Chapter Text
February 8, 2017
“Don't look so sad, hyung,” Jiyong says with a laugh. He nudges Seunghyun’s thigh with one of his feet hanging off the countertop. “It’ll grow out again.”
It shouldn’t be possible for Seunghyun’s frown to deepen further. He looks so pathetically miserable sitting there with the salon cape draped over his nice suit. Like a child being forced to get an unfavorable haircut by an overbearing parent.
“That's easy for you to say,” Seunghyun grumbles. “I could blink and your hair will have grown an inch longer.”
Jiyong laughs, hanging his head and tugging at the strands on the back. He’s planning to let it grow out for a while before his inevitable turn in the salon chair comes up. Ever since he got the tattoo on his neck he found that he liked how he looked with it a little longer, anyway.
After another minute contemplating himself from every angle in the mirror, Seunghyun finally nods to Taehyun standing off to the side. She steps forward and hooks up the clippers. As the electric buzz of the razor starts to hum, Seunghyun reaches out, fumbling around for Jiyong. Jiyong puts on a brave face, giving Seunghyun an indulgent smile. He shuffles closer and takes his hand. He glances up at Taehyun, but if she notices their intertwined fingers beneath the cape, she shows no sign of it.
It’s Seunghyun’s enlistment date. In a few short hours, the company will drive him and his family down to the base, where severe- looking men in crisp uniforms with judgmental eyes will take him away and keep him for longer than they have any right to.
Because Seunghyun doesn’t belong there. Seunghyun, who is sensitive and emotional and spends his mornings staring at the artwork hung above his bed, shouldn’t be forced anywhere near the military. None of us should be forced to, Jiyong thinks to himself, but that’s a thought for much later. This is a much more personal, intimate anger.
They’d held a get-together with Youngbae and Daesung earlier in the week, going out to drink and let loose one last time. Seunghyun had enjoyed himself, looked happy enough as he danced with Daesung and made exaggerated faces behind his back at Jiyong. He’d spent the next three days with his family.
Yesterday and today were reserved for Jiyong alone.
Last night, Seunghyun had fucked him achingly slowly. Jiyong had found himself losing track of time as he trembled against Seunghyun’s plush bedsheets, gasping as Seunghyun had brought him to his first orgasm of the night with his mouth on his cock, pleading as his boyfriend stretched him open then fucked him so good he came again.
The way Seunghyun had looked when he finally, finally came himself is etched into Jiyong’s mind—eyebrows screwed up, his brown eyes soft and wet. When Jiyong had moved to pull away, Seunghyun had tightened his hold around his body. “Can we just…lay here together a little bit longer?”
Jiyong’s muscles were starting to ache, and his rim was sticky with cum and lube where Seunghyun’s softening cock was still buried inside of him. “Sure, hyung.”
Seunghyun had folded his body down into Jiyong’s, nestling into the crook of his neck. He’d kissed the skin there and whispered, “I don’t want it to change me.”
He hadn't been able to come up with a response to that. In truth, it scared him, too.
Jiyong thinks of what Seunghyun had said then, now, watching as he physically braces himself for the first pass of the razor through his hair. It goes straight through the center of his hair, leaving a landing strip of short fuzzy hair there. Taehyun meets Jiyong’s eyes over Seunghyun’s shoulder and laughs silently.
“Hyung,” Jiyong says, keeping his expression straight. “Open your eyes for me, real quick.”
Innocently, Seunghyun obeys, and looks up at Jiyong, right into the lens of his phone camera as he snaps a horribly unflattering picture of him. Seunghyun pouts at him and opens his mouth to whine at his boyfriend-.
April 2024
A timid knock on the bathroom door snaps Jiyong out of his trance.
“Are you—.” comes Seunghyun’s cautious voice through the door. “You doing okay in there?”
Right. He’s in Seunghyun’s bathroom. In 2024. With one toothbrush at the sink. One set of shampoo and conditioner in the shower.
Jiyong inhales sharply, rubbing at his face like he can make the reality of his situation set in by forcing it through his skin. He’s sitting on the toilet seat, one leg tucked up to his chest, his bad foot stretched out in front of him. Seunghyun’s house slippers are sitting off to the side, the sole of the right one coated in blood.
He presses a hand to his mouth, stomach churning. He can’t bring himself to look at the wound again; he’d gotten so light-headed at the sight of the blood bubbling up from the ragged hole torn into his foot he nearly fainted.
“Jiyong?”
“Do you—I can’t find the first-aid kit,” Jiyong answers, voice wavering.
Seunghyun is quiet for a second. “Are you hurt?”
Jiyong peeks at the sole of his foot for a second. Bile rises in his throat. “Um, a little.”
Another pause. “Okay, hold on. I’ll go get it.”
His footsteps retreat down the hallway. Jiyong curls further in on himself. He’s never felt so wrong in Seunghyun’s villa, like an intruder. He doesn't know how to act around, let alone understand, a future Seunghyun who clearly does not want him in his life.
It doesn’t help that Seunghyun had kept his distance the whole walk back after dropping the equivalent of a fucking nuclear bomb on Jiyong’s head. He’d just sat there while Jiyong started to spiral on the sidewalk, then sighed like he was being inconvenienced by Jiyong’s crisis before he helped him up to his feet. Even then he’d stepped away as soon as Jiyong was stable on his feet.
