GTOP PART2

The kids outside the rather standard black clubhouse are pissing Seunghyun off, and god help him he's going to turn around and slam all their faces into the wall behind them the next time one of them mentions ass and felching that breaks all of them into another fit of giggles.

He flicks another cigarette butt onto the asphalt, blowing the last of his smoke into the night. Now he's out, with nothing but five Marlboro stubs at his toes and an empty carton in his pocket. There isn't even a gas station in sight to stock up - actually, there's nothing on this street besides the apparent ‘rave', except a few backsides of corporate buildings and tow-away zone, do not park signs.

Maybe he'll just go home.

And maybe Jiyong just thinks he's a superhero in neon and glitter, the way the blond almost takes it as a cue to show up the very next second, a touch to his arm and smile on his face like he isn't half an hour late. "Hey," he says, and Seunghyun sighs loudly.

"What were you doing, powdering your nose?" The sad part is it wouldn't even surprise him. Sadder still is that a face full of makeup suits the shorter boy, tonight his usual metallic kohl with a burnt orange in the corners of his eyes like fire.

Jiyong just shows his teeth. "If you wanna call it that," he agrees, and he unclenches his fist to reveal a small plastic bag full of what looks like salt. (It's not salt.)

Seunghyun blinks. "Hardcore," he says sarcastically, and Jiyong pockets it, rolling his dilated pupils.

"It's cold as fuck out here," he says, and grabs Seunghyun's wrist to pull him forward, past the teenagers and the bouncers at the door into the melted darkness of the club.

Honestly, Seunghyun doesn't understand why they have to always do this before they stumble back to his apartment since Jiyong can barely last a full hour with his hands to himself thanks to the e, but the sweaty dance floors and bartended drinks have almost become like a poor-man's prerequisite they have to perform beforehand. Maybe Jiyong needs validation for being more than a booty call and if that's the case, he'll play along if it means another completed song or two at the end. He is grateful, however, that nobody he even remotely knows would ever set foot in a place like this. He'd never live it down.

They make it to the bottom of the steps to reveal an ice palace, falling "snow" (how appropriate) dusting everything with a fine coat of sparkling silver and fog pouring out of machines screwed to the corner; Jiyong slips a candy necklace between his lips and Seunghyun thinks it's a good thing he's not actually a superhero.



Another time, another dimly-lit place with too-loud bass and music Seunghyun doesn't even consider to be music so much as what you'd get if you combined womb noises and fire sirens.

Tonight's theme seems to be gore, snuff films projected onto the four sky-rise walls and the drink orders pertaining to ways to die that makes Seunghyun's stomach turn. Most everybody around him has overdosed on fake blood and stick-on injuries, and a few turn their noses up at Seunghyun's jeans, the only contributing effort he made tonight having unconsciously been the black Saber-tooth gauges in his ears.

The lights change and then Jiyong pushes himself out of the crowd to stand beside him at the bar.

"You should come dance," he says. Seunghyun nods at his unfinished drink on the countertop - and then remains unsurprised as Jiyong reaches over with his rainbow nails and downs the rest of the murky cocktail in a gulp. "Come on, it could be fun. All you ever do is get wasted."

Seunghyun looks at Jiyong like he's slow. "Because it helps me deal with the shit you call music."

"Then why do you keep coming?" It's obvious Jiyong's looking for one specific answer that Seunghyun doesn't have. Meaning, he lets Jiyong cajole him, lets him pull him up and away from the bar by his belt loops and weave through the bodies until he finds them a spot.

The blond starts to dance, reaching an arm behind him and pulling Seunghyun close so that his back fits against the curve of Seunghyun's chest and their bodies are aligned. Seunghyun can hear his breath next to his ear, and his hands rest lightly on Jiyong's hips. It feels kind of stupid, but it's not that bad and about four steps away from their next activity, so he figures it's a good form of foreplay and that it'll last for all of one song before they move on.

True to form, Jiyong flips back around before the song changes, his lips against Seunghyun's collarbone and his tongue darting out to taste skin, and Seunghyun works his hands into Jiyong's back pockets and feels Jiyong's heart rate increasing, and deduces they're about there.

He pulls Jiyong in for a kiss, drawn out and teasing, before retracting his hands and turning to leave, but Jiyong tugs him back and shakes his head.

