notes:
Still trying to work out how AFF works and hope that I didn't make too many mistakes meanwhile... this was up on LJ for a while now but I've decided to archive the longer works here. Nice to meet you all and I hope you will enjoy this humble little offering... *bows*

Disclaimers:
Concept of the timer is taken from the movie TiMER.

"The timer, is not an exact science."
-- anon



The timer, as what people had taken to calling it, was truly a sign of humans' evolutionary abilities when it started manifesting in children. It was not a physical device like what the name would suggest, but the faintest signs of numbering on the inside of the wrist, the shading changing with each pulse of the heart. The scientists were puzzled by the dwindling numbers on the children's wrists, unable to associate any meaning to them, until one research team managed to solve the mystery and tie the countdown to the exact moment a person met his or her other half in life.

In a typical textbook case, one would be born with a fixed amount of time on one's wrist that counted down to the moment of meeting the person one was destined for. Most people started with years on their wrists, some unlucky ones with months, some unfortunate ones with blank wrists, but the truly tragic people were perhaps the ones with timers that had stopped counting down.

Stopped, because their other half no longer existed.


---


It was a Sunday afternoon, and like any other weekend afternoon he spent at the YG Entertainment building as a trainee, Seunghyun found himself repeating the same move for the last ten minutes while frowning at his reflection in the full-length mirror of the practice studio. Perhaps, if he stared hard enough, he could will his body into becoming more supple than before.

Seunghyun reached up to swipe at the sweat beading on his forehead absentmindedly and the movement dislodged his wristband, enough for him to catch a glimpse of familiar numbers.

00-00-01 16:04:36

They were small enough to be easily overlooked except that everyone knew what they were and where they could be found. It had become a matter of such privacy that there was an entire industry built around catering to accessories of all designs and motifs, in order to conceal a string of numbers on the wrist from the rest of the world. Seunghyun never had anything more complicated than a simple sports wristband on his left wrist, though the trainers had chided him for it numerous times.

If someone had asked him two years back what he thought about debuting from one of South Korea's most reputable entertainment company as a member of their brand new idol group, he probably would have laughed in that person's face. But here he was now, working his off for their upcoming debut, which he was told would happen in another two months' time.

The string of numbers on his left wrist would come into attention then.

While the truth of the matter had been hidden from the rest of the world, especially the media, it was a known secret in YG that Seunghyun's timer had stopped.

In their world, a world whereby a person could count down to the exact moment one met one's destined other half, having a stopped timer was often viewed as a matter of much tragedy. While a blank timer meant a lifetime of loneliness, a stopped timer was more tragic simply because those numbers indicated that one's destined other half had existed, and was lost.

Seunghyun knew that the numbers on his wrist, the same numbers which would haunt him until the day he died, said he was just a little less than two days away from meeting his soulmate when the timer stopped. What could have happened? Seunghyun couldn't help asking himself that question even though he knew that there would be no answers. He had checked the mortuaries for weeks after realising his timer had stopped, but there was no flicker of recognition, nothing to help him identify the person he missed by hours, the one person meant for him for the rest of his life.

He had felt bitter and angry about it initially, channeling those emotions into powerful raps on the things he felt were unjust in life, which in turn led to Kush discovering him at one of the underground clubs. As he got older, he slowly realised that everyone was subjected to fate and its little tricks, and he wasn't exempted from any of them. There were other more unfortunate people out there; the ones whose timers were blank, the ones who counted down but couldn't find the person they were looking for, the ones who found their other half but discovered at the same time that they couldn't love each other, no matter how hard they tried.

In place of that never-ending quest for the special someone, he replaced it with music, and flourished under the care of Teddy and Kush, two of YG's current heavyweight producers. More with Kush than anyone else, he felt a sense of kinship, because he was very sure there was some secret about Kush's timer which he was not allowed to know yet, but he could wait.

"Seunghyun-hyung," Jiyong, the leader of his soon to be debuted group, poked his head into the studio, the beginnings of a frown surfacing on his brow. "It's getting late, you should go back and rest. We have an early recording tomorrow."