The bathroom door opens a crack and Seunghyun peeks through, first-aid kit in hand. Jiyong grimaces as he shifts to stand and Seunghyun extends the kit through the crack towards him.
He pauses, eyes flitting down to the slippers, to the drops of blood on the white tiles. He meets Jiyong’s gaze, brows screwing up in the middle, looking conflicted.
“I can handle it,” Jiyong says, voice clipped.
Seunghyun chews his lower lip. “Sit back down,” he says with a sigh, opening the door the rest of the way and slipping inside.
Suddenly, Seunghyun’s spacious bathroom feels claustrophobic as he crowds into Jiyong’s space. He shrinks back against the toilet, avoiding meeting Seunghyun’s eyes.
There’s a familiar scraping sound as Seunghyun drags the plastic stool he keeps under the showerhead over to him. Jiyong’s chest aches—it’s so disorienting, all these little things about Seunghyun that are still the same mixed in with the insurmountably large changes. An old memory flickers to life inside him. He remembers sometime in 2013 or so, barging into Seunghyun’s villa after not hearing from him for a week and finding him sitting stark naked in his shower, sitting on this same stool, water spraying down at him and making him look like a soggy, sad puppy.
Jiyong remembers laughing at him then before shutting the door and waiting for him back outside. When Seunghyun takes a seat and hesitantly reaches for Jiyong’s foot, he doesn’t laugh. He grips the edges of the toilet seat and lets Seunghyun inspect the injury.
“How did this happen?” He asks, voice low and gravelly, so quietly familiar.
“Didn’t think to wear any shoes before bed,” Jiyong says humorlessly. “I forgot to prepare for possible midnight time travel.”
Seunghyun doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t react at all, really, except to reach into the kit to pull out a wipe to clean up the blood caked around the wound.
Jiyong twitches; his feet ticklish. Seunghyun tightens his grip on his ankle in response. The veins on his hands are more pronounced now, and the skin is lined and slightly weathered. Now that he’s willingly sitting closer to Jiyong, he can see that he's noticeably older.
“What did you step on–a screw or something?” Seunghyun grabs the antiseptic, pouring it into a cotton pad. He daubs at the wound gently, thick eyebrows screwed up in concentration.
“I didn't see it,” Jiyong admits. “I was just-I really couldn't handle stopping to look at it. People were starting to recognize me,” he sniffs, running a hand through his limp and greasy hair. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, where to put them when he can't touch Seunghyun, can't reach out for comfort. Seunghyun hums in sympathy. “I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible but…apparently I changed the code to my apartment at some point in the past seven years.”
Seunghyun’s eyes flick up to his at that, and Jiyong’s breath catches in his chest.
It's disarming. He has crow’s feet pressing into the skin around his eyes. When did he get those? At what point did he start to look older? The grief that accompanies the observation hurts, burrowing deep inside his chest.
“You did?” Seunghyun asks. His movements stall, a roll of gauze half-opened in his hand.
Jiyong searches his eyes for a moment. “I didn't.”
Seunghyun averts his gaze back down to Jiyong’s foot. He unrolls the gauze and starts to wrap it. He lets out a little sigh under his breath.
He can't take this anymore. This day has been long and torturous enough. “Hyung?” When Seunghyun doesn’t reply, he chews his lip and speaks again. “Can you just…I don’t understand how you came to the conclusion that I time traveled to the future, or whatever is happening here.” Jiyong fiddles with the hem of his shirt. “I believe it, how could I not,” he gestures vaguely around the bathroom; at all the empty spaces that Jiyong and his belongings used to fill. “It’s just kind of crazy.”
When Seunghyun still doesn’t respond, Jiyong slumps against the toilet seat, dejected.
Seunghyun tapes the end of the gauze and lets Jiyong’s foot drop back down to the ground. He exhales through his nose. “It’s the way you look,” he gestures around Jiyong’s body. He presses his thin lips together, eyes flitting around the features of Jiyong’s face. He curls in on himself self-consciously. “I can only remember seeing you this thin, once. Back then. You don’t look that way now.”
He shrugs, then, like this is nothing. Jiyong fights the urge to fold his arms to cover himself up.
The hard question is on the tip of his tongue. He can’t seem to force himself to open his mouth to ask it. The pessimistic part of Jiyong says, what’s one more shot to the heart, in the grand scheme of things, while the not-quite-optimistic but terrified part of him wants to prolong hearing the answer he knows is coming as long as possible. Maybe he’ll fall asleep here and return home, back to the time he belongs in, and everything will feel like a horribly realistic nightmare he can pretend to forget for a while.
He can’t say it.
The moment to ask, to get clarity, passes. Seunghyun stands up from the stool with a grunt, gathering up the strewn about components of the first aid kit. “Right, then,” he sighs. “It’s late—or early, I should say. I think it would be best for both of us to get some sleep.”
For some inexplicable reason, Jiyong’s heart sinks as Seunghyun moves away from him, opening the bathroom door and turning his back on him. “Hyung?” Jiyong calls after him, throat hoarse.
