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Jiyong sees an envelope clipped neatly on the cover of Seunghyun's lyric file and, he knows.
Seunghyun is never the kind to ever bother with checking the mailbox, less opening an envelope and let alone safe keeping one.
Jiyong doesn't inspect it the first day he notices it. Nor does he on the second. Or the third, either. But on the fourth day, he's uneasy, alone and sitting in the studio, unable to read the music sheets. The clock hand signals a quarter of an hour to midnight and Jiyong feels his pulse racing just thinking about infringing on his hyung's privacy.
The envelope still sits there, though, fast asleep on the cover page of Seunghyun's lyric file.
Jiyong walks over, his breath still caught up in his throat. His fingers are barely mobile when they reach to trace past the smooth felt like the surface of the envelope.
There's the military seal, printed next to the address of the recipient.
And then, Jiyong stops breathing. Registers the gravity of the situation. Withdraws his trembling fingers from its glossy surface. Collapses meekly onto his lyric chair and feels his vision blur , for a moment of two.
The letter held the effect of the Pandora's Box, only worse, Jiyong thinks bitterly. At least Pandora's box existed in the realm of fantasy. The letter only served to underscore the reality of a barely realised dream of supreme idolatry. Seunghyun is leaving. His hyung is leaving. His breath is leaving him. The inspiration behind his music; meaning behind his lyrics and the complementary base rap to his singing. The temperate of the room is all of a sudden, beyond freezing and Jiyong finds himself burying his face in between his drawn up knees.
He isn't hiding tears, no, not at all. The back of his tongue is merely salt with a thick afterthought of a severed union made to have last longer, longer than this at least, he thinks.
And just then, silently and gently, Seunghyun slides in, graces Jiyong with his presence, as if nothing's changed at all, and latches his chin on Jiyong's shoulders, arms girdling his waist, like a giant woollen jacket hugging over the younger. Jiyong draws in a sharp breath, eyelids fluttering shut because just maybe, behind closed lids, the swollen, puffy tear-drenched eyes would somehow look less conspicuous.
"Hey," Seunghyun says, husky voice halting Jiyong's train of thoughts.
When Seunghyun reaches for the open envelope, Jiyong doesn't even try to hide the blots of salty tears that he had unintentionally adorned it with; it was too late anyway.
It’s always too late.
"So you've read?"
Stupid question. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Jiying flits his wet eyelashes downwards, nods.
"I'm sorry."
Seunghyun sighs, weary and resigned. Any urge for Jiyong to fight back the tears from before had all thoroughly vaporised now. His hyung is a fighter. Seunghyun /always/ finds a way out of things - however ridiculously puerile or ostensibly futile his attempts were. To suddenly realise that Seunghyun's got nothing left to offer but the warmth of his touch; it's the kind of frightening novelty that makes one’s heart leap. That leap one takes when they’re midway through a dilapidated bridge bounded between two shores by a loosening thread.
By the time Seunghyun attempts to gently pry Jiyong's fingers from the envelope, the two blots of tears had doubled to four, and eight and, and —-
It isn't fair at all. They've only just begun mapping out their empire. Jiyong had intended for at least one more album collaboration with Seunghyun. The last time they had collaborated was five years ago. Jiyong had then insisted that another album collaboration is necessary because working with Seunghyun was an extraterrestrial music making experience altogether. They were almond and chocolate; Seunghyun's presence wasn't to accommodate but to assist. To not always go with the flow but instead point out then mend the gaps in Jiyong's music with his own quirky, esoteric ideas. With Seunghyun, Jiyong's music was experimental, never fully certain.
But with together Seunghyun in the studio, he finds himself growing more and more accustomed to it, the corrections; (as Seunghyun tactfully coins them, not ‘criticism’). He smiles whenever he hears it, somehow makes him feel lighter even with those heavy, supposedly blistering words. Words that should weigh him down. It's a trick of gravity, a scientific fluke, a mistake in biology. Because with words and all the most hurtful comments he hears, Seunghyun translates them effortlessly into lightweight corrections that buttress rather than demolish. And the end is always a masterpiece, from rust, it’s turned into stardust. Like the Jiyong before, that’s made and chiselled out perfectly, to be G-Dragon.
