Sorry, in advance. =S

CHAPTER XX

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.

Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” 

James Baldwin

When Jiyong opened the door of his house, that house whose façade seemed again filled with lonely tones and despicable memories, he found a house immersed in sad notes that were too familiar. Those musical notes that he had wrote and were able to penetrate through his skin until reaching his bones and scratch with long, sharp nails onto those re-opened wounds of his. He was bleeding when he had written them and he was bleeding now too –metaphorically- but the feeling was real and present. Seungri’s back at the kitchen, moving with his own peculiar elegance felt so distant, as a simple shadow fading within the false and the surreal that Jiyong had to detach his eyes from it and take a breath of fresh air in an attempt to stop his necessity to vomit right there.  Behind him, Youngbae was following his steps with a slow gait, almost fearful, with a face shrunken in many emotions intermingled at the same time: terror, repentance and a glimpse of what could be named as hope, though it was fading exponentially at each step they took towards Seungri.

“Who gave you this?” hissed Jiyong and walked through the living room until he reached the music player and stopped the record with a violent move making Seungri jump surprised and turn his back with widened and shocked eyes.

“Ji-Jiyong,” was the only thing Seungri could mutter out, bewildered by the fact Jiyong was there accompanied by Youngbae with such an unknown stare, or more likely, with a well know stare but so far away from his memory. The stare he had the first time they had met, that one who let nothing to be seen, one that concealed every single feeling with eagerness. And Seungri felt fear running through his spine and glanced at Youngbae who only lowered his stare incapable of explaining anything.

“Who gave you this?” Jiyong questioned again with more strength in his voice, fists closed at each side of his body, lips tightened in a line almost invisible. There was something though, maybe in the way his body seemed to tremble or the way his shoulders were curved as if trying to protect himself from something; it was as if a part of Jiyong wanted to retrieve and back away and shut up and escape away through the door. “Those are my songs. Why do you have them?”

“I… Youngbae…. I,” Seungri hesitated, incapable of answering without the need to explain more things. Incapable to find an answer that saved him from disclosing what he had been hiding. But when he saw Jiyong’s face and the way his eyes clouded with sadness, he knew. He recognized knowledge in Jiyong’s stare and the way trust, or what he called as trust between them, started fading away from his eyes.

“I though I could trust you,” chocked Jiyong with lowered eyes, biting his lips and hiding his face beneath that seriousness, beneath a shut down face that had took so much effort for Seungri to rip apart and now was there again. Seungri’s hands trembled at each side with a necessity to stop the pieces of that broken shield to form around Jiyong again, but he stood there in silence, incapable to find a way to explain or excuse himself.

Finally he said with a broken but determined voice. “You can. You can trust in me, Jiyong,”

But Jiyong only lifted his gaze and stared openly at Seungri’s eyes, bright eyes whose pupils were losing its splendor, letting an opaque curtain to fall in front of them and a false smile to adorn his face, empty of any content. Seungri sighed anguished and tried to approach towards Jiyong but was stopped by the later; who only raised a hand and signaled him to stop moving, to move backwards.

“Thank you,” Jiyong murmured trembling from head to toes. “Youngbae told me what you did and have been doing for me all this time. Thank you. I… own you too much, Seungri. I do,”

Seungri would have loved to smile at those words, would have loved to answer that it was nothing, the he had done it all because of him, because he loved him, because he cared about him, because it was what he wanted to do, but Jiyong’s voice was empty, was emotionless and there was no trace of the softness it used to had when it was directed to him. It was simply dry, polite but dry.

“Jiyong…,” he started saying but Jiyong interrupted him again shaking his head and forced him to gulp down his explanations, burying his words inside the deepness of his throat.

“Do you remember what you promised me that day at the bridge, Seungri?” asked Jiyong with teary eyes and Seungri shook his head because –truthfully- his head was too preoccupied onto losing the opportunity to explain himself than remembering all the promises or things he had said before. But the way Jiyong nodded with his head and closed his eyes told him he should remember that promise and that whatever he was going to say it was going to be cruel and sharp and painful and… “You told me you would stay until I needed you to say. That you would be here until I told you to be here,”

Seungri was afraid of answering and turned his face seeking for something of Youngbae but the other man remained with his eyes closed, denying with his head as if he could not believe what was happening or find it impossible to understand. At the end Seungri forced a hoarse “Yes” against his will.

“I need you to go, now,” Jiyong finally declared with a constrained murmur, closed his eyes and turned away stepping out of the house leaving a confused Seungri with too many explanations and complaints in his tongue but tied up hands and a body falling in little pieces.