"Let's just stay," he smiles. Seunghyun arches a brow.

"Okay, you wanna find a back alley, or just do it here?" he asks (jokes).

"Neither," Jiyong frowns, and his hand finds Seunghyun's in the darkness, fingers lacing together before Seunghyun is entirely sure what he's holding. "Let's just dance tonight."

"Just dance?" He nudges Jiyong back. "You shitting me?"

Jiyong is innocence pre-packaged in nylon, except Seunghyun knows better. "It could be fun," he says.

"That's what you said about this," Seunghyun cards a hand through his hair and it comes away damp with sweat and something bright red that's rubbed off from people posing as train wreck victims. "Can we go now?"

"Seunghyun, what are we doing?"

The question throws Seunghyun for a loop, and Jiyong looks suddenly awkward as he hastily backtracks.

"I just, this is weird. I've never done this before, and," here he takes a breath, dropping his eyes to the floor against a backdrop of a man blowing his head off, brain spilling onto the wall behind him, "I don't know. I'd just like a heads up now if - if I'm just, like, gonna be a good fuck to you, and that's it." He doesn't sound angry, just curious mixed with something else Seunghyun can't place.

Seunghyun snorts and goes the safe route. "Who says you're good?"

Jiyong blinks. "Come on," he says, exasperated, and Seunghyun sighs.

"What if you are?"

The other boy shrugs one-shouldered, lip catching between his teeth. "I don't know." He laughs, and it doesn't sound like a laugh. "This is totally the wrong conversation to be having." It's a little apologetic, but Seunghyun steps back.

"No, if you can't deal with what it is then - whatever." It's his turn to shrug now - feels something tightening on his fingers and at the last second remembers he's somehow still holding Jiyong's hand, and wrenches his fingers away - and then he slips between the cracks of pale skin and outstretched arms all the way out the door.

The music is giving him a headache.



Fifteen minutes and he's next door on the steps of a convenience store, bottle of soju and a cigarette hanging from his lips as he wonders where the fuck all the cabs are.

It's not like Seunghyun is one of those douches with commitment phobias. Yea, it's rare, and too much drama for him to like doing it much, but he isn't one to jump ship if he really wants somebody. He just isn't entirely sure it's in the stars for him to start shit with a club-kid who mostly pisses him off and who his intentions with aren't exactly honest.

"Hey." A pair of heeled boots click onto the stone steps where he's sitting. Seunghyun looks up to see a girl with star-struck written all over her face, and she's pointing at him with dark, filed nails. "You're not Choi Seunghyun, from like, that one band, are you?"

She's wearing jeans tucked into her knee-highs and a leather bustier, and her hair is teased, streaked with white that matches the shadow on her eyelids. That one band. Seunghyun sighs.

"It's your lucky night," he mutters flatly.

The groupie seems to take this almost literally because her eyes light up. "Is it?" The smile on her lips is blood red.

Seunghyun lets her drape herself off him in the cab she snags for them. Maybe all this bullshit about Jiyong being some weird supernatural muse is just that: bullshit. Maybe it's just all in the timing.



She pretends to show interest in talking to him when they get there, but he's not feeling it and pushes her onto the bed three seconds after closing the door.

He doesn't bother remembering her name, and she doesn't seem to care the way she writhes underneath him, bites back moans when he thrusts into her again, again, leaves lipstick on Seunghyun's chest, rolls them over to straddle him and tell him she's not scared of doing the work, just sit back and enjoy it baby, pulls his hand up to grip her breast - and she's better than Jiyong if he's honest with himself.

But no songs come. And he can't help but feel disappointed, restlessness bubbling up underneath the satiation.

She leaves when the sun comes up, jeans unzipped and one boot still in her hand with a hasty grin on her lips. Seunghyun doesn't see her off. He figures it's light enough outside that she can find her own way around.



It's after noon when he finally wakes up, eyes crusted over and a hangover that grows exponentially the longer he's conscious. Two o'clock, and he finally pulls on a pair of jeans and attempts to function (which means stumbling to the bathroom and drowning his face in sink-water); three-thirty and he presses ignore on a message waiting on his machine and goes out to get coffee because his kitchen has nothing but ice cubes, alcohol, and a jar of mustard.