"What if it all ends." Jiyong manages, his voice an uncertain echo of his thoughts - still shaky. "You know it's not going to last forever, don't you? The fans, all this luxury, the perks of unlimited travel, gifts and free admissions. It fades away with every moment you're on stage... what's going to happen when you--"
"Jiyong," Seunghyun mutters as he takes the younger boy's dainty fingers in his.
"Look at me now." Their fingers are interlaced. Jiyong hears his steady breath, lifts his gaze to meet Seunghyun’s.
His pools are a well of crystalline calmness, like looking through clear water held in a wine glass; perfect stillness, not a hint of hysteria or despair; only recognition. Perfect love has a breath of poetry that can exalt the mood of the most desperate human being, and this breath of poetry had surrounded Jiyong from the very beginning of time; underground, at the desolate void decks when Seunghyun was Tempo and Jiyong was merely Jiyong the boy, with a dream. Then, it was the unvitiated feeling of affection that burgeoned. The kind where it felt still too nebulous, too uncertain to distinguish between infatuation and love.
Reckless, destructive but still simultaneously beautiful, sacrificial love. The love he knows now. Seunghyun.
“You’re thinking again.”
“M’ not—-” Jiyong protests, flashing his mid-recovery, on-my-way-to-being-okay-again smile.
”You know, you worry too much, pretty boy," Seunghyun says, running his thumb over the barely visible wrinkles on Jiyong's forehead. "Bet you'll get these permanent forehead creases before I do."
Jiyong cracks a loose half-grin, expels a mirthless laugh a few seconds after, only because it felt appropriate to do so. ”I'm not---"
The lights in the room flicker on and off and Jiyong’s mind blanks out for a minute or two because Seunghyun poisons his mind, because he’s sinking, fighting for his breath and resisting the feeling of not relenting into the other’s sweet, warm cavern at the same time. Warm lips are dancing in sync against his, strong and firm hands are elevating his cheeks, setting his fear, frustration and doubts all alight. Like a burst of colours in a monotone film, a torn hole in the sky rightfully stitched up and a meteor shower of dying, falling, failing stars; Seunghyun gifts him a brief respite from the disconcertment of a battered reality.
And when Seunghyun’s lips dances against his nothing really matters - billboard rankings, album revenue, copyrights, or whether big bang in twenty twenty-five will be the big bang they were in twenty fifteen. His only goal is crisp like daybreak in his mind, like the feel Seunghyun's breath against his. He wants nothing more than to hold him in his arms forever, to feel his presence everywhere even in his eventual absence.
"I'll come back home soon. So will you." Seunghyun whispers delicately into his ear.
"I know, hyung." Jiyong mumbles, softly. "I know."
Seunghyun gives the younger's palm a soft squeeze, then rests his chin on the crown of Jiyong’s head. They don't mean much - the minute gestures of affection - but they do much to remind Jiyong that yes, Seunghyun will conscript. Yes, his departure will tear him and break him more than it will sting for the rest of Big Bang, but it will also mark a beginning.
A beginning of an age, a novel distance merely measured by nothing more than arithmetics that may sunder their union, if Jiyong chooses to let it.
And Jiyong knows, its existence is but specks of dancing, diffused, dust between two hearts intertwined souls.
He knows that being apart, will only ever give him all the more ammunition, gumption and anticipation to for the day they when they'll meet again.
Knows, that as Seunghyun cups his cheeks, brushes away the salty trail of tears on his cheeks, everything and anything in the world is and will always be, for now at least, okay.
“I think you were mine even before our rise to stardom,” Seunghyun whispers against Jiyong’s lips.
“So you’ll be mine and only mine at the end of it all.”
And this is how silently, Jiyong hands over his heart.