Seunghyun wiped at the sweat on his forehead again, adjusting the wristband self-consciously when it slipped.

"I'm still not getting the dance right-" he began, but Jiyong interrupted.

"It can wait until tomorrow, hyung. I'll do it with you after the recording." 

He saw the way Jiyong's eyes darted to his left wrist, and Seunghyun clutched onto his t-shirt in reflex, turning the inside of his wrist away from the other boy's gaze. Jiyong, like the other boys in their group, knew about Seunghyun stopped timer but he had declared, using the namesake of their leader, the topic taboo where Seunghyun was concerned and the questions the oldest boy had been anticipating from a bunch of curious teenagers never came.

"Okay," Seunghyun breathed, relaxing slightly when Jiyong finally turned away to glance back down the hallway. "Okay. Just give me another five minutes."

Jiyong smiled then, his eyes crinkling into small crescents. "Hurry up, the maknae is starting to whine."

And then Jiyong was gone, the studio door clicking close softly in his departure.

Seunghyun closed his eyes, inhaling deep before rubbing his left wrist in a habitual move, to comfort and reassure himself that everything would be alright.

You're not here anymore, but I promise I'll be fine.


---


Jiyong was unnaturally quiet during the walk back to their dorm. 

Seunghyun usually had his earphones plugged and kept half a ear on the conversations flowing around him, but even he noticed that the normally chatty Jiyong was strangely subdued and kept the arm he wrapped around Seungri's neck rigid. The youngest boy was beginning to complain, being forced to trot along in an awkward sideways stagger, when Jiyong let go of him abruptly and fell back to walk with Seunghyun.

He glanced at the younger boy, unplugging his right earphone and offering it to Jiyong out of habit. Jiyong took the earbud with a smile, twisting the hem of his hoodie in an unconscious move while he matched Seunghyun stride for stride.

"I'm sorry," Jiyong's murmur was soft and indistinct against the background noise of nighttime traffic. "Sorry, hyung."

Seunghyun thought he heard wrongly, and took out his left earbud too, frowning down at Jiyong, who was resolutely looking away.

"What?"

Jiyong glanced over, reaching for his forearm with a reply on his lips but shook his head and let his hand fall away at the last moment, fingertips grazing lightly over the wristband on Seunghyun's left wrist.

Seunghyun started and recoiled, almost as if he had been physically punched. He in a breath sharply, clenching his left fist tight but Jiyong was wrapping fingers over his fist this time, squeezing his hand tightly. He wanted to shake the younger man off, wanted to rescue his hand from the intimate gesture but found himself strangely unwilling to turn away the comforting touch.

Later that night, after they had all eaten and showered, and right when he was about to slip off into dreamland, he heard the door to his room open and close quietly. Brushing it off as the workings of his overworked mind, he was startled badly when someone slipped underneath the blanket onto his bed, curling into the warmth of his body almost immediately.

"Who-" Seunghyun tried to sit up but hands were nudging him, pushing him back down, and Jiyong's quiet voice whispered a reply.

"It's me, can I sleep with you tonight?"

He relaxed back into the bed, curling an arm around the other boy.

Truthfully, after Daesung with his mild nature and ever present smiles, Jiyong was the next closest person in the group for him. The multi-talented Jiyong, who could compose, sing, rap, and dance, who always identified himself first and foremost as a rapper-- they shared a strange affinity for the bold and unpretentious nature of rapping, and revelled in being able to say whatever was on their minds to each other without inciting looks of outrage or incredulity. Perhaps that was what made them click so well with each other. While Seunghyun was not ashamed to admit that his mental age was about twelve years old on even the good days, Jiyong had a side to him which was most definitely stuck at twelve as well, and that side of him would come out to play whenever Seunghyun was around.

"It was awful initially, but I got used to it." Seunghyun finally mumbled, thinking about the numbers on his wrist. "If that hadn't happened, I guess I wouldn't be here either."

