Work Text:
Jiyong witnesses Seunghyun and Daesung's first kiss, or what he assumes must be their first kiss, entirely by accident.
It's Seunghyun's birthday and Seunghyun is sitting alone on the patio when Jiyong spots him, sucking on the mouth of an empty beer bottle and staring into space. Jiyong only stepped out to have a cigarette, and he's about to move into the light and offer Seunghyun one when Daesung eases through the sliding door to Seunghyun's right, closing the door softly behind him and holding two beer bottles in one hand. For some reason, the sight of him makes Jiyong freeze in place, despite the sharp breeze trying to drive him back inside.
"Need a top off?" Daesung asks, dangling the bottles in front of Seunghyun's face. Seunghyun looks up at him without answering for so long Jiyong starts to feel itchy.
"Thanks," Seunghyun says at last, taking a bottle and obediently knocking it against Daesung's when Daesung doesn't pull his away.
"Do you feel wiser?" Daesung asks, taking a moderate sip of his beer. Daesung's never been a fan of the stuff, Jiyong knows; he wonders if Seunghyun has ever noticed.
Seunghyun, on the other hand, is bleary-eyed, blinking against a cloak of alcohol they've all seen him wear before. "Stupider, actually," he says.
Daesung chuckles and settles himself on the bench, draping his legs across Seunghyun's lap and tilting his head against Seunghyun's shoulder. It's nothing Daesung wouldn't do on any given day to any given member, with or without an audience, but as Jiyong watches Seunghyun goes rigid, his lips setting in a tight, unreadable line. Jiyong can feel his own lips get tight, too, and he only remembers the cigarette in his hand just before it burns down to his fingers. He flicks it to the cement and crushes it with his boot.
"Has it been a good birthday?" Daesung asks, quiet because his mouth is so close to Seunghyun's ear. Jiyong has to strain to catch the words.
Seunghyun pauses, and Jiyong can practically see the cogs turning in his head. He takes a swig of beer, enough to probably drain a quarter of the bottle, before answering, turning so he's eye-to-eye with Daesung. Jiyong is at once terrified. He wants to escape, but it's too late to slip away unnoticed and his feet are rooted to the spot.
"Could have been better," Seunghyun says. Daesung frowns but doesn't move. Their faces are so close Jiyong can see Daesung's hair flutter with Seunghyun's breath, and an image of Seunghyun brushing the hair away from Daesung's forehead comes to Jiyong unbidden, startling him.
A second later, Seunghyun does exactly that.
"Hyung," Daesung says, a deep warning to his voice. Seunghyun looks like he's going to be sick but doesn't stop. He strokes Daesung's jaw with his thumbs and brings their faces even closer together, so their noses are brushing and their mouths are centimeters apart. When Daesung breathes out, Seunghyun breathes in, like he wants to keep Daesung's air all for himself.
"What are you doing?" Daesung asks, but he's already shifting closer, arms looping around Seunghyun's neck, eyes half-closed.
"Something stupid," Seunghyun answers, before tilting Daesung's chin up and kissing him.
What kills Jiyong is how natural it looks—a perfect, inevitable fit, like they've been waiting to do this for years. He starts to flip through memories of the two of them since day one and realizes maybe they have, but the thought makes his stomach hurt so he pushes it aside. Daesung gasps suddenly and Seunghyun pulls away until Daesung touches his face and whispers something in his ear, and like he's been released from a spell, Jiyong's feet go unfrozen. He stumbles backward, making a little too much noise but confident Seunghyun and Daesung wouldn't notice even if he threw a cigarette at them, and escapes around the side of the house.
When he falls asleep that night, his head is swimming with someone's voice whispering unidentifiable words and the ghostly touch of fingers on his jaw.
It's hard not to feel possessive of his bandmates, and Jiyong tries to remind himself of this as he bites his nails and watches Daesung and Seunghyun flirting at a photo shoot. The difference between their interactions now and before is subtle, but Jiyong can spot it in the way their eye contact lingers, the way Seunghyun keeps watching for Daesung long after he's left for a wardrobe change. Jiyong watches, too, and feels guilty when Seunghyun catches his gaze and they both look away.
"Can we get TOP and G-Dragon out here, please?"