“You remember where the guest room is, right?” Seunghyun says. He turns over his shoulder, whatever expression he’s making covered in shadow. “I’ll get you something to sleep in.”
Jiyong frowns. His actions since bringing Jiyong back inside have been kind on the surface, but his words are cold and indifferent. It chafes at his already ground-down patience.
Pulling himself up to his feet, wincing at the dull ache he feels when he puts his weight on the wound, he says, “Of course I remember. It hasn’t been that long since I’ve been here.”
Cold satisfaction races up his spine as he sees Seunghyun’s shoulders slump in the dark.
“Of course,” is all he says in reply. He exhales and walks away from Jiyong down the hall.
The guest bedroom is the one place in Seunghyun’s villa that appears to be frozen in time.
Jiyong hasn’t had much occasion to be here in the past, though. The last time he can remember was sometime in 2016 when Seunghyun caught a horrible stomach flu and was sweating so much he kicked Jiyong out of bed so he could cool down. Before then, it was their first major fight as a couple. He remembers Seunghyun being furious with him over some minor issue, so riled up he was pacing and tugging at his hair, just barely stopping himself from screaming himself ragged like he used to when they were younger. It had scared the shit out of Jiyong, being confronted with the possibility of losing what he had with Seunghyun after going through so much just to get together. His decision to stay in the villa and just sleep in the guest room had initially pissed Seunghyun off even more, but after a few days, he got over it.
He paces the length of it, taking in every little detail, hunting for differences. He finds none. Same paintings, same sheets, same armchair in the corner, same sparse desk off to the side of it.
Fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, he stands in the center of the room, before the foot of the bed. How could it be possible that he’s traveled to another time? He tugs at the stretched out fabric of his shirt.
Jiyong laughs dryly to himself. He wishes he had his phone on him, at least, so he could call Youngbae. Or his sister, his mom. Anyone. Just to confirm this is all really happening. Do phones work after time travel? He muses to himself. Maybe it would have exploded or something if he tried to use it. Maybe he would call Youngbae and they could laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and he would try to help Jiyong figure it out instead of acting like he had some contagious disease. Unlike some people.
A soft knock on the door pulls Jiyong out of his spiraling, absurd thoughts. He inhales sharply, scrubbing at his scalp. There's a headache building that feels like it's coming from everywhere. Or going everywhere. Who knows.
Seunghyun enters the bedroom without waiting for Jiyong to respond. In his arms is a comfortable-looking sleepset. “Here,” he passes them over to him.
“Thanks, hyung,” Jiyong says quietly, taking the clothes. The pajamas are identical to the set Seunghyun is wearing. If he were still in 2017, he would have teased him for this; when Seunghyun liked a piece of clothing, he always bought multiple pairs because he hated doing laundry. There would always be a pile of dirty clothes in his laundry room. Sometimes Jiyong would bring his own over from his apartment and they would tackle it together, mixing everything up so Jiyong would end up taking pieces of Seunghyun’s wardrobe back home with him, or leaving his own clothes with Seunghyun.
He tentatively looks up to meet Seunghyun’s eyes.
“They might be a little big,” Seunghyun says stiffly. Jiyong wonders if he’s living through the same memories he is, right now, or if they’ve been lost to time in this strange future. “I haven’t worn them yet.”
Jiyong frowns, frustrated. That statement feels so loaded. He searches Seunghyun’s tired, aggrieved expression and finds nothing. For a moment, back in the hallway of his apartment, the crumpled letter in his hands, Jiyong had felt like his future held at least a faint glimmer of light at the end. Now it feels like he’s right back where he started. Ironically, this future that he can live and breathe in feels just as dark. Just as unknowable.
It was meant to be a question. “We broke up,” Jiyong says simply, like the words aren’t tearing a gaping wound in his chest.
Seunghyun’s hands clench into fists where they hang limply at his sides. “Yeah,” he says.
The ache surges, but Jiyong doesn’t let it show. He nods. “When?” His voice nearly cracks, but he swallows it down.
He watches Seunghyun’s fists unclench, running his palms down the backs of his pants. “Two years ago. In 2022.”
Jiyong’s tired brain runs the numbers in his head. His heart sinks. They barely made it to three years together after their discharge. Maybe even less, since the full duration of Seunghyun’s service has been so up in the air, lately.
Another sinister possibility enters his mind. “Fuck—did we disband? The others-.”
Seunghyun interrupts him with a derisive snort. “You’re still together.”
You’re. Not we’re. Jiyong makes a distressed sound. “What does that even mean, hyung? You left?”
Holding a hand up, Seunghyun cuts him off again. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m filming all day tomorrow.”
“You think I want to be talking about this?” Jiyong snaps, his voice rising. “You think I want to be sitting here listening to you talk to me like I’m a stranger?”
Seunghyun closes his eyes, taking a deep breath that lifts his broad shoulders. “Please,” he says, quieter. “I know. This is all a-,” he gestures around the air vaguely. “Big fucking mess. I know this all feels very shocking for you.”
Jiyong laughs humorously. That's putting it lightly.
