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The first thing Renjun sees when he wakes up is a crack in the ceiling.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, squinting up. It’s thin and serpentine, stretching out from the base of the chandelier and spanning a quarter of the width of the room before tapering off into nothingness. Here and there around the little fissure, the ceiling bows slightly. That may be cause for alarm. If he remembers correctly, it could be a sign of serious defects ‒

Renjun’s train of thought screeches to a halt. Wait. A chandelier?

He pushes himself up into a sitting position, fighting with the plush bedding that threatens to swallow him whole. Renjun isn’t in his bed back home, waking up at the crack of dawn to the sound of his neighbour’s children crying. The room he’s found himself in is no less familiar, though, with its floor-to-ceiling green wallpaper and old, stately furniture. It’s silent, save for the hum of the central air-conditioning and the sound of running water coming from behind the door off the hallway. The bed is as large and luxurious as the last time he had been in it, except now, he’s found himself (mercifully) alone.

The angle at which the light slants through the half-drawn curtains is suspiciously high, and Renjun feels a bite of anxiety. He rolls over and blindly fumbles around the bedside table, knocking into two empty glasses and a silk tie before his fingers catch on a strip of smooth leather.

Renjun squints at the hands of the Patek Philippe, and feels his stomach drop. It’s already twenty to nine in the morning.

Shit.

He kicks the blankets away and forces himself out of bed. His footsteps are muffled by the threadbare carpeting as he moves around the room, looking for his clothes and slipping them on as quickly as possible. Renjun balls the socks up in his hand ‒ there’s no time to put them on ‒ and glances around for the jacket of his uniform.

He’s never stayed the night before ‒ it’s the one rule he had made for himself when this whole thing started. Renjun has been disciplined, has always managed to pull himself away to make it back home, careful to never overstay his welcome. He can’t ‒ doesn't want to ‒ pause and examine just how he let himself be lulled to sleep in a pair of arms that he doesn’t belong in.

If he sneaks out now, he reasons, circling the room like a hawk, he can avoid any morning-after awkwardness. Actually, if he stops and thinks about it, it won’t make a difference, not when they’re going to see each other later, but Renjun is too flustered to think objectively.

He just needs to find his stupid jacket ‒

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Renjun whips around, heart in his throat. Yangyang leans against the bathroom door frame, wearing nothing but a wide smile and a towel slung low around his hips. His hair is still wet from his shower, droplets clinging to his shoulders and collarbones.

Hooked on his finger is Renjun’s jacket. Yangyang gives it a little wiggle. “Looking for this?”

A bead of water rolls down his chest with the movement, then lower still until it eventually becomes lost in the white, fluffy fabric. Renjun’s gaze chases it the whole way.

He swallows. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Yangyang holds the jacket out, and Renjun takes it. There’s a glint in his eye as he looks Renjun up and down. “Dressed already? You weren’t trying to sneak out on me, were you?”

“I…” Renjun tightens his grip on his jacket. “Maybe?”

“What?” Yangyang laughs. “Why?”

Renjun feels himself flush with embarrassment. “I don’t know. I’ve never ‒ I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologising for?” Yangyang looks incredulous, sweeping back into the bedroom. He unfastens the towel, throwing it across a chair in exchange for his bathrobe. Renjun averts his eyes, but not before he catches a glimpse of a long stretch of bare skin. “It’s no big deal.”

Maybe it isn’t, for Yangyang. Maybe this sort of thing happens to him all the time, in other places, and he’s learned to deal with waking up to strangers in his bed on the regular. Renjun looks down at his bare feet. “As long as I didn’t disturb you, and you slept okay ‒ ”

“Like a baby,” Yangyang reassures him.

Renjun nods stiffly. He wonders if it would look pathetic if he were to start edging his way to the door. “Okay. Well. I should probably go.”

“Already?”

Yangyang is by his side before he can take so much as a step. Up close, his skin looks like honey. Renjun had drowned in it the night before, but he finds himself still wanting a taste.

“Come on,” Yangyang coaxes. His finger sweeps, featherlight, across Renjun’s jaw, and Renjun finds himself leaning into the touch. “Let me at least make you coffee before you go.”

Yangyang does not make him coffee. Yangyang manoeuvres him back into bed instead, with hungry kisses and gentle hands. Renjun, as he is inclined to do whenever he’s in Yangyang’s presence, goes pliant; goes willingly. It’s not long before the clothes he had scavenged are peeled off yet again. Even less before he ends up on his back, wrists pinned above his head, Yangyang hovering over him, caging him in between his arms. His teeth flash white in warning before he bends his head to mouth at the column of Renjun’s neck.

