said – Jiyong was stubborn and never gave up... But thinking about it... If he didn’t give up, he’d still be here.

“Listen, everything will be okay,” Youngbae breathed, kissing Seungri’s soft hair. “I promise.”

Seungri pouted. “Everyone’s making too many promises.”

Youngbae just sighed and looked up. “Mm...”

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Daesung was rifling through the cupboards. There was a surprisingly sparse amount of food, except for packets of ramen. Seunghyun took it out and placed it on the counter. “If this is all we have, then let’s use it!” He whined, mostly because he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had ramen. And it was his favourite flavour.

Daesung looked at the packets hesitantly. “Well I suppose once is alright..” He decided, before taking 4 packets and getting a large pan out.

“I’ll measure the water. Remember when you didn’t know how on Family?” Seunghyun smiled at Daesung’s expression grimace.

“Don’t remind me. That was embarrassing..” He laughed, passing a large measuring jug to Seunghyun, who filled it up with the right amount of water. “Besides, that was ages ago..!”

“Well I haven’t seen you make ramen since!”

Daesung punched Seunghyun’s shoulder lightly in defeat, waiting until Seunghyun had poured the water in before turning on the heat. He then turned to Seunghyun, who was facing the wall. He wrapped his arms around the small waist and rested the crook of his nose on Seunghyun’s shoulder.

“...You think they’re okay?”

Daesung smiled. “I hope so.” He stood on tiptoes and placed a kiss on Seunghyun’s jawbone. He then slid his hands across Seunghyun’s stomach, one of his hands resting on the other. Seunghyun turned his head so him and Daesung were facing each other. They shared a soft kiss, before Seunghyun twisted around in Daesung’s grasp and leant down so Daesung didn’t have to tiptoe. He also wrapped his arms around the latter and pressed his mouth to Daesung’s soft one, and their lips slowly moved with each other. There was no need to deepen the kiss as it was perfect as it was.

They both pulled away together when they both got out of breath, and pressed their foreheads together, breathing softly and entwining their hands together. Daesung pecked Seunghyun’s lips once more and then gazed into Seunghyun’s eyes.

“I love you,” He said, and as he said it his lips brushed against Seunghyun’s; who found it the most electric feeling.

“I love you more,” Seunghyun replied, before hesitantly releasing himself from Daesung’s grasp and went to focus on the boiling water. “And I’ll take care of this, as I don’t want you burning your finger again, okay?” Daesung just laughed and hauled himself on the counter, playing with the plaster and watching as Seunghyun poured all the packets of ramen into the boiling water, eating the small bits of noodle that hadn’t come out.

“Hey, that’s greedy!” He whined playfully, laughing louder at the dramatised pout Seunghyun responded with.

Chuckling deeply, Seunghyun just hummed to himself as he got out some bowls.

---

Half an hour had passed. Jiyong still wasn’t home; they’d finished eating the ramen and were sitting on the table worrying about their leader. After contemplation and Seungri’s hand tugging at his, Youngbae had forgiven Jiyong and was suggesting a range of places where the latter might be. Then it occurred to him.

“You think he’s with Dara somewhere?”

That sentence caused an uneasy silence across the dinner table. Seungri knew Jiyong couldn’t be there, as it didn’t make much sense... Kissing him then seeing his girlfriend? Nothing clicked. And Daesung was thinking the same thing.

“We can always call her to see...?” Seunghyun suggested, feeling his pockets for his phone, but was stopped by a wave of Youngbae’s hand.

“She changed her phone number, remember? So we don’t have her number...”

“Oh...”

Daesung sighed at their dumbfounded expressions. “Well, if you think he’s there, we can always call Bom, because she’s always with Dara, and would probably tell us yes or no.” He smirked softly behind his hand at their widening eyes.

“Oh... Okay, well I’m pretty sure I have her number then,” Seunghyun pulled out his phone and scrolled through the contact list. Seeing her name, he nodded triumphantly and called the number. “I’m calling her now!” He told the others, who rolled their eyes. Obviously...

“Hello?”

Seunghyun exhaled. “Hi,” He looked towards the window and fixated his gaze there after pressing the loudspeaker button so the others could hear their conversation. “Have you seen Dara or Jiyong?”

“Mhm!” Seunghyun let out a sigh of relief. “He seemed really weird though... He was even crying at one point... But he won’t tell anyone what’s up, which is annoying. But yeah, he’s here!” Seungri frowned at what Bom said. Jiyong was crying? His heart shifted forwards a bit and he fiddled with his hands.