Still no songs.

Seunghyun grimaces, stuffing his hands in his pockets; his hair blows into his eyes with the wind, and he turns a corner and shakes it away - and suddenly he's looking at Kwon Jiyong, leaning against the brick wall outside his usual coffee shop in last night's clothes with a jacket thrown haphazardly over his shoulders for the cold, makeup caked and smudged around the edges.

He looks just as surprised to see Seunghyun, but breaks into the grin Seunghyun knows like the back of his hand by now a second later. "Classy," he smirks.

Seunghyun has no idea what the hell he's talking about until Jiyong brings a hand up and exaggerates the motion of brushing his neck.

When Seunghyun mimics him, his fingers come away full of greasy lipstick. He shrugs, wipes it on the edge of his shirt, and doesn't feel that sorry
as he pulls the door to the café open.

The door jingles behind him when Seunghyun is waiting for his black coffee, no cream, no sugar.

"So, look, I was wondering," says Jiyong, silhouetted against the door, "how good is your memory?"

"Uh." Seunghyun frowns. "What?"

"It wouldn't happen to be really bad, would it?"

"Are you still high?"

Jiyong ignores him and closes the distance. "'Cause, like, I'm just wondering if you've forgotten what I said yesterday." His eyes are clear, if a little red-rimmed, but unreadable when he smiles again. "'Cause that would be cool."

Seunghyun snorts. "I think that's a little too easy." He knows he shouldn't be anything except accommodating since his fingers are itching to write, but usually his mouth runs faster than his common sense on account of his pride, or something.

"Why can't it be easy?" Jiyong's eyes flash. "You're not gonna tell me you have feelings for me or something?"

Seunghyun doesn't take the bait. "I'm just saying, maybe it is weird. What this is."

It prompts an eye roll from the blond, like he wasn't the one who came up with the whole damn cloud over their heads last night. "So stop reading into it, then. It is what it is." His fingers brush against Seunghyun's collarbone and dip just inside his shirt, hands cold as ever on Seunghyun's skin and breath alternatively hot. "You missed a spot." His voice is soft, he shows Seunghyun the lipstick on his fingers, and his eyes read please.

Oh, what the hell. Seunghyun's empty brain needs its fix.

"Fine," he says, and Jiyong grins, looking completely different in the light.



Seunghyun is discovering he really doesn't give a shit about technical performance, he'd rather have familiarity and comfort and I know this I know you I know your body.

The last of Jiyong's makeup comes off on Seunghyun's sheets, sweat and grime from the night before. Afterwards Seunghyun smoothes a hand over the blond's hair and sweat and swollen lips, wondering just in how deep of shit he's treading in.

He tries to sleep but ends up at his desk at one in the morning, words pouring out of the ends of his ballpoint faster than he can keep up with them. The sentences come out fragmented and nonsensical but he figures he'll decode what he'll trying to say later because right now he doesn't have the energy or will to.

He casts a glance over at the boy sleeping underneath the slotted moonlight from his windows when he crawls back into bed. Yea, it is what it is, but that's never really the case.

Then again, nobody ever said show business was a romp in a field of daisies and happiness, either.



He knows he's right when he wakes up to a raging thunderstorm like even the Lord God Almighty wants this to happen.

Jiyong says he can just call a taxi but his eyes keep giving him away, and Seunghyun isn't that much of an asshole. So. The rain stays, and so does Jiyong.

Two o'clock (boxes of takeout scattered across the tabletops and television remotes lost in the couch cushions), and Jiyong is digging around his music collection, and Seunghyun is bent over on the floor writing in his third notebook, making corrections to last night's word jumble and adding things. Because apparently Jiyong doesn't even need to be doing much of anything for there to be music.

"You have five copies of the same Bob Dylan album," Jiyong says. He piles them on the ground by Seunghyun's head, and then gets sidetracked. "What're you doing, writing in your diary?"

"Yes." Seunghyun doesn't even look up as Jiyong flops onto the floor across from him and studies his notebook.

"So you write your own songs." Seunghyun can hear the surprise in Jiyong's voice. "Don't people use a keyboard or something to figure this out?"

He shrugs. "Not when they're good."