Renjun gasps, pleasure blooming along with the bruise Yangyang is surely sucking into his skin, low enough for the high collars of his uniform to hide. He tries to wiggle his hands free, but Yangyang simply tightens his grip on his wrists and hip and pushes down, leaving him stretched out and all for the taking. Renjun is left to jerk helplessly against Yangyang each time he feels the scrape of teeth across the sensitive spot on his neck, his Adam’s apple, then his ear. Ordinarily, he would have no objections to this, but ‒

“Yangyang,” he manages to eke out, “My shift begins in ‒ ” he cranes his neck to take a look at Yangyang’s watch, now discarded on the pillow next to him “ ‒ fifteen minutes, so.”

Yangyang draws back. They stare at each other, breathing heavily, until Yangyang’s lip twitches, getting the message loud and clear.

“Then we better make the most of it,” he says with a wink, and promptly disappears beneath the blankets. Renjun lets his head fall back amongst the pillows, and the crack in the ceiling comes back into view. He should probably let the handyman know. Ask them to come up and have a look.

Then Yangyang braces a hand on his hip, steady and warm, and all thoughts about hotel maintenance fly out of his head.

<<<

“The car is coming,” Renjun’s manager says, looking off to their right. “Look alive, boys.”

Mark immediately snaps to attention. “Yes, sir!” He places a hand between Donghyuck’s shoulders and pushes gently. Donghyuck scowls irritably, but obediently pulls himself out of his trademark slouch and brings his hands to his front to clasp them together.

The sky is overcast, and the cold hasn’t let up all morning. So much for a warm welcome. Renjun cups his hands in front of his mouth, blowing hot air into them one last time before squaring his shoulders. These guests aren’t tourists in the traditional sense, but they’re important enough that his manager has deemed it fit to roll out the metaphorical red carpet.

He watches the taxi wind its way up the driveway to the hotel, a square of bumblebee yellow stark against the ashen brown of the roads. The hum of its engine grows louder as it draws nearer, white noise slowly filling the air. When it slows to a stop in front of them, the four of them move in unison, backs ramrod straight and bowing deeply until they’re angled ninety degrees to the ground. Renjun keeps his eyes fixed on the gravel and hears one, two doors open and shut.

“Welcome, Captain. It’s a pleasure having you and your crew stay with us.”

At the sound of his manager’s voice, Renjun straightens up, Mark and Donghyuck following suit. Their new guests are two men dressed identically in navy double-breasted jackets and trousers, caps tucked in the crook of their arms. Each of them has a gold winged badge pinned to their left breasts, gleaming in the weak sunlight.

“Please, call me Kun,” says one of the men. He has a kind smile, and his hair falls in waves around his face. He clasps the manager’s hand in greeting. “And thank you. The pleasure is all ours.”

There’s a noise that sounds like a hastily muffled snort. The captain ‒ Kun ‒ whips around to raise an eyebrow at the source: his companion, a shorter man with sharp features and even sharper eyes. The man raises a hand in apology. “Sorry. I sneezed.”

Renjun presses his lips together in a thin line. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mark and Donghyuck exchange looks. The hotel is old, yes, and it’s overdue for remodelling, but it’s still an icon. It’s still theirs.

Kun doesn’t look as if he believes his companion. He turns back to Renjun’s manager. “This is Mr Leechaiyapornkul, my First Officer.”

Mr Leechaiyapornkul waves the statement away with a graceful flick of his wrist. “Ugh, Kun, please. Even I find it a mouthful. Ten Lee is fine.”

Renjun’s manager visibly relaxes. “As you wish, Mr Lee. I was given to understand you had a third pilot, Mr Liu ‒ ?”

“In the taxi, paying the fare,” Ten says, then abruptly yanks the door of the taxi open to stick his head inside. “Yah, Yangyang!” he yells, and all of them jump at the volume. “It’s freezing out here, what is taking you so long?”

“It’s the currency,” Renjun hears. “I’m not familiar with it, and ‒ oh, forget it! Look, here ‒ here, just take everything.”

The door opens, and the last passenger stumbles out of the taxi, stuffing his wallet into the back pocket of his trousers. He’s dressed exactly like his colleagues, save for the fashionable aviator sunglasses perched on his nose, and the cut of his hair is stylish, bangs swept away from his face. Even with half his face obscured, he looks sophisticated and youthful. Renjun can scarcely believe he’s qualified to operate an aeroplane.

“Sorry, sorry,” Yangyang says, then shivers. “Jesus Christ, it’s cold.”

“That’s what I said,” Ten hisses.