 “Ah, okay. Oh, is he... available? Could we talk to him?” Seunghyun then heard some muffled conversation he couldn’t make out for the life of him.

“No, he’s uh... about to have a shower.”

Seunghyun nodded. “Oh...”He looked over at Youngbae who was tapping his wrist frantically. The time. “Well uh, tell him we have practise again tomorrow, at the same time.”

“Mhm!” There was a click then a long monotone beep.

Seunghyun put his phone away. “At least he’s okay...”

“What was all that mumbling about?” Seungri asked, letting curiosity get the better of him. Youngbae shrugged, staring down. “Maybe it’s because he thought we were going to either yell at him, or say something he didn’t want to hear or something,” He suggested.

“I mean he was crying, so... Maybe he thought we were going to shout at him ‘cus he didn’t know about practise, I dunno...” Daesung mumbled, looking towards Seunghyun, who nodded slowly.

“Let’s just give him some time. He’s probably not going to stay here, so I guess we’ll just talk tomorrow. Because we’ve got a concert and there’s no point in doing it if we’re conflicting with one of the members, right?”

“Right,” everyone chorused, nodding their heads.

“So, let’s just put it at peace for now and get some rest, okay?”

“Right!”

Seunghyun smiled. “Goodnight!” He spoke loudly, grabbing Daesung’s hand and leading him to the bedroom, shutting the door loudly.

Youngbae looked at Seungri. “Do you.. think Seunghyun left like that so we could clear up everything?” He groaned in realisation.

Seungri nodded. “I guess so...” he sighed and picked up the bowls, walking briskly to the kitchen.

“Hey, wait!” Youngbae grabbed all the chopsticks and raced behind him. Seungri opened the dishwasher to put the bowls in with a blank expression, while Youngbae threw the chopsticks in their place. He shut the dishwasher and then enveloped Seungri in a tight hug. He sighed. “I really am sorry, Ri. I feel like a complete .”

Seungri half smiled. “And I said it’s okay, Bae.”

Youngbae rubbed Seungri’s back, dropping his tone into a low whisper to continue his apology further. “It’s just...” He swallowed before continuing. “With everything, and I mean everything, it’s just built up and I... I just lashed out.”

“I understand, Bae. Everything’s been a mess and it’s fine to feel stressed out. Not fine to release that stress on someone else, but you’re not being a worse person by getting angry. You’re human, y’know?” He leaned into the crook of Youngbae’s shoulder. “You’re human, so getting stressed is part of life. I don’t know, but releasing it on someone else is... At least it’s human. It shouldn’t be normal to do so, but it apparently is, so don’t feel so burdened by it. Everything will be okay soon. We’ve just got to wait a little bit longer; life tends to be a that way.

“Take Dae, for example. He had a very hard time and I can’t even imagine, nor comprehend what, or how he’s feeling; not being able to be intimate with Seunghyun without thinking of Lee Soon ing with him and getting so scared because he gets a flashback of what happens. I can see that it hurts Seunghyun, even if he acts like it’s okay. Even if he tries to believe he’s okay, he’s not, and we can see how painfully stressful it is for him to have to hold back all the time, waiting for Dae to build up enough trust. But Dae was brave, he got through it and he’s getting better. It will be okay soon, life is just pushing that date back for them. It’s hard but even they know. Deep inside we know, and they know. It’s testing them, and if they pass that test, the sun will shine for them.”

Youngbae let out a deep sigh. Seungri was completely right. “Thank you so much, Ri. And I’d hate it if something like what happened to Dae, happened to you. But I guess we’ll have to wait for Lee Soon to get arrested for something.”

Seungri closed his eyes. “And you see, that takes time. It’s not like we’re going to bump into him tomorrow and then have the police on our back, we don’t even have police here, just a bunch of security cameras and someone that roams the street for suspicion, so if Lee Soon came here, then it’d be a while until the police actually got here. But one day... One day, we’ll catch them. And we’ll have a huge celebration when it happens. For now, we just have to look out for them.”

Youngbae nodded in agreement. “Yeah.” He then broke apart from the hug, and brushed some hair from Seungri’s face. “Let’s go to sleep,” He spoke, kissing Seungri’s forehead.

“It’s only 5pm...!” Seungri tried to protest as he was dragged to the room. Well, he was completely exhausted, but going to bed at 5pm? That was something old people did, and Seungri definitely wasn’t old.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE - END

A/N: todae & baeri <33 the baeri picture was too cute not to put on OTL