“If somehow you haven't…gone back to your own time, by tomorrow,” Seunghyun sighs. He presses his lips together in a tight line. “I don't know. We’ll figure it out.”
The last thing Jiyong wants to do is wait for tomorrow to figure it out. He doesn't like to wait to resolve conflict, especially not something as big as traveling through time to the fucking future. Deep down, though, he knows Seunghyun is right; they both need to get some sleep. He already feels like a dead man walking as it is, he doesn't think he'll survive learning any more about his future tonight.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
Seunghyun gives him a curt nod. His fingers pinch the seam of his pants, fidgeting. Then he just turns on his heel and leaves the guest room, pulling the door shut between them.
Despite his best intentions to stay awake a little longer to try and mentally sort through everything going on, Jiyong falls asleep almost immediately after he climbs into bed. When he wakes up he’s lying sideways across the bed with a foot dangling off one edge and a hand draped over the other.
He blinks into awareness and groans, screwing his eyes shut from the light streaming in through the window facing the river. Shielding his face, Jiyong flips onto his back to take in his surroundings. His stomach sinks when he realizes he’s still in Seunghyun’s guest bedroom. Still stuck in the future. Somehow.
The shock of it is dulled, now. Jiyong scoffs to himself. Not even time travel can stop him from feeling so apathetic towards his own life.
Wincing as he rolls out of bed onto his bad foot, Jiyong stretches with his arms up over his head. Every muscle in his body feels sore, worse than after the first show of a tour. He shuffles over to the bedroom mirror, grimacing at his reflection. He somehow looks worse than he had in the subway bathroom, his hair so flat and greasy on his head it looks like a sheaf of plastic draped over his scalp. The baggy pajamas falling over his feet and hands only worsens the effect.
Suddenly, Jiyong’s head starts to pound.
He opens the bedroom door and shuffles out in search of Seunghyun. In the light of day, Jiyong finds that he doesn’t particularly want to see him again just yet. Now that the panic and fear have subsided with sleep, he isn’t sure he’ll be able to keep his cool in front of him.
He just loved me yesterday, Jiyong’s brain thinks, helpfully, on a loop as he wanders through the villa, peaking around corners in search of Seunghyun.
When Jiyong doesn’t find him anywhere, not in bed, not in the weird, exposed bath, not out for a smoke on the balcony, he stands in the kitchen, annoyed all over again. How could he just leave Jiyong on his own here? He can’t go anywhere, he has no clothes, no shoes, no wallet, no phone, no nothing but his own stupid body. What the fuck else is Jiyong meant to do?
Eat breakfast, his growling stomach replies helpfully. Grunting, Jiyong trudges over to the fridge, resolving to raid all of the expensive shit in it to make himself an extravagant breakfast. He stops with his hand hovering over the fridge handle when he spots the pink sticky note stuck to it.
There’s just one word scrawled on it. Filming.
Right. He mentioned that last night. Explains the hair, Jiyong grumbles to himself as he tugs open the fridge. Filming what, though? Jiyong can’t imagine it’s a music video or anything related to music. Not after everything that’s happened. It must be acting, then?
There’s a weird feeling in his stomach as he turns that knowledge over in his mind. It’s good that, at some point, Seunghyun was able to get back out into the world and do at least one of the things he’s passionate about. That he hasn’t just holed himself up inside the villa, alone with his paintings for good.
He doesn’t quite burn down Seunghyun’s kitchen, but it’s a near thing.
In front of Jiyong sits a heaping pile of food. Double eggs benedict topped with shaved truffle and a generous helping of caviar. A side of half the container of Seunghyun’s mom’s kimchi because she makes it the best out of all of their moms. A glass of sparkling wine.
Jiyong takes a chunk out of the egg and pops it in his mouth. He wrinkles his nose as he chews, looking up at the kitchen. At the egg white and shells coating the surface of the stove, the mess around the blender and on the floor where he’d spilled some after taking the lid off, the pans filled with bacon grease and charred fat stuck to the coating.
The egg is going soggy in his mouth. He swallows.
A sob bursts out of his mouth, so loud and sudden like it’s been chained inside his chest.
Jiyong claps a hand to his mouth to contain it, but it doesn’t stop. His shoulders shake, his whole body wracked violently with deep, heaving sobs. “Fuck!” Jiyong shouts, wiping the tears streaming down his cheeks roughly.
He shoves the plate of his lunch away, feeling sick with guilt. He made such a mess. He buries his face in his hands and curls in on himself, bringing his knees up onto the chair.
How could this happen to Jiyong, of all people? Hasn’t he had enough?
He cries so hard he starts to feel nauseous. The decadent breakfast he’d made for himself now looks entirely unappetizing to him. His stomach turns, threatening to regurgitate the single bite of egg he’d managed to swallow down.
Unhelpfully, Jiyong’s thoughts turn to Seunghyun—his Seunghyun. What would he think if he walked back into his villa at this moment and saw his kitchen destroyed and his fridge ransacked by someone who claimed to love him.
Jiyong presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying desperately to catch his stuttering breath.
A sudden knock on the door manages to do the trick. Jiyong stops to listen, sniffling. There’s another knock.