Finally Seungri regained his senses and his legs ran behind Jiyong, he stumbled onto Youngbae on his way out of the house and reached a Jiyong that was standing at the middle of the front garden, cross-armed and fragility exuding from every pore of his self. It was as if he was seeing the same Jiyong that had received him five months ago, with strength only visible in the seriousness of his face but the rest of him showing a disintegrated soul.

“Why?” Seungri asked for answers, touching carefully Jiyong’s shoulder though the later jumped as if the simple touch burned his skin.

“Did you think truth could be find within more lies, Seungri? What are we? What does this -we- mean?”

Seungri gasped unable to understand what was he being asked. They were they and they were there. What else mattered?

“I don’t understand. I can’t understand. I just wanted to help you… to give you some answers.”

Upon hearing that Jiyong looked at Seungri with tender eyes as if he wanted to say something with his only stare, as if he wanted to express something that could not be expressed with words. He stretched his hands and cupped Seungri’s face between his palms and with a loving care leaned his own face onto Seungri’s face.

“The thing is I don’t need answers. Not from you. I just need you. Whoever you are,”

“You have me,” Seungri whined, closing his eyes and denying his ears to understand or hear any other word.

“I’ll always cherish what you did for me, Seungri. But you have to go,”

“I don’t want to go. This is my home,” said Seungri letting tears roll over his cheeks looking desperate, as a kid being pulled away from his parents. But Jiyong shook his head and with one of his fingers erased one of Seungri’s tears.

“This is not your home, is mine Seungri. This is not your life it’s mine. This is not your place, it’s mine,”

Seungri kept shaking his head, his eyes grabbing onto Jiyong’s coat. Jiyong carefully and slowly started moving backwards, detaching himself from Seungri’s grasp.

“What is this? Why?” Seungri cried out with red eyes and trembling hands that now were grasping onto empty air. “What is this?”

Jiyong looked at him one last time and gifted him with one last sad smile. “We need to stop hiding behind each other, Seungri,” he whispered with such strained voice it seemed he was trying to convince himself over that truth. “Reality will find us anyway.”

The afternoon thereafter passed like a silent, slow old movie with grey colors and bad quality. Seungri packed his things one by one in a robotic way, first his clothes, then his toothbrush, then his limited personal things and finally his books. All the time focusing his eyes onto the fabric of his backpack than the walls or the space around him, trying to avoid feeling the sharp stabbing of the goodbye or the abandonment he was used to feel when little. Again he wasn’t anymore and that place wasn’t his anymore. And he could not find a reason, maybe he did, but he pretended he did not as of why he should leave or why he was being pushed away. Finally he checked one more time and opened the drawers next to his bed only to find his sketchbook there, hidden at the deepest part of it. He sat at the edge of the bed and opened the notebook, staring at each of his drawings, page by page, and each of the memories they brought to him. Finally he sighed and decided to leave it there, hidden because the memories in there were too hard for him to carry around. He pulled himself off and closed the door of the room without s second glance.

Youngbae was sitting at the concrete step at the front of the house, with his head leaning over his hands and lost stare looking at the place Jiyong’s car had disappeared minutes ago. When he heard Seungri’s steps he stood up and looked at him regretful, with his face broken.

“This is all my fault,”

Seungri shook his head and reassured him with a little smile. “No, it’s not,”

Youngbae helped him to carry his belongings outside the house and placed them at the trunk of his car. Then Seungri palmed Youngbae’s back  in a friendly gesture and asked him to take care of Jiyong, gazed at the house he was leaving, remembered his first impression of that place and how much they and it had changed during all those months and muttered a goodbye only he was able to hear.

“Jiyong’s lawyers are already working on the lawsuits and all the legal stuff against the Hyuangs,” interrupted his thoughts Youngbae. “I’ll speak with the Choi’s tomorrow though his lawyer probably informed them already about the events,”

“That’s good,” affirmed Seungri. “What about Soo Hyuk?”

“He made the wrong choices. He accepted money from the Hyuangs to try to make Jiyong give up his shares by breaking him, you know? Making him feel guilty and at fault of everything. I guess he never expected you to appear and save Jiyong’s sanity,”

Seungri merely lifted one edge of his lips and affirmed with his head not really convinced about anything. “I guess so,”

“I thought this would be different.”

“Maybe it was scripted this way,” Seungri answered and entered inside his car, started the engines and waved his hand one last time at Youngbae before driving away, without a real place or destiny to go to. He felt lost and without a purpose. And so, when hours later he arrived again at his long time forgotten neighborhood and saw his house (or what was left of it) with his grass grown up and dirt covering its windows, he welcomed loneliness again.  He leaned his head against the staring wheel of his car and cried; unable to define what was he supposed to do now.