An awkward silence follows. Renjun’s manager coughs into his fist. “Apologies, gentlemen ‒ let’s not keep you out here in the cold any longer.”

He ushers the pilots inside, leaving Mark, Donghyuck and Renjun to deal with the luggage. They struggle with the finicky boot for a minute, but they eventually manage to secure a suitcase apiece and file into the lobby together. After glancing at the initials embossed on each suitcase, they figure out that Mark and Donghyuck have Kun and Ten’s luggage respectively, and once Kun and Ten finish up, Mark and Donghyuck leave to show them to their rooms.

Yangyang is the last to be checked-in. Renjun waits unobtrusively by a pillar, watching him chat with Jeno, making him laugh. Yangyang’s back faces him from this angle, but when Renjun sees him slip his passport back into his pocket, he starts making his way towards him. Before he can lead him to the elevators, though, Yangyang steps towards the centre of the lobby and tilts his head upwards. Confused, Renjun follows his gaze, and realises he’s simply looking at the architecture.

“Wow,” Yangyang says to no one in particular. His voice echoes in the empty lobby. “The pictures don’t do it justice.”

They don’t. Nothing can quite capture the magnificence of the hotel, built into the mountainside and painted in the softest shades of green. Time hasn’t been the kindest to her, though. There are cracks in the facade and ivy growing up the walls outside, and the decor has clearly gone out of style. Hardly anyone comes to stay anymore, and the faint scent of disuse permeates the air. Still, in Renjun’s more nostalgic moments, he swears she’s more beautiful than ever before. It seems that Yangyang feels the same way, too.

Renjun wonders what pictures he has seen, but he doesn’t ask. Instead, he trails Yangyang as he wanders around the lobby curiously, stopping once or twice for a better look, hands shoved in his pockets. Yangyang takes off his sunglasses to better examine the cupola, stepping directly into the path of a sunbeam, and ‒ oh.

Haloed by sunlight, Yangyang looks otherworldly, and Renjun feels as if he’s been punched in the chest. He stares unabashedly at the long line of Yangyang’s exposed throat as he tilts his head back, full lips parting of their own accord. Even his eyes are pretty, half-lidded against the burst of light.

The eyes he’s just been thinking about blink owlishly back at him, and Renjun realises with a jolt that he’s been caught staring. The lobby, for all of its spaciousness, suddenly feels too small.

He coughs, once, to mask his embarrassment. “May I ‒ may I show you to your room now, sir?”

Yangyang bites down on his lower lip, plump and pink, obviously fighting back a smile. Renjun dies a little bit inside. “You may.”

They ride the elevator to the room in complete silence. Renjun is too mortified to flip through his repertoire of small talk, and Yangyang seems to be content with not talking at all. It’s only after they reach his room and Renjun sets the suitcase at the foot of the bed that his tongue unsticks itself from the roof of his mouth.

“Bathroom to your left,” he recites. He moves around the room on autopilot, flicking the lights on. “The beverages ‒ ” he points at the small cupboard stocked with tea bags and coffee “ ‒ are complimentary. If you need anything, you can dial the concierge for assistance, and we’ll send someone right up.”

Yangyang nods, half-listening. Renjun hovers by the door and watches as he circles the room, familiarising himself with the layout. Yangyang pauses by the sideboard where a vase of freshly-cut flowers has been placed and reaches out, slowly, to caress a petal. It trembles under his touch.

Renjun clears his throat softly. “If there’s nothing else…?”

Yangyang lets the petal fall. When he looks up at Renjun, the wonder in his eyes from earlier is gone. Even though it’s barely noon, his eyes are soft and sleepy. It seems the exhaustion of travel has caught up with him. “Thank you,” he says.

Renjun bows, and goes.

He doesn’t see the pilots for the rest of their stay until it’s time for them to take their leave. When Renjun goes to help with the luggage, Yangyang is already waiting for him.

He looks well-rested, eyes bright and blazer neatly pressed, cutting sharply across his shoulders. Renjun is so entranced by the errant lock of hair falling across one eye that he doesn’t register Yangyang’s outstretched hand until his eyes flick downwards.

There’s an envelope in his hand. “This is for you.”

Renjun blinks, surprised. “What ‒ ?”

“Ah, it’s just a little something.” Yangyang scratches the back of his head, shy, then his eyes widen, jerking the envelope back. “Wait ‒ do you like sweet stuff?”

Is this a trick question? Renjun wonders. “I ‒ I do.”

Yangyang sighs in relief and when he smiles, small, the corners of his eyes crinkle. He shoves the envelope at Renjun until he takes it, the brown paper crumpling a little in his hands. “Great! Just ‒ uhm. Don’t open it until I’m gone, okay?”