Warily, Jiyong slinks out from the dining table down the hall to the front door. His stomach churns, still, but this time for a different reason. Who, in this future, could be knocking at Seunghyun’s door?
The security camera at the front shows a man waiting outside. Jiyong presses the button for the intercom and calls out tentatively. “Hello?”
“Delivery for a Mr. Choi?”
Jiyong frowns, confused, as he sees the deliveryman in the videofeed holding up what is clearly a takeout bag.
“Just leave it at the door, please,” Jiyong replies.
The man complies without further question and leaves back down the entranceway. Jiyong waits another minute before he opens the door and snatches the takeout bag and brings it inside.
He sets it down on the table next to his abandoned breakfast.
Why would Seunghyun order food to his villa if he was out filming? Did he plan to come home for lunch. No, Jiyong shakes his head. If there’s one thing that stands out from his experience with Seunghyun’s acting career, it was that the days were long, and breaks were few and far between.
There’s an ache building again in Jiyong’s chest, though this one isn’t quite so despairing. He opens the takeout bag and pulls out two containers with fresh sushi, one with seared salmon belly and the other with tuna sashimi topped with crispy onions.
This Seunghyun still remembers his favorites.
Jiyong eats in silence, occasionally wiping dripping snot from his nose throughout. The sushi finished, Jiyong stares, contemplative, at the receipt attached to the takeout bag with Seunghyun’s name on it. He laughs, watery, and something comes loose in his chest (probably leftover phlegm from the whole sobbing his eyes out thing that happened earlier). He can’t believe Seunghyun used his real name to order delivery. How ridiculous.
After he finishes his lunch, Jiyong feels a little bit better, yet simultaneously more confused and hurt than ever. He wraps up his breakfast and sticks it in the fridge along with the remaining ingredients he’d left sitting out on the counter.
Nothing makes sense. Jiyong can’t take another minute of not knowing what kind of future he’s fallen into.
He highly doubts Seunghyun will give him the answers he’s looking for when he gets home, either. He can practically hear his exasperated sigh in his mind and his excuse of I’m exhausted. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Not all of them, at least.
Even if he somehow is transported back in time tonight, he needs to know. To carry it with him when he returns home.
Jiyong strides back towards Seunghyun’s bedroom.
Now that he sees it with more clarity than his brief glance from earlier, it hasn’t changed much. There are still paintings hung up on the wall in front of his bed, but different ones. The space itself is just as sparse as ever. His king-sized bed is made, which surprises him, but he’s left his pillows unfluffed, the pillow on the right side of the bed, Seunghyun’s side, is indented with the impression of his head. Noticeably, the left side is untouched. My side, Jiyong thinks to himself.
A not-so-small part of him sighs in relief that Seunghyun doesn't seem to have a new long-term partner. At least not one serious enough to have their own side of Seunghyun’s bed, their own belongings fitted in besides Seunghyun’s.
He opens the bedside nightstand. It’s, for lack of a better phrase—full of crap. Seunghyun can’t be bothered to organize something that will be out of his sight the majority of the time.
Jiyong pushes around through receipts, boxes of condoms and lube that he chooses to ignore for the sake of his sanity.
At the bottom of the seemingly bottomless drawer, Jiyong finally finds it: Seunghyun’s second emergency phone. Well. A secondary emergency phone; this one is a different model. Still, he’s relieved that he has something. Jiyong wipes off the dust from the screen and takes a seat on the side of the bed. There’s an incense diffuser on the nightstand giving off a calming mixture of hinoki and bergamot.
To Jiyong’s surprise, the passcode to the phone is the same as before. 150822. Their anniversary.
For a moment, Jiyong is thrown by it. He stares at the screen until it times out and he has to type it in again.
He shakes it off. He refuses to read anything into Seunghyun’s laziness. He once left an art world acquaintance as an unsaved number in his phone for a good eight months before he sheepishly saved it in front of the friend after much teasing.
Jiyong opens the phone’s browser and types his name in the search bar. He hesitates with his thumb poised over the enter key, chewing his dry and flaking bottom lip. Something Seunghyun had said to him earlier came back to him. I don’t think you want another media circus on your hands so soon after the last one.
It’s not like he hasn’t had his fair share of scandals in his career. But the prospect of having one happen to a version of him that he has no context for is terrifying in a way he couldn’t explain to anyone else if he tried.
Unhelpfully, Jiyong remembers the camera flashes on the subway. The group of girls in the corner with their phone cameras turned towards him. The hand holding the phone trembles. Oh God. What if he’s made whatever situation future Jiyong has gotten himself into worse?
Does Future Jiyong still exist right now? Or did he—current Jiyong, that is—get replaced by him when he traveled here. Or, even more disturbing, does his future version still exist, completely unaware that his younger self was co-existing with him and possibly fucking up an already damaged image even more.
Ugh. Jiyong’s brain hurts trying to work through it. Seunghyun is better with this nerdy spice-time-continuum bullshit. Must be why he figured it out so quickly, Jiyong thinks bitterly.
The phone has timed out again. Jiyong unlocks it and stares uncertainly at the open search tab. He’d come in search of the phone and opened the tab in a fit of what must be madness. Now that he’s confronted with it, Jiyong realizes that he doesn’t want to take this easy way out.