"I didn't know you were such an elitist." A few more minutes, and the silence breaks again. "Hey, I took a music composition class a few years ago."

"Good for you," Seunghyun quips, and Jiyong smacks him, hard, on the arm.

"I'm just saying. I could help you if you want."

Seunghyun snorts. "No thanks," he says, but Jiyong starts saying the ends of the lyrics aloud anyways like they're still in grade school and quality comes in the forms of a-b-a-b rhyme schemes.

"Lines. You could use vines, mines..." It's a good thing the blond's eyes are concentrated on the paper in front of him and not Seunghyun's face, or else he would've cut himself off already. "Silence runs along phone lines... how about 'don't pick up they're landmines'? What?" He says, because he finally looks up and it's right about now Seunghyun can't help the are-you-serious look on his face anymore.

"Waiting for you to tell me how bad you failed that class," he says, and Jiyong glares at him.

"Fuck you, I did great." He rolls over onto his back to stare at the ceiling.

Almost ten full minutes, and then, "the dark throws me a lifeline."

Seunghyun stops writing. "What?"

"The dark throws me a lifeline." Jiyong rolls back over, jabbing a finger at the sheet of lyrics. "Kind of cheating since it's the same word, but it works."

"Did you just spend the last ten minutes thinking that up?" Seunghyun grins cockily when Jiyong just looks indignant. "Cute."

"They're good lyrics!"

"Sure, kid."

"You're a pretentious asshole."

"At least I'm not a cock-sucking bitch." Jiyong looks like he's about to storm out so Seunghyun rolls his eyes and deliberately writes it in, the dark throws me a lifeline, underneath the bottom of the verse. "Stop being a drama queen, all right? I'm fuckin' around."

And it takes a while to work the scowl off his face, but in the end Jiyong smiles and calls him a jackass and keeps his hand a little cautiously by Seunghyun's, the one that's not writing, just enough that Seunghyun can feel the heat from his arm - like he's waiting for Seunghyun to pull away, but Seunghyun doesn't. Call it distraction or apathy or... something.

One or twice he looks over and Jiyong's just reading over his shoulder, absentmindedly mouthing the words to himself.

That's pretty much how the rest of the day goes, give or take a few more boxes of delivery pizza.



Maybe it's some sort of accidental trigger, because three days later, he scrambles a few sentences on the seventh song and doesn't know how to fix them, and then paces around his apartment for a few minutes before his phone rings like fucking magic, what the hell.

It's Jiyong, sounding hesitant as he asks if Seunghyun wants to just, maybe do something that doesn't involve strobe lights and glow sticks, because he's kind of wandering around between his classes and doesn't exactly know what to do with himself.

"I'm not sure if this is allowed," he says, but Seunghyun just shrugs and it couldn't be better timing as he tugs on his jacket and asks Jiyong where exactly he is.



Another two days and they end up on a rooftop at all obscene hours of the morning right in the half-light before the sun comes up, watching the telephone lines and blowing smoke into the city below them. Seunghyun lets Jiyong pull himself up from the ledge and kiss him, tasting like ash and coffee and mint and a little sloppy at the seams, hand gripping the front of Seunghyun's shirt like always. There is knowledge at the back of his mind that this is a slippery slope and they're sliding off the edges.



He keeps ignoring his phone, keeps deleting messages without listening to them as he works.



His days become a sort of odd routine that isn't routine at all.

The weather gets colder, and Seunghyun trails Jiyong to places like playgrounds at PS-239 and the basement stacks around the corner.

He picks up things in the snow along the way, like, Jiyong hates sharing his earphones, and Jiyong hasn't actually seen his dad for more than five minutes at a time since he was twelve, and Jiyong likes watching weird late-night history documentaries on television. And, Jiyong is self-conscious about stupid things like his knees, and Jiyong likes figuring people out.

He doesn't give anything back except the appropriate emotions, but short of being a total parasite, he feels like that's all he can get behind, so far.

He's still not past thinking that he'll wake up one day to real life with some sort of hangover from the ninth circle of hell and the remnants of a homemade drug that he is never doing again in his hand.



And then it's five in the evening and he pens the last word of the last verse of the last song he has to write - and he's done.