Jiyong's slow exhale was a soft puff of warm air against his cheek.

This time, the hand that was intertwined with his gave strength, and Seunghyun slipped off to sleep feeling safe for once in a very long time.


---


Jiyong could remember the first time he met Tempo. 

Yes, he met Tempo first, not Choi Seunghyun as people often misunderstood.

Kush had brought him to one of the underground clubs in Hongdae (sneaked him in would have been a better choice of words actually) to show him the boy he found rapping away at breakneck speed about the rest of the world being unfit to tell him what to do with his life, his stage, that they could all off and go stick their opinions up their own asses.

Tempo was young but he already carried an imposing air; his tall frame combined with his current dressing, a black hoodie and extra-loose cargo pants, he made a striking figure even though his pants sported a pattern that made Jiyong dizzy under the strobe lights. The long, dark hair that covered part of his face did nothing to conceal the fierce frown he was sporting, and he gave off an air of menace despite not moving too much from where he was standing. Jiyong couldn't see his features well from where he was, too far away from the stage to have a good view, but the other's voice captivated him, the low timbre rapping making something inside him shiver in reply.

"He's good, isn't he." Kush was grinning at him, his teeth white even in the dim lighting. "We need someone like him at YG."

Jiyong grinned in reply. "Hyung, he looks like he eats babies for breakfast."

"You'll be surprised," Kush laughed, head bobbing and fingers tap-tap-tapping away to the throbbing beat the entire club was vibrating with. "He's a really nice boy. I think you'll like him."

Jiyong glanced at the boy on the stage again, noticing how his features changed when he smiled in thanks to the audience after finishing his piece, the softening of harsh angles making him look like a different person.

"Like you," Kush tilted his head in the direction of Tempo, giving a casual shrug. "He has the soul of a rapper."


---


He was sure there was some mistake, especially taking their timers into consideration, but Jiyong couldn't shake off the feeling that being with Seunghyun was right. From the moment he was introduced to Seunghyun in Yang Hyunsuk's office, he couldn't shake off the feeling that he had met the person he was waiting to meet his whole life.

Although he didn't get to introduce himself to Tempo after his stage performance that one night Kush sneaked him out, the image of the other boy stayed with him long after the incident, to the point whereby he often wondered if he could sneak out to the club again on his own and somehow, become friends with the other.

Being called to Yang Hyunsuk's office was one of those things he desired and loathed in equal amounts. He had already started scripting the words Yang-sajangnim would have prepared for him today, so it was an understatement to say he was surprised to to see the boy he knew as Tempo already seated in the office. Tempo had glanced at Jiyong briefly when he entered -such pretty eyes was the first thought which came to mind, and Jiyong blushed at the recollection- but turned away quickly, suddenly shy in the presence of a stranger.

"This is Seunghyun." Hyunsuk introduced Tempo to Jiyong using his given name. "His family name is Choi but that makes two of them in your group now, so we probably need to work out a system to eliminate unnecessary confusion. Anyway, Seunghyun is one year older than you so he is technically your hyung, but you have been with us for the last five years, Jiyong, and you are his senior in everything except age here."

Seunghyun was looking at him now, eyes wide and confusion-filled, like he couldn't understand what was happening. Jiyong wouldn't be surprised if the other boy left the meeting feeling like he had been ran over repeatedly by a truck-- their company president had a tendency to do that to other humans.

"So," Hyunsuk began again, propping his elbows on the desk before himself and crossing his fingers. "I need you to teach him, and he is going to be your band member should he manage to debut with you and Youngbae. Seunghyun is rather gifted in rapping and lyrics so I think you may have met your competition there, Jiyong."

Jiyong looked up, a surprised retort on the tip of his tongue but Hyunsuk was looking at him like he anticipated the reaction he just gave, a small smirk on his lips. Jiyong bowed at Seunghyun, respectful, and saw the other boy scrambling to stand up and do the same, his posture ramrod straight and hinting on so much good family upbringing that it looked at odds with his whole rapper image for a moment.