He had no answers, no idea as of what to do now that he was… free. Free of what? He looked around, took a deep breath until easing his agitated breathing, took his phone out and dialed the only number he could remember.

“Dae? Can you met me at my house?”

Jiyong on the other hand wasn’t any better. He kept staring at the house now in front of him hesitant, feeling miserable. But a certain kind of conviction kept him from crumbling upon his choice. He opened the door of his car and walked through the same garden he had grown up as a child. Where he had broken his father’s favorite golf stick or had sang his very first song to his mother. Why was he there? He could not really explain but somehow he had driven to there and now he was knocking at the door, waiting at the entrance of the very same house he had promised to never return months ago.

“Jiyong!” had exclaimed his mother the moment she opened the door and had embraced him with such excitement it made Jiyong lost any doubt of what he was doing there for a moment. His doubts collapsed there, one by one and so he let a shaky “Mom” out.

“I’m so sorry,” he let escape between gasps and tears and all those things he had kept only for him or Seungri to see. “I’m so sorry,” he kept repeating over and over again whilst her mother only caressed the back of his hair tenderly, shushing him with the same soft voice she used to use while he was afraid and tormented by his childish fears.

Maybe he had been incapable to explain his reasons for letting go the one he cherished the most, the one whose existence had become essential for his own. Or maybe that was the exact reason. For when Youngbae had told him all the things Seungri had done for him, something had tightened inside his heart and throat; a kind of suffocating knot that made him feel uncomfortable. It was as listening that someone had lived all that time for him, with him, by him; and even though that could be amazing for someone else to listen, for him, for some reason, was disturbing. He could not explain why but he had not like it. Because it made him feel as if everything, all that circled around them now had a different meaning or significance. As if a lie as thin as the edge of a paper sheet was wrapping them both in a cruel game, almost unnoticeable but there. Because there was no difference between dependence, need and love in what they had had and that was wrong and it felt wrong and that wasn’t what he wanted. He needed to be able to differentiate between them and so far he could not and he was sure Seungri was not able to differentiate between those three things too.

To what extent they had confused need with love? To what extent they had hidden themselves in the commodity of the presence of the other? To what point they cherished the other not for what they were but for the protection the other gave? And that light had illuminated his eyes and had pushed him to seek for answers, and the answers could only be found by separating what was intermingled in such a confusing relationship. He and Seungri were like vines or creepers embracing and suffocating each other, eating each other, consuming each other, making a bundle of leafs and branches which they had come to call their world, and inside which they could escape from staring or facing at everything around them. And all of it was painful.

He wanted to love Seungri. He wanted to be loved by Seungri and however he felt he was a prison of bones and skin in which the man had sought for cover to escape from his own problems and life. And it was until the moment Youngbae had explained him all those things Seungri had done and when he had seen Seungri breaking down in front of his mother's grave when he realized the fragility of the man he had took as pillar, the humanity of the man he had took as anchor and had seen then the weak, the helpless and volatile Seungri actually was. And so Jiyong had to force him to uncover himself, even if that meant pushing him away from him. He was no good for Seungri, at least not now. It was cruel, it was unfair and it wasn't love but another thing that could not reach love still. None of both was yet able to love and it was not until that precise moment when the truth had hit him on the face.

Now he was in front of his parents trying to face his own responsibilities by his own, to be strong because of him. And the moment he had stepped inside that house a weight had lifted from his shoulders. Maybe they could find each other again. Just maybe. He stared at his parents who listened at him with loving eyes, who listened at his story, at his pain, at his mistakes and once suicidal thoughts without rejection. And Jiyong let a relieved sigh escape from his lips. And again the idea crept inside his head. Maybe they could find each other again, renewed, stronger and free. Just… maybe. But the "maybe" was hard to accept because the probabilty of not seeing Seungri was unberable and yet he had to live with it until life showed him the opposite. Until life showed them the opposite.

Hehehe.... *hides beneath the cover of my bed* I mean.... I... I hope you understand what Jiyong is feeling cause it's love but a different manifestation of love. Is about growing up and looking beyong himself to Seungri's own wounded self. He is not getting rid of him but he is allowing Seungri to explore what he can be without him. What he can reach by his own. And I personally find it beautiful. And also he is trying to define what he feels, what is everything he had experienced so far. So do not hate the poor guy. He'll have it hard later... Promise. LOL

Anyway. Thanks to my new subscriber lady_shizuka. ^^ And to meypyong for the amazing image-quotes she makes from abstracts of my fic. ^^ THANK YOU!!! I loved the last one you did!