Jiyong and Seunghyun rise at the photographer's call and move in front of the green screen, Seunghyun's hands stuffed in his pockets, Jiyong still chewing on his thumb. He forgets what the theme of the shoot is today and glances down at his outfit to try and remember.
"Do you think you two could get a little closer?" the photographer suggests, miming with his hands that they close the considerable gap between them. From the side, Seungri and Youngbae laugh.
"Shut up." Jiyong grins and sidesteps into Seunghyun and thankfully things ease back into a familiar routine. Seunghyun relaxes, elbows Jiyong in the side, and they can work again, effectively if more quietly than usual.
That's when Daesung returns, drawing Seunghyun's attention like a magnet, beaming from behind the cameras and making Jiyong's palms sweat. The moment they're dismissed, Seunghyun and Daesung fall together, joking about something Jiyong doesn't catch, lost to the rest of the world. Jiyong finds his thumbnail and bites, pulls, tears.
"What are you doing to yourself, Oppa?" One of Jiyong's attendants grabs his hands, pulling them away from his face and inspecting the nails with a click of her tongue.
"Sorry," Jiyong says with a smile. He wishes he knew.
On Seungri's birthday, they go to a Japanese restaurant for teppanyaki. Seungri flirts with the waitresses and gets drunker than he has a right to be from a couple cocktails, and Jiyong tries to be happy for him but can't keep his focus off of Daesung and Seunghyun. They're all snug in a half-moon booth a shade too small for five people, and Jiyong's starting to get hot from the close press of thighs and shoulders. Seungri is in the middle with Jiyong and Daesung to his right and Youngbae and Seunghyun to his left, and from his vantage point Jiyong can easily watch Daesung and Seunghyun's interactions across the table.
It surprised Jiyong at first to realize they aren't showy, even remotely so, in their affections. For Seunghyun, private and shy in a way he wishes he could hide better, it makes sense, but Daesung is the one who takes something that makes him happy and flaunts it, like a kid with a new toy. Yet all Jiyong has caught so far, with the significant exception of the kiss, are lingering glances, maybe slightly more hushed conversation than usual. Until he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and notices, in the way Daesung stumbles getting out of the booth and Seunghyun has to cover his laugh with his hand, their ankles have been tangled together under the table.
He burns with a strange anger about it all the way to the bathroom, and once he arrives ignores the urinals in favor of the sink, splashing cool water on his neck and wishing he had an excuse to leave without forever ruining his relationship with Seungri.
Youngbae strolls in barely a moment later, also ignoring the urinals to stand next to Jiyong, by the mirror.
"It's a nice party," he says, fixing his shirt collar and smiling like Jiyong doesn't know him well enough to call an ulterior motive when he sees one.
"It is," Jiyong agrees, smiling right back, because two can play at that game.
"Seungri's definitely enjoying himself."
Jiyong rolls his eyes and nods.
"Daesung and Seunghyun seem really happy lately," Youngbae says. Jiyong is admittedly thrown off; it's unlike Youngbae to cut to the point so fast, but maybe he could see in the way Jiyong was drying his hands on his pants that he's ready to bolt.
"Yeah," Jiyong says. When he meets Youngbae's gaze he has to swallow down panic, because if Youngbae's already noticed this without even seeing a kiss, what else might he have noticed? But there's no reason to think he's trying to talk about anything beyond what it sounds like.
Jiyong leaves as quickly as he can anyway, and when he returns to find Seungri having a shot poured down his throat by their youngest waitress and Daesung and Seunghyun on the same side of the booth, tucked in together and sharing yakisoba, he finds he has no idea where to go.
Jiyong doesn't like group van rides on the best of days—Youngbae gets carsick and Seungri gets hyper, so it's always a test of nerves and patience—but today, strapped in the direct middle between Seunghyun and Daesung, it's close to unbearable. Youngbae has his head tilted against his cracked window and Jiyong wishes he had the option of mimicking him; the air in the back of the van is thick with something unspoken, and Seunghyun to his left is stiff and solemn, eyes fixed straight ahead, not speaking.
"Do you have any gum, Hyung?" Daesung asks, leaning over and causing Jiyong and Seunghyun to startle.
When they both reach into their pockets and everyone realizes it's unclear who Daesung was addressing, Daesung laughs.
"Whoever can get to it first," he says.