You have reached the residence of, three-one-seven-six-two -

Seunghyun throws his keys on the kitchen counter and actually contemplates picking up the landline.

- please leave a message after the beep. Beep.

"If I know you, Choi Seunghyun, you're on the couch, probably watching TV, with a bottle of whatever alcohol you have left after - how long has it been, two months and twelve days? - so, cooking sherry, I'm guessing - but you're probably still coherent enough to answer your goddamn phone. Which you'd better do now, or I'm getting us a new lead with a built-in GPS tracking device."

Seunghyun sighs, shakes his left arm out of his jacket, and takes the phone in his hand as Junhyung is still rattling off how well he knows him. "I'm not getting drunk on my couch you dumbass," he says matter-of-factly, "and you'd never replace me."

"Nah," Junhyung agrees without missing a beat or the fact that he hasn't heard from him in a century, "but you always pick up when we threaten to." There's a pause and a scuffling noise, and Seunghyun can imagine that he's swatting Jaebum's outstretched fingers away from the receiver, that he's telling Chaerin to stop clawing on his arm. "How's that sherry? Your balls invert yet?"

"Oh, suck me," Seunghyun says, and Junhyung actually laughs.

"Seriously. You okay?"

And then he figures out why he has finally picked up the phone. "I'm sitting on top of a whole album, so yea, I'd say I'm okay." It takes remarkable self-restraint not to add an I-told-you-so.

It is unnaturally silent on the other end.

Seunghyun finishes dryly, "So, assuming I'm allowed to come back, I'll see you bitches Monday."

Junhyung says something along the lines of "shit, son" before Seunghyun hangs up, but he's not actually too sure because he's too busy kicking his heels together like a five-year-old.



three. phonetics

"Big crowd outside," Chaerin says.

Seunghyun tightens his A string, tries out the sound again, and gives the guy at the soundboard an okay. "That's good," he says, and Chaerin shakes her head, adjusting her microphone for the fifteenth time.

"You think you'd be a little more nervous," she tells him, "since it's kind of your head on the chopping block if we get booed off this stage."

"You're a good friend."

"Hey, still, Jaebum said he'd write our next album for us, and anything you wrote can't be worse than the shit that'll come out of that." She grins at Seunghyun's blank expression.

"Jaebum's writing the next album?"

"Jaebum is not writing the next album. Stop encouraging him," Junhyung growls, appearing from the back room lugging another speaker for his guitar and a few cables slung over his shoulders.

Behind him is Jaebum, carrying absolutely nothing at all except for his drumsticks, and he flashes an enthusiastic thumbs-up behind Junhyung's back as Chaerin snorts and Seunghyun rolls his eyes.

Chaerin stops fiddling with her mic stand and nudges his elbow. "Look, I think the songs are really, really good." She crosses her arms, takes a step closer to him. "Did you actually write them? I won't tell."

Seunghyun blinks underneath the multi-colored lights they're testing out. "You're a really good friend," he repeats, and she kicks him in the heel.

"You know what I mean, bitch."

"Yea, I wrote them," he says, and turns away to take a few cables Junhyung tosses at him to plug in. "Or, I think I did."



Jiyong is in the crowd. Seunghyun spots him when Chaerin is shouting out hello's and introductions, splashed in the blue and pink and gold lights, looking out of place in frighteningly normal clothes.

He stays throughout the first song, the second, the third - he stays through half a set, and Seunghyun swears the boy has his shit-eating grin pasted onto his face, especially when he sings the line he made up - but then towards the end, it fades and Seunghyun looks over and he's gone before the end, slipped out the door and not even a gap in the audience.

He skips the encore because he can. He tells Junhyung he isn't feeling well, and then goes out the back door and pulls out his phone.



Somehow it gets to be four in the morning. Four in the morning, with them on the ground in Seunghyun's apartment in the almost-dark. Scraps of paper are scattered like fall leaves around their sprawled bodies and it's almost pathetically poetic as they count the cracks in the ceiling, watch scattered car-lights that wave across the walls every so often from below.

Seunghyun is close to sleep when (a still partially high) Jiyong shifts, paper crumpling beneath him, to slur, "I have to tell you something."

"It better not be ‘I'm in love you'," Seunghyun replies automatically (because he's a little drunk).