Renjun waits until the taxi pulls away from the hotel before he ducks behind the front desk, fingers scrabbling against the sealed flap of the envelope. When he rips it open, he finds several items bundled inside ‒ a tip, just a few bills in the local currency; a bar of chocolate from an unfamiliar brand; and finally, a painting printed on cardstock.

Renjun picks up the card to examine it closely. It’s of a castle he’s never seen before, perched on a mountain and rising proudly above green-smudged trees and fog against a backdrop of blue sky. The landscape is beautiful, right out of a fairytale, and Renjun is sure that it must only exist in the artist’s imagination.

When he flips the postcard over, he’s surprised to find a message waiting for him.

Renjun

Thank you for your hospitality! Here’s a little something for your troubles.

From
Yangyang

>>>

“Cutting it a little close there, aren’t you?” Mark calls out as Renjun slams the door to the employee changing room wide open in his rush. He ignores him, skidding to a halt on the slippery tiles and managing to punch in just as the hour hand of the old clock mounted on the wall reaches nine.

Renjun slumps against a locker, wheezing from the ten floor sprint down from Yangyang’s suite. “I overslept.”

Jeno, already dressed and watching him from their row of lockers, raises an eyebrow. He shuffles a little closer, looking at him up and down. “You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” he points out under his breath.

“It’s a uniform,” Renjun says haughtily. He turns away from Jeno, opening his locker and rifling around for mints. He hadn’t had time to brush his teeth, between trying to sneak out of Yangyang’s room and then sliding back between his sheets. “I wear the same thing every day.”

“Okay,” Jeno says. “It’s the same uniform, then.”

Renjun glances down at his clothes, still visibly crumpled from Yangyang’s wandering fingers and a night spent on the floor. “No, it isn’t.”

Jeno’s mouth does a complicated little move, like he’s actively trying to hold back a smile, and settles for patting Renjun’s head placatingly. “Okay,” he says, squeezing past him to get to the door. “Whatever you say, Renjunnie. Let’s go before we’re really late, yeah?”

It’s just the two of them at the front desk when the pilots come downstairs to check out. It didn’t make sense for there to be more people, when the weather had gotten warmer and the luggage lighter. And if Mark and Donghyuck wanted to skive off ‒ well. Renjun wasn’t going to complain about two less pairs of eyes on him.

Speaking of which. He can practically feel the weight of Jeno’s knowing gaze on him as he goes to Yangyang’s side. He ignores it the same way he ignores how Yangyang’s fingers brush against his when he takes his luggage from him. It’s a well-rehearsed dance ‒ neither he nor Yangyang spare a glance for each other as they go outside, careful to keep some distance between them, their conversation limited to the weather and their upcoming flight. Once Yangyang’s colleagues ‒ Kun, and a relatively new First Officer named Sicheng ‒ bid their goodbyes and are safely ensconced inside the waiting taxi, Yangyang meanders to the rear where Renjun is loading the suitcases.

“For your troubles,” Yangyang says. As always, he produces an envelope from his pocket and presses it into Renjun’s hands. As always, Renjun tucks it away inside his jacket for later.

Renjun looks up at him, backlit against the sun. “Safe travels, Second Officer.”

He must say it differently, because Yangyang’s gaze softens into something Renjun might call fondness. He glances around ‒ the boot is still open, hiding them from the taxi’s occupants’ view ‒ and dares to place a single finger on Renjun’s neck, still sticky with sweat, right above his pulse. Renjun’s blood sings.

“See you in two weeks,” Yangyang murmurs. He holds Renjun’s gaze for one, two beats, and then he’s gone, ducking into the taxi. Renjun allows himself a moment to stand there before shutting the boot and moving out of the way. He keeps his head bowed, his hands flattened against the tops of his thighs, until he can no longer hear the sound of an engine running. When he straightens up, the taxi has disappeared from view.

The skin over his pulse is still heated to the touch. Renjun presses a thumb to it, as if by doing so the ghost of Yangyang’s touch could sink into his skin, a little piece of him that’s his to keep. To keep him sated until the next time he comes.

It doesn’t quite work. It never does.

<<<

A fortnight later, the pilots are back.

“Hi, Renjun,” Yangyang says, sidling up to him. The other pilots have gone up to their rooms already, leaving them alone in the elevator lobby. The temperature has dropped even lower since his last visit, winter now well underway, and Yangyang’s cheeks are tinged pink from his brief journey from the taxi to the inside of the hotel.

Renjun glances at him, surprised. “You remembered my name.”

“I did.” Yangyang pauses. “It’s also on your nametag, so I think it’d be pretty rude if I were to mess it up.”