Seunghyun turns out to not have any at all, so Jiyong hands a piece of gum over to Daesung and tries not to feel too much like he's just won a competition. When he glances sideways at Seunghyun, he wishes he hadn't, because Seunghyun is looking at him with his brow furrowed, like he's thinking very hard.
"You two have been too tense lately," Daesung says sagely. "You need to stop thinking about work all the time."
As he speaks, he rolls up his gum wrapper, aims, and throws it at the back of Seungri's head. Seungri, singing off-key to something blasting from his oversized headphones, doesn't notice. Jiyong and Seunghyun take one look at each other and burst into laughter.
"That's better," Daesung says, grinning, and Jiyong has to agree.
"We should try something heavier," Seunghyun suggests.
"A wallet?" Jiyong says.
"I was thinking cell phone."
They dissolve into giggles again, and the distraction is what prevents them from noticing, at first, Daesung. Daesung, who has unbuckled his seatbelt and is now facing the wrong direction, bending in half over the back of the seat as he digs for something in one of the bags behind them.
"I think I have a Doraemon toy in here," he's saying, but his sentence ends with an abrupt yelp. At the same time, Jiyong and Seunghyun lunge for him, but Seunghyun is somehow the one who makes contact first, even though he's farther away. He jerks Daesung back by the waist of his jeans and forces him bodily into his seat.
"What the hell are you doing?" Seunghyun snaps, unbuckled from his seatbelt now, too. He's leaning over Jiyong's lap as he yanks Daesung's seatbelt back across his chest and buckles it for him, Jiyong's fingers twitching uselessly at his sides.
"That's dangerous," Seunghyun adds, a little sullenly, as he sits back down and attends to his own belt. No one says it, but they're all remembering the same thing: getting the unexpected call about Daesung and a van accident; going to the hospital and not being able to recognize his smile under all the bruises.
"Sorry," Daesung says. He's quiet but sounds more thoughtful than anything, and he can't seem to stop staring across Jiyong at Seunghyun with a sort of dazed wonder, like a fan meeting TOP for the first time.
All the lightheartedness from before is gone as quickly as it came. Jiyong inspects his fingernails as long as he can get away with before glancing in Seunghyun's direction, and when he does, just as he expected, Seunghyun is watching not Daesung, but Jiyong. In place of the confusion from before, Seunghyun now looks like he's figured something out, and Jiyong colors under the scrutiny.
"Switch places with me?" he mumbles, when it's getting to be too much. "I'm not feeling well."
Seunghyun obliges wordlessly, and Jiyong gets to follow Youngbae's example at last, cracking the window and closing his eyes as he tilts his head against the cool glass. He's fairly certain Seunghyun and Daesung were itching to sit next to each other, anyway.
Usually when he catches Youngbae or Seunghyun or any of the members on TV, Jiyong snorts, watches for a little while, and changes the channel. If it's Seungri, sometimes he'll watch a little longer just to make sure he's behaving himself, but the fact of the matter is it's just too jarring to sit through an entire interview. There's a sharp contrast between the people he rehearses with and records with and sometimes lives with and the people whose faces greet him on cell phone ads, whose voices follow him through convenience store speakers, and he tries to keep that wall up as much as he can, for self-preservation if nothing else.
Tonight, he's channel-surfing in the privacy of his own apartment, his first time home in almost a month, when he flicks past Seunghyun's unmistakable eyebrow quirk on the screen. Jiyong flicks back, leg bouncing with sudden energy and nerves, and turns up the volume. It's Seunghyun and Daesung together, he realizes, on an old rerun of a now-canceled talk show. They look so much younger it makes Jiyong feel nostalgic, weirdly homesick for a place he can't identify.
"Did it take long for the members of Big Bang to warm up to one another?" someone is asking them, causing Daesung and Seunghyun to turn to each other, amused.
"I think we got along pretty well right away," Daesung says. "But it was very stressful in the beginning, with the TV show and everything, so it wasn't until a little later that we really became close."
"Who did you grow close with right away?" the interviewer asks.
"Seungri, right?" Seunghyun asks Daesung, giving him a gentle shove. Daesung kicks him and hides his face; the audience laughs and Seunghyun kicks back and Jiyong wonders how it is that he can't place this interview at a particular moment in time. It seems so significant now, watching the easy way Seunghyun and Daesung feed off each other, have fed off each other from the start. He can hardly believe seeing Seunghyun like this, teasing and unrestrained on television, a complete disparity with Jiyong's mental image of his nervous, rigid co-idol preparing for interviews.