He hears Jiyong shaking his head. "You're a dumbass."

"Good."

It's silent, and Seunghyun counts to twenty before tilting his head up. "So, you telling me, or what?"

"Don't laugh," Jiyong says.

"If you wouldn't be such a woman about it, I wouldn't laugh," Seunghyun says.

Jiyong frowns down at him. "Jackass."

"Pussy."

"Faggot."

"Cock-sucking bitch," and then Jiyong laughs, and Seunghyun does too.

It takes Jiyong a while to speak again. "I like myself better when I'm high." The sound has nowhere to go but down. And then he shrugs, puts a pacifier in his mouth that's been hanging on a chain and sorely missed. "Your turn."

There are so many things Seunghyun can do with that, so many cracks he can make and stupid easy-ways-out he can take that'll probably finally lead to a quick fuck and fumble against the window, because tonight they're suddenly in the dark again, after he catches Jiyong come out of a midtown rave, barely ten words exchanged. He can laugh - should laugh, and then let Jiyong be the one to walk out to make everything easy and definitive.

"I used you to write all thirteen of the songs we played tonight." Or, in light of the dark, he can go the shit-show route.

For a second he thinks Jiyong's bolted already until he glances over and sees the blond hair splayed on the floor amidst the ink and paper. 

And Jiyong's eyes are set on the ceiling instead of him when he says, "I know."

Seunghyun decides that he doesn't believe in the existence of charades anymore.

The sound of another car passes by underneath their feet - and he feels Jiyong's hand brush his, a sigh of hot air on his neck - and then he is rolling over, feeling Jiyong's fist clamping familiarly on his shirt for security as he crashes their lips together, teeth clicking as his hands push into Jiyong's shirt to feel his heart and count the ribs, down to his jeans to cup him and rub through the heat.

In version two Jiyong is impatient and reaches down to help him tug pants and boxers down and kick them away, helps Seunghyun pull his own shirt over his head and his jeans down to his feet. The hooded need in his eyes borderlines on almost crazed before Seunghyun remembers he's still flying on ecstasy.

To Jiyong right now, he's just ten thousand points of magnified contact and skin-on-skin.

A part of him is not okay with this even as he scrabbles for the condoms and packet of lubricant from his coat pocket, watches Jiyong spread for him and barely breathing as he coats his fingers and sticks two, three fingers inside him.

He positions himself above him god he doesn't even know what he's doing, and Jiyong pulls him up for another sloppy kiss, tongue brushing over Seunghyun's teeth and hands tangled in Seunghyun's hair - and Seunghyun pushes in.

Jiyong doesn't speak except a few breathy moans of "fuck" against Seunghyun's neck as Seunghyun thrusts into him, legs hooked around his waist and eyes fluttering closed. Seunghyun can't help the own noise that tears its way from his throat when Jiyong sucks wetly on his neck, grabs one of Seunghyun's hands to close it around his own dick and start him off at the pace he wants.

It's just like this, Seunghyun breathing him in and finding his mouth again to kiss him, limbs twisted and both of them grappling for some sort of purchase, as he rides the wave all the way to orgasm.

He pulls out and breathes hard, wiping Jiyong's come off his hands.

Rolling over to lie on his side, Jiyong on his back, Seunghyun watches him watch the ceiling, counting cracks still.

"What would you have said?" Seunghyun doesn't know what Jiyong's talking about (but he does), and Jiyong's eyebrows knot a fraction of an inch. "If I had said I was in love with you."

Seunghyun has nothing in his head, nothing comes out of his mouth, nothing nothing nothing.

After a moment, Jiyong rolls to face him, and he is only smiling with one corner of his mouth. "It's okay," he says, "It is what it is, right?"



The sunlight streaming into Seunghyun's eyes is what wakes him. When he rolls over on his floor he crushes paper underneath his elbows and heels before he realizes he's alone.

He gets up, brushes his teeth, and pushes his feet into his shoes for a coffee down the street.

When he is back again, his desk is still empty, you have no new messages on his voicemail, and.



(Maybe you'd only given me a chance to answer you maybe it would have been different.)



At the end of the day, he's back to square one with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand (it's what happens during breakdowns) and marveling a little at the irony.

AUTHOR :LOVELYABLE