Renjun instinctively looks down at the tag pinned to his front, his name spelled out in cursive font, and blushes.

Yangyang’s lip twitches. “Did you enjoy my gifts?”

“I did,” Renjun says, and he’s being honest. The tip had been spent on groceries for the next week. The chocolate, milky and sweet and thick, he savoured, rolling it around his tongue to make it last for as long as possible. As for the postcard, he had pinned it above his bed to cheer the room up a little. Against the whitewashed walls of his cottage, the castle looked a little less imposing; a little more lonely. “Thank you for them. It was very kind of you.”

When Yangyang smiles this time, it’s with his whole face, teeth and gums on full, unrestrained display. Renjun quite likes it. “I’m glad. The chocolate’s from a shop back home.”

“Home?”

“Düsseldorf,” Yangyang says, and when Renjun just blinks, he elaborates. “In Germany.”

Renjun vaguely recalls the city’s name from primary school geography, but beyond that, he can’t visualise the place at all. “I see.”

“It’s wonderful, very different from here. Have you been before?”

Renjun runs his tongue over his teeth. The truth is, he’s never left the province. The Huangs were never wealthy enough to afford to travel abroad to begin with, but there was no reason to. Not when he grew up within these four walls, running through its hallways and harassing the maids while his parents worked the front desk. Not when excitement could be found with Donghyuck and Jeno and guests who were visiting from all over the world.

And then the borders had closed by the time he was old enough to even consider leaving for greener pastures, and, well. That had been that.

But that’s not what Yangyang had asked. Renjun shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Oh ‒ no. I haven’t had the chance.”

The elevator reaches the lobby with a soft ding, and they step inside. There’s more than enough space for the two of them, but after he presses the button for the tenth floor, Renjun finds himself moving closer to the pilot, chasing his warmth. If Yangyang notices, he doesn’t let on. He doesn’t move away, either.

The ascent is slow and shaky, and Yangyang startles when the elevator lurches on the third floor. In an effort to distract him, Renjun continues, “I saw your note, too. The picture of the castle on the front was really pretty.”

“Yeah?” Yangyang tips his head to look at him. “It’s a real place, you know? A couple of hours away from Düsseldorf.”

“It ‒ No way. Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh, wow.” Renjun tries to picture how the castle looks in real life. “I can’t imagine it. It looks unreal. Like it was built amongst the clouds.”

“Yeah! I went once, years ago. It was gorgeous.” The look on Yangyang’s face is faraway, reminiscent. “You should go, one day. It’ll make for an adventure."

Another truth is this: Renjun has roots here, buried deep in the earth, tendrils entangling with the very fabric of their town. Adventure isn’t for people from small towns like him. Adventure is not something he’s familiar with, much less something he’s seeking. It would cast him into the world, unknown and alone, and it might very well rip him apart.

“I’ll be sure to keep it in mind,” is what he tells Yangyang instead.

That infectious smile again, as bright and quick as the ascent of a summer sun. “That’s enough for me.”

>>>

The new flight route had been touted by their local tourism board as a golden opportunity to drum up business. Come see our quaint little province, the advertisements read. Explore the mountains with our local guides. Visit our temples and make an offering to the old gods. Come and immerse yourself in our culture, when we had tried to keep you out for so long.

“I mean, I guess I know why people wouldn’t want to come here,” Donghyuck sighs. His tools lie abandoned in the dirt, along with his gardening gloves. “It’s sooo boring ‒ there’s literally nothing to do. Everything’s old as shit. I’ve seen comic books in the library older than my parents.”

He’s been growing increasingly dejected and restless as the months pass, but Renjun can’t blame him. They all have. They’d all been so blindingly optimistic at the borders reopening that they hadn’t realised that the world and its taste had moved on in their absence. Now, people flock to big, bright cities, wanting something cosmopolitan, wanting the rush, the excitement of going and getting lost in the concrete jungles of somewhere new.

But their province is a quiet, isolated thing, sandwiched between mountains too tall and too wide to carve tunnels into. In their small town, there are only a handful of shops, the hotel, and the vast wilderness. Most of the roads are packed dirt, worn away by people who will live and die in the same place. There is nothing here for outsiders. Some might say there is nothing here at all.

Renjun continues working silently, tugging on a particularly recalcitrant ivy root. He’d overheard Kun and Ten discussing the take-up on the flight over breakfast the last time they had been here, and knows that it’s lukewarm at best. The hotel, luckily, still receives a slow trickle of guests, usually older holidaymakers looking for a quiet escape to the countryside. Renjun remains hopeful, but