"It's hard to say." Daesung crosses his legs and backs away from his fight with Seunghyun. Jiyong's heart skips a beat when he goes on, "Maybe G-Dragon. He's very talented and confident; right from the beginning I felt like I could follow him."
The interviewer doesn't even have time to follow-up before Seunghyun says, "Me too. G-Dragon works hard and expects the rest of us to work hard, but he loves the group so much. It makes me feel reassured to work with him."
Rather than listen to more, Jiyong changes channels, the lump in his throat getting too big to linger. His head is swimming with so much grief and confusion that for a moment he doesn't realize what's playing on the very next station. Another rerun, this one from the very earliest days of Big Bang's conception, greets him, only now it's not Seunghyun and Daesung but Jiyong and Daesung appearing together. They're in a sort of dance competition, Jiyong remembers, but what strikes him now is his arms draped around Daesung, hugging him from behind, a sort of protective blanket not quite shielding them both as they watch their competitors and laugh.
He falls asleep still tuned into the same program, hoping for another glimpse of their past so he can take notes on what he's supposed to be doing, how to proceed from here.
They're on-site for a photo shoot but taking a break when Daesung pulls Jiyong aside, out of nowhere, apologetic. "Can we go for a quick walk?" he asks.
Jiyong nods despite the panic welling up in his chest and follows Daesung—away from Seunghyun, who watches them, and everyone else, finally coming to a stop behind a big, barren tree.
"Seunghyun saw you," Daesung confesses in one short breath, which ghosts out visibly in the air in front of him. "The night of his birthday, when we—" He pauses, wetting his lips. "He's been worried about it but I told him it's you, you'd never. Hyung. It doesn't bother you, does it?"
Jiyong can't find the words for how deeply it bothers him, how sharp the ache in his heart is. But when he looks at Daesung's face, tense with worry but also hope, what he says is, "Of course not."
Daesung relaxes and smiles, and for a second, it warms Jiyong just like it always has. "Thank you, Hyung," he says, and before he leaves he takes Jiyong's right hand and squeezes, just once. Jiyong sits down heavily once he's gone, rummages for a cigarette, and remembers.
Daesung and Jiyong's first and only kiss took place a year ago, on Daesung's birthday. They were both drunk, Daesung drunker, and it was late, the other members already long unconscious.
"I knew you were my only real friend," Daesung slurred as Jiyong snickered, stumbling arm-in-arm over the wreckage of the living room toward Daesung's bedroom. Seungri was passed out on the couch, but otherwise Jiyong can't remember who was where; it seems significant now that he can't place Seunghyun, because who knows if he secretly witnessed it all, just like Jiyong later, a sick cycle to be repeated on birthdays for years to come.
"I am your only real friend," Jiyong affirmed. He dumped Daesung down on his bed, intending to stumble away, but Daesung didn't let go so he fell with him, happy and buzzing, his face easily burying itself in the space between Daesung's neck and shoulder.
He still wonders what would have happened if he'd stayed like that, unmoving, until they both fell asleep. They would have woken up stiff and awkward but otherwise unscarred, and maybe things wouldn't seem half so miserable now.
Maybe they would seem worse.
Jiyong will never know because after a few deep breaths he pulled back, ready to go even if his body wouldn't obey, his face only a breath away from Daesung's, who smiled at him through barely-open eyes and lifted a hand to his cheek.
"This is what I wanted," he whispered, and maybe he moved forward first, but maybe Jiyong did. They kissed slow and slick until they both had to pull away to gasp and Daesung's head hit the pillow hard, and Jiyong said "Happy Birthday" and let him sleep, curled around Daesung's body, heart pounding with a terrifying happiness.
When he woke up, he was on the far side of the bed and Daesung was sitting in the middle with his head between his knees.
"Are you okay?" Jiyong asked, sliding a hand up Daesung's back.
Daesung started, blinked blearily, and said "You slept here, too?"
Jiyong didn't say anything else, but got up and came back with a glass of water and two painkillers.
He thinks Daesung really doesn't remember. He likes it better that way.