"I'll try my best, sajangnim." He smiled at Seunghyun, saw the other boy smiling back almost shyly, and decided there and then that he had to become best friends with the other as soon as possible.

The rest, as they would say, was history.

Jiyong discovered in the days which followed that Seunghyun, despite his stage persona and the somewhat shy image he presented in the president's office, was quite a mood maker and a joker all wrapped in one confusing bundle. Seunghyun was always ready to joke, always casual and easygoing even when Jiyong thought he was being too harsh on the other boys. He felt that out of all of them, Seunghyun was probably the only person in the group who would tell him 'it's okay' after one of his 'leader' ranting sessions and meant it.

The thing about Seunghyun's timer, however, was that while he found out the truth after needling Kush over it relentlessly, Jiyong never tried to figure out how much time was left on the older boy's stopped timer. He wasn't sure if he was ready to find out, and he had a feeling it wasn't quite information Seunghyun would have liked to share with all of them. 

It was a chance encounter which would have happened had he not walked in on the other boy changing at the studio after practice hours by accident, an incident which he did not plan for at all, he swore. Jiyong only wanted to make sure that the studio was ready to be closed for the night, years of ingrained habit guiding his feet to the studio when he ought to have returned to the dorm.

He realised that the studio was not empty like he initially thought only after he had stepped in, the sight of Seunghyun's such an unfamiliar sight that he thought it was Dongwook-hyung for a moment. The other boy had turned when he heard the door opening, the t-shirt he was struggling to take off caught at an awkward angle, and the wristband which he used to cover his timer was caught, coming off together when he finally escaped from the confines of the t-shirt.

The first thing Jiyong noticed was the numbers, and he couldn't help feeling a surge of sadness when a quick mental calculation told him it was just a little less than two days away from counting down to zero. But when he glanced up and caught sight of the look on Seunghyun's face, the sour feeling at the tip of his nose grew, his heart aching with how helpless Seunghyun looked then. It was at that moment that Jiyong realised what he just saw and slapped a hand over his mouth in embarrassment.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" Jiyong started backing out of the studio, panicked, but Seunghyun stopped him with a small shake of his head. ", I'm really sorry about that, I didn't think there would be anyone-"

Seunghyun only shook his head again and gestured for him to come closer. "Come here."

Jiyong stepped closer to the other boy gingerly, not quite sure where he could put his eyes, and jumped when Seunghyun grabbed his hand and pulled him closer still, their foreheads close enough to touch. Seunghyun kept his left wrist facing down, but he knew that Jiyong had already seen the numbers, so there was no point in denying further.

"This doesn't leave the practice studio, you understand?"

Jiyong had nodded silently, eyes wide.

"I don't know what happened either," Seunghyun rubbed his left wrist in an unconscious move, releasing Jiyong's hand at the same time. "I never found out who it could have been."

He had reached over and caught Seunghyun's hands, squeezing them gently before letting go.

They walked home in silence that day, Seunghyun with his earphones on and Jiyong had his mind filled with a thousand and one thoughts, each of them screaming to be heard.

Only one thought stayed throughout the night though, persistent even in the face of truth.

When he saw the numbers on Seunghyun's wrist, he had thought for the briefest of moments that they were meant for him, that maybe he had the ability to make them move once more, so that the other boy would belong to him and nobody else. That way he would have a legitimate reason to keep Seunghyun's heart safe from the rest of the world, away from the prying eyes of the public, and away from those who would seek to hurt him.

But he knew, as certainly as he knew that his own timer was still counting down, that Seunghyun's heart wasn't meant for him, and would never be.


---


Seungri had been watching his two hyung for a while now, and while he couldn't be definite about his claim, he was very, very, very sure that Seunghyun and Jiyong were more than just close friends outside the company. Call it a haunch, and Seungri rather thought that he was exceptionally sharp when it came to such things. He might not be the best singer or even dancer, now, and he still had ways to go before he could call himself a composer or a producer, but he was the second best looking and definitely the sharpest member of their group.

