’Cause baby we were born to live fast and die young,/
Born to be bad, have fun,/
Honey, you and me can be one,/
Just believe, come on.

-“Never Let Me Go” by Lana Del Rey

“!” Seunghyun roared.

He ducked under fire and ran to the fallen man. He quickly gathered him in his arms and hefted him up in a bridal carry. Realizing that guns were still firing, and he wasn’t fast enough to ensure Daesung’s safety from harm — further harm — he collapsed on the ground, defeated in every way imaginable.

“Dae, Dae, Dae, wake up, you gotta wake up honey,” he chanted, gently tapping the man’s cheek. “Baby, you’re so cold.”

Seunghyun slipped off his neon jacket and draped it around his shoulders, bundling him close to his chest. Daesung always joked that the loud jacket blinded innocent bystanders. Now here he was, an innocent bystander, shot mid-song. He was injured because of Seunghyun’s doing: Seunghyun, the person who was supposed to love him the most. His sight was blurring, and he rubbed furiously at his streaming eyes.

“Baby, please wake up. What do I do? God, what do I do?”

His tears landed on the still man’s fringe and ran down his nose, making Daesung appear to cry. But the body he held was pale and lifeless, not like his joyful boyfriend at all. Daesung’s smile was infectious and his energy uncontainable. This was a stranger lying in his arms.   

He swiped his sleeve under his runny nose, sniffling and not giving a damn about his favorite shirt. His stomach churned and he felt nauseous as well as a number of emotions that he could not verbalize. He felt something damp on his thigh and when he shifted his legs to see what it was he almost lost his lunch. Based on his next actions, it appeared that he did indeed lose his mind.

Blood. In all the excitement, he had forgotten exactly why his lover was unconscious, and the stain was so red and there was so, so much of it. He screamed aloud.

Over the sound of ricocheting bullets and the din of utter destruction, Seungri could hear a baritone stream of nonsense words mindlessly spilling forth from the man’s mouth. From his position under the nearby, splintering bar, he could see Seunghyun hoisting the boy over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, as if he wanted to pick him up and flee the chaotic scene even through the gunfire. In the senseless state he was in, he would get both himself and the boy killed.

That is, if the boy wasn’t already dead.

“No!” Seungri yelled. He put his hand up.

Seunghyun’s head snapped around. There was a wild look in his eyes. Somehow, the gesture caught his attention, and he ceased his animalistic wailing.

“Stay put! I’m coming!”

Scarcely knowing what he was doing, Seungri crawled on his hands and knees towards the two. Shards of glass scratched his palms open, but he continued moving. A gunshot rang out deafeningly over his head. Pieces of plaster showered down from the ceiling like noisy confetti. He didn’t stop. Finally he reached the pair and immediately grabbed Daesung’s shoulders.

“He needs to be flipped. I need to apply pressure to his wound,” Seungri explained to a wary Seunghyun, who grudgingly allowed him to touch his boyfriend.

Seungri didn’t know why he trusted him. They had only met that night, and Seunghyun had no way of knowing that he had always planned on going to medical school before his mother had died. As the meager savings in her bank account dwindled, he had devoted every remaining cent he possessed to Minseo’s needs, promising himself he would revisit the idea once his sister no longer depended upon him for everything.   

Now that Seungri had taken over, the taller man shriveled in on himself. Every last bit of strength seemed to have abandoned him. He was clearly in a state of shock. All color had drained from his face, and without the adrenaline to animate him, he could do nothing but watch in horror as some stranger pressed down on the neon jacket, causing a dark stain to seep through.

“It’s going to be all right. Just believe,” Seungri insisted. “Come on!”

Honestly, he had no idea if what he said was true. He wasn’t a doctor. He had never treated someone with a gunshot wound—especially not an unconscious person.

“Hold him,” he barked.

He had no idea if it would help, but he wanted to believe it would. He had watched enough romantic movies and dramas to believe that the human touch was capable of miracles. Seunghyun sprang into action, scooting closer and cradling the boy’s head in his hands. He leaned down and kissed his forehead.

“Honey, you and me can be one,” he murmured into his hair.

It was a promise. Seungri sensed imminent danger in those words. He feared the man would stand up and commit suicide—intentional or not—to become one with his dying lover. It was a romantic concept echoed throughout every great love story. But unlike the idea of human contact having healing properties, Seungri knew it wasn’t real.

“Wait,” he ordered. “I’ll get us out of here.”

“Seungri!”

He craned his neck in the direction of a familiar voice as much as he dared. A man with a mohawk and terrified eyes peered at him from the doorway of GDYG's.

“Stay back!” Seungri yelled, but Youngbae didn’t listen.

They used to joke about his inability to obey Seungri’s unethical advice in high school when it came to himself. Against his best friend’s advice, Youngbae had admitted to copying off an unwitting classmate’s quiz to the teacher. He had confessed his feelings to his lab partner instead of teasing her as his friend suggested.

While he was certainly an all-around choirboy (literally and figuratively), there were rare times when he was unabashedly dishonest. The incidents tended to revolve around Seungri.

In sophomore year he had lied to Seungri’s mother when she had called his home, asking where her son was.

“He went down the street to get us some snacks, Mrs. Lee,” he had said easily. “We’re studying for the history exam.”

But in actuality, he had spent the night with a senior who wore vanilla perfume and fake eyelashes. When Seungri had approached her in school the day after their date—his heart on his sleeve—she pretended she didn’t even know him. Youngbae had hugged him, discreetly wiping tear tracks off his cheeks with his hoodie sleeves, and then steered him out of school to sit in a café and vent to him all afternoon.

That was the one and only time he had ever been truant. Seungri had yet to thank him for it.

“You deserve someone much better than her,” he had said. “Someone too good for this world, like you.”

Staring at the man across the destroyed club in the middle of a shoot-out, completely powerless to stop him from running to his aid, Seungri felt cheated of time. He could have known all along instead of just figuring it out now, in the worst, most inconvenient situation ever. Watching the man advance, he only wished Youngbae had opened his eyes to the truth earlier.  

                                                                        *****

“I’m going to tonight,” Daesung moaned.

“You weren’t born to be bad,” Seunghyun said. “That’s impossible. Just have fun.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not going to be up on stage in front of a crowd of people, sweating under spotlights with butterflies wreaking havoc in your stomach, praying for the sweet release of death.”

“Baby, we were born to live fast and die young. Together.”

“I can’t do it!” Daesung yelled, throwing his hands up in the air and dropping his necktie in the process. “I just–can’t.”

“You don’t need that stuffy necktie anyway. It’ll just make it difficult to breathe.”

“It’s already pretty hard to breathe.”

Seunghyun took his shaking fingers and put them between his hands, rubbing them. He looked into Daesung’s wide, worried eyes. He kissed the nervous wrinkles on the skin between his eyebrows. They stood next to the floor length mirror in their bedroom, and Seunghyun could admire the reflection of his lover's backside as they talked. 

“If it you makes you feel any better, I’ll go on stage with you.”

“Really? You would do that for me?”

“Absolutely. I’d walk around in public for you.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, rolling his eyes and smirking.

“I’d rather not, but for you I would.”

“You better not. I don’t share.”

“Neither do I. So I guess it’s a good thing I’ll be up on stage with you. To make sure you and the drummer don’t get too close.”

“What drummer, bingu?”

“Aish! Why are you so mean to hyung?”

Daesung pecked him on the cheek.

“Thank you," he whispered.

They had no way of knowing that Seunghyun appearing on stage during his boyfriend’s performance would be the downfall of Daesung.

                                                                        *****