He needs to hear it from the people in his life; all that’s happened in the past seven years, that is. He’ll have to wait for Seunghyun to come back home and get him to explain it himself. As much as one can condense the experience of nearly an entire decade into words.
For now, though…Jiyong figures there’s at least one person he can safely count on to answer him. To still be around, at the very least.
Jiyong quickly finds that a regular phone call won’t be happening. For one, Seunghyun has zero contacts saved on any of the installed messaging apps—which kind of defeats the purpose of this phone existing, in Jiyong’s humble opinion—and for a second thing: Jiyong has no idea how to use anything on this new phone. He feels like he’s turned into his dad as he pokes and prods around on the phone.
A silver lining comes when Jiyong manages to log into his Instagram account. His luck only grows when he discovers that Instagram now allows users to make phone calls to each other. Hope rapidly balloons in his chest as he clicks on the call icon.
“Jiyong?”
Relief fills his lungs, and he takes in a shuddering breath. “Youngbae?” Jiyong whispers into the phone, as if afraid that if he speaks any louder, he’ll provoke a reaction similar to Seunghyun’s. Rejection. Disgust. Anger.
“Yeah? Why are you calling me on Instagram?” Youngbae laughs on the other end of the line. The sound of it is so sweet in Jiyong’s ears.
Unbidden, he feels tears start to well up again. He quickly rubs at his eyes before they can fall. “No particular reason,” Jiyong replies, valiantly managing to make his voice sound normal and not at all like he’s about to collapse with relief at the sound of his best friend’s voice. “I was already using the app, so…” He trails off. He doesn’t know what to say to make it sound believable. He has no clue what people do on Instagram these days.
“I’m sure you were,” Youngbae teases.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?!
“Right. Haha,” Jiyong says awkwardly. “Um, I just wanted to ask you something.” Youngbae hums in acknowledgment. “You haven’t seen any…weird pictures or articles about me yet, today…have you?”
It’s silent on the other end for a moment. Jiyong screws his eyes up. What has future him been getting himself into?
“No?” Youngbae says carefully. “Should I have? Is that why we’re talking on Insta? Post something you didn’t mean to?” He laughs, musical and bright.
“No, no, just wondering,” Jiyong says, relieved. Maybe the sight of him looking the way he did on the subway had worked as some kind of cartoonish disguise, something so different from the hard-edged but polished G-Dragon he’d worked so hard to build. “Uh, how are you? What are you up to today?”
Youngbae snorts. “Sleeping in. You actually just woke me up. My sleep schedule has been completely out of sorts lately. What’s up with you?”
“Same actually,” Jiyong replies for lack of a more normal answer to give him. Youngbae is the closest friend Jiyong has ever had, and he’s always trusted him to be able to tell him every embarrassing little secret—save for one really big one, like the fact that he’s been in a committed relationship with their bandmate for the past two years—but this one feels unexplainable to anyone. At least not over the phone. The sleep schedule part is pretty much true, though. He hasn’t really had a sleep schedule for almost a year now. Mostly because he just doesn’t sleep.
“Your voice sounds different again,” Youngbae says. “Did you quit smoking?”
“What? Hell no,” Jiyong says with a scoff. “You must be hearing things.”
“Hm. Sure.” There’s a pause at the other end of the line. Jiyong chews at his lip. Should he ask Youngbae about the status of the group, about what the hell they could possibly be doing without Seunghyun? He tastes copper on his tongue. “Well. If that’s all, I should probably get going. I’ve got to pick the kid up soon. Hyorin is spending the weekend with her mother, so…”
It’s Jiyong’s turn to go silent. Kid? What kid?! His heartbeat picks up in his chest, pounding at his ribs like it wants to escape and run to his best friend for answers. A child? Youngbae has a child? “Oh!” Jiyong says, sounding strained even to his own ears. He cringes, one hand fisting in the topsheet of Seunghyun’s tidily made up bed. “No problem! I’ll let you go, now.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Youngbae asks, a tinge of worry coloring his voice.
“Yup!” Jiyong screws his eyes shut, cursing under his breath. “Bye, Youngbae!” He ends the call, tossing the phone to the other end of the bed.
Fuck.
Youngbae has a kid. Seunghyun left BigBang. Jiyong is a fuck-up, apparently, once again.
He needs a nap.
Jiyong falls asleep sprawled across the length of Seunghyun’s bed without a care for how he might feel about that if he were to come home before he woke up. Sue him. If he were home, Jiyong would be able to have this whenever he wanted without asking.
He sleeps like the dead. By the time he wakes up, the sun is setting over the river, spilling a warm sunset glow over Seunghyun’s austere floors. Jiyong lies there, nose pressed into the sheets. He inhales deeply. It smells like Seunghyun, a unique mixture of his skin, his detergent, his handsoap, his shampoo. Him. Jiyong curls up tighter around it.
The light is all but gone when Jiyong drags himself off the bed in search of a cigarette, a search that quickly becomes just as agitating and futile as just about everything that has happened to him in the last twenty-four hours.
In what world did Choi Seunghyun possibly quit smoking? How dare he?