He once again congratulated himself on his exceptional senses when he paused suddenly before the door to their dance studio, the back of his neck prickling. He felt vindicated when he peered through the clear glass and found Seunghyun sitting against one of the mirrored walls, Jiyong's head nestled on his lap.

There was nothing particularly strange about the two boys' closeness, everyone knew that their two resident rappers hit it off better than anyone else in the group when it came to things they believed in, like music and freedom of expression, to cite a couple of examples. Even Youngbae, who had known Jiyong for more than six years, couldn't claim that he understood his longtime friend well enough to decipher his strange moods.

Seungri was sure though, if he observed the other two longer, closer, he would find out what was going on.

Of course, he knew about Seunghyun's stopped timer. It was such a pity, that such a handsome and talented person was destined to be alone. Or perhaps that was for the best, for who would want to share someone like Seunghyun with the rest of the world?

But he also knew that Jiyong had more than three years left on his timer, having taken a peek at the older boy's wrist when he was asleep.

It was taboo in their world to desire what wasn't meant for oneself and the notion had persisted despite there being active movements questioning the purpose of the timer and what it dictated for humans. If Jiyong's timer had stopped too (no, he wasn't trying to wish that upon his leader, he swore) or if his timer had counted down and he couldn't find his other half, or even if he had been born with a blank wrist... any of the above unfortunate situations would have made the current progression of events slightly more socially acceptable. For that meant Jiyong wasn't meant for someone else, and he was free to be with Seunghyun as much as he liked without drawing criticisms.

But Jiyong's timer was still counting down and Seunghyun's had remained frozen, so he was sure that nothing good would come out of the dangerous lines the two boys were toeing.

"Seungri."

He jumped at the sudden interruption to his thoughts, turning around jerkily and coming face to face with an expressionless Daesung.

"A-ah, hyung." Seungri offered his most charming and innocent smile.

"What are you doing?" Daesung's lips were pressed in a thin, tight line, and he glanced into the studio when Seungri's eyes darted unconsciously to the two boys inside, oblivious.

"N-nothing. I was just going to practice the dance moves for our next single."

Daesung stepped closer, finally catching sight of Seunghyun and Jiyong, and Seungri noticed the slightest shift of expressions on the older boy's face, something like sympathy and fondness meshed together in a dizzying mix of emotions.

"I'll beat you up if you ever dare to rat about them to sajangnim," the look on Daesung's face turned grim as he flexed a bicep at Seungri, and the latter recalled suddenly how much Daesung had been working out recently. "You understand what I'm saying?"

"But hyung-" Seungri began, and was silenced with a scowl from the other. He bit the bullet and tried again. "Jiyong-hyung is-"

Daesung made a gesture that looked like he wanted Seungri to be silent or he would silence him personally, and the younger boy snapped his mouth shut, feeling rather maligned about the whole matter. He was trying to help, and he cared about the other two too, it wasn't as if he was doing this to bring down their popularity with the rest of YG, though he was very sure that they needed to be taken down a peg or two.

"This is their choice, not yours."

Seungri wished he could tell the other boy otherwise, but also knew that he was right. Taboo it might be, but there were no laws in the world which stopped two people who weren't meant for each other from being together.

"Are the two of you fighting again?" Youngbae's voice traveling down the hallway interrupted the moment, but Seungri was sure he read the pity in Daesung's eyes correctly.

The older boy turned away from him then, pushing the studio door open and stepping into it with a cheerful greeting, startling Jiyong from his nap while Seunghyun only gave him a placid look, earbuds still firmly plugged in. At times like this, Seungri was reminded of the fact that Daesung's timer counted down before he joined YG, that he already had someone out there waiting for him, and that knowledge made him seem so much older and more mature than any of them added together suddenly.

Seungri touched his own covered wrist briefly, comforted by the knowledge that it was still counting down, that he had another two years still, and he hoped that the other person, whoever he or she may be, would revel in the spotlight as much as he did.



tbc.