Jiyong barely has the time to transition from feeling irritated to proud of Seunghyun for making a positive lifestyle change before he hears the chime of the front door unlocking.
A jolt of anxiety shocks through his system. Jiyong leans against the wall of the bathroom and takes a deep breath. Shit. He’s not ready to face Seunghyun again. Especially with zero nicotine in his system and a persistent headache pounding at his temples.
Jiyong glances at himself in the mirror, at his haggard visage. Fuck it, he thinks to himself. Everything that can possibly go wrong has already gone wrong. He’s dealt with far more intimidating people than this strange, warped version of Seunghyun. If Jiyong could sit through critiques with Yang Hyunsuk as a teenager, then this should be nothing in comparison.
He finds Seunghyun in the kitchen, standing at the threshold with his arms on his hips, taking in the damage Jiyong had done to it. Jiyong, standing a little farther away down the hall, winces. He’d meant to clean that up after he’d had a smoke.
Jiyong braces himself and steps into view. “You’re home,” he says evenly. He folds his arms over his chest, though he doesn’t imagine that he looks particularly threatening considering he’s still wearing Seunghyun’s pajamas.
Seunghyun turns to face him, his lips pressed tight together. He sighs, shoulders relaxing, whether in relief or disappointment Jiyong cannot tell. “You’re still here,” he says.
He’s wearing a baggy hoodie, sweatpants, and a beanie over his dyed hair that makes his already large ears stick out more.
Against Jiyong’s will, the sight of it makes his heart flutter. What a sickening situation this is. Being forced to interact with and depend on the person he loves more than he’s ever loved anyone else, and now, seven years later, wants nothing to do with him.
Jiyong’s entire body aches with the instinctive urge to cross the room and fold Seunghyun into his arms, to kiss him and welcome him home like always did when they spent time together before his enlistment.
“I’m still here,” Jiyong says. He can’t help the fact that it comes out as a sneer.
When Seunghyun doesn’t acknowledge that, opting to stare around Jiyong awkwardly, clearly twiddling his fucking thumbs together in the large front pocket of his hoodie, Jiyong speaks up again. “You quit smoking?” He asks.
Seunghyun finally meets his eyes. “Yeah. Sort of.” He tugs something out of his pocket and holds it up. “I still use these, though.”
“What is that, an e-cig?” Jiyong snorts.
“Sort of,” Seunghyun says again with a shrug. He pockets the flash drive looking device. “Did you not eat the food I sent you?” He turns his head to look back at his dirty kitchen.
Jiyong’s bravado fizzles out of him like a deflating balloon. “I was going to clean that up before you got home.” Seunghyun scoffs and shakes his head. Indignant, Jiyong defends himself, “how the fuck was I supposed to know you were going to get me something? You didn’t say anything to me except to leave a stupid note with one word on it. I mean, you don’t even have ramyun in this place!”
“Okay, Jiyong,” Seunghyun says. He opens up his fridge and starts rooting around inside.
As quickly as it left, Jiyong’s frustration comes right back up again. It leaves him feeling slightly dizzy. “Hyung. I don’t have a phone or anything. How am I supposed to know anything if you don’t tell me?” He quickly presses his lips together to stop himself from speaking any further. He’s clearly not just talking about the stupid food issue anymore.
Seunghyun looks back at him over his shoulder. Jiyong wants to scream. When did he get so impossible to read? Since when did he start masking his expressive face around Jiyong?
He pushes his sleeve up to check his watch underneath. “It’s late. Go sit at the table. I’ll make us dinner.”
Jiyong is left speechless. That was not the response he was expecting. He stands uselessly in the kitchen entrance, watching uncomprehendingly as Seunghyun starts taking ingredients out of the fridge and placing them on the counter. Seunghyun meets his eyes as he takes down a clean pan from the cupboard above. “Go sit down,” he says again. Gentler this time.
Well. Okay then.
Jiyong cranes his neck now and then to get glimpses of Seunghyun cooking—cooking! who would have thought! At some point in the twenty minutes he spends in the kitchen, he comes back out to drop off a bottle of wine and two glasses without another word. For a moment, all of Jiyong’s other troubles fall to the wayside as he listens to the sound of hot food sizzling in the pan, knife cuts against the countertop
The next time Seunghyun comes out it’s with a bowl of stir-fried chicken, two plates, and two bowls of rice that he arranges on the table before he takes the seat across from Jiyong.
“When did you learn how to cook for yourself?” Jiyong blurts out, because he can't help himself.
The corner of Seunghyun’s lips twitches. He’s so obviously fighting a smile. It makes Jiyong’s heart constrict painfully. “I think a few months now?” He ducks his head to pile up chicken and rice on his plate. “I have a lot of time on my hands.”
That statement seems to carry so much invisible baggage behind it. Jiyong frowns and loads up his own plate. Seunghyun reaches for the wine and uncorks it, pouring each of them a glass. “But you're working right now,” Jiyong hazards a guess.
Seunghyun glances up at him. His long eyelashes kiss the skin under his eyes when he blinks. He’s somehow even more beautiful now. The softness of his features is only accentuated by the signs of his age around them. “I am. I’m filming a show. We started late last year.”
“That's what the hair is for,” Jiyong gestures around his head.
Seunghyun nods and looks back down at his food and continues eating.
Jiyong doesn’t get it. Seunghyun seems to have done well for himself after everything that happened to him in the past few months in Jiyong’s time. After the bullshit “scandal” broke, and all the other shit kept piling on, Jiyong had thought they would be getting through it together. Despite all their personal issues that cropped up as a result of their being massive names in a fucked up industry, their relationship had always been the strongest, most sure thing either of them had in their lives. At least that was the case for Jiyong.
So how could he be here now, back in the public eye in some form or another, acting like a functional human adult, not all fucked up and maladjusted from spending his youth in the spotlight, and doing it all without Jiyong?
“Why did we break up?” Jiyong asks. His knuckles have gone white where he’s gripping his chopsticks.
He can see the way Seunghyun’s shoulders tense. He’s seen it a thousand times before. His jaw is working, as if chewing on Jiyong’s question, grinding it down between his teeth.
“Why do you want to know?” Seunghyun replies. His eyes meet Jiyong’s across the table.
Jiyong blinks at him in disbelief. “The fuck do you mean, why do I want to know? What kind of question is that?”
Seunghyun is looking at him like he’s dealing with a child having a tantrum. It makes Jiyong’s skin crawl. “I just…” He sighs. “I don’t think knowing what happened between us will be helpful to you.”
Jiyong opens his mouth to fire back indignantly, because what the fuck? But Seunghyun cuts him off. “This is completely uncharted territory for both of us, Jiyong. I know it must be a little worse for you, having traveled here with nothing to go off, but,” Seunghyun screws up his eyebrows in the middle, eyes averting to somewhere above Jiyong’s head. “Just yesterday my life was completely normal. I’m used to it, you’re used to it, somewhere out there. We haven’t been together for years, and all of a sudden a version of you that was in love with me is in my house with nowhere else to go.”
“But isn’t that the point?” Jiyong asks, frowning. He hadn’t considered that before. That Seunghyun isn’t bothered by his presence; he’s hurt. Facing a past version of Jiyong is painful for him. Still, he has to try, he has to get Seunghyun to see from his perspective. “When I get back to my time, shouldn’t I know? I don’t want this to be what’s waiting for me.” He flaps his hands around vaguely.
Something about his phrasing seems to rub Seunghyun the wrong way. He makes a little frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “You don’t know what will happen as a result of this time travel thing, Jiyong. Neither of us does. We don’t even know why or how you got here in the first place. It’s entirely possible you won’t even remember any of this when you go back.”
“I know that,” Jiyong says with an exasperated exhale. Seunghyun looks straight at him now. “But, just…If I’m going to be here for an indeterminate amount of time, why should I have to live so miserably? Not knowing anything. I mean, I can go look this shit up on the internet right now and see what the general public thinks about you leaving the group. I’m sure they’ll know everything, right?”
Seunghyun’s jaw moves, staring Jiyong right in the eye. Jiyong holds his ground. He raises one eyebrow. “Fine. I can give you basic answers, okay? I don’t think anything more would be good or helpful for you right now.
Well. That’s better than nothing. Jiyong can make a compromise. “Fine,” he says. He takes a deep breath, folding his arms over his chest. “Who broke it off?”
That gets more of a reaction out of Seunghyun than he expected. He reaches for the glass of wine, swirling it around before he takes a sip. “It was mutual.”
Jiyong feels like his eyebrows are going to fly up to the fucking stratosphere. “Mutual?”
Seunghyun curls the corner of his lip, eyes dropping down again. “We had a fight?”
“Over what?”
“I said basic answers, Jiyong.” Seunghyun rests his elbow on the table, rubbing at his brow with a thumb.
Right. That definitely doesn’t put a massive pit in Jiyong’s stomach. “Did you leave BigBang before or after we broke up?”
“A year after,” Seunghyun says. He pauses, considering, before he continues. “We haven’t seen each other since.”
A whole year. The Seunghyun in front of Jiyong hasn’t seen him in a year. The thought makes him feel sick. Jiyong has felt like the spaces in between being able to see Seunghyun during his military service have lasted for eternities. The idea of not seeing Seunghyun, not being able to touch him or hear the sound of his voice, or press his face to his chest to breathe in his scent is untenable.
“What about the others? What about Youngbae and Daesung?” Jiyong asks. Embarrassingly, his voice cracks.
Seunghyun shakes his head.
“You’re all alone?” Jiyong says.
”It’s not like that,” Seunghyun says, insistent.
“Are you happy?” It comes out almost desperate. He has to be. He can’t have completely upended his life to be unhappy.
Seunghyun smiles then, something small, just a small curl of his lips, but it’s there. And Jiyong knows, instantly, that it is genuine. “I’m getting there.”
Somehow, that’s the answer that breaks Jiyong the most. And then he almost instantly feels disgusted with himself—because how could he ever be upset that Seunghyun is happy?
And yet he is. He’s upset. It hurts to hear. So much so that it stops him in his tracks. He suddenly doesn’t want to hear anything more out of Seunghyun’s mouth. He hopes that Seunghyun is right. That when he travels back home to his own time, he forgets all about everything he’s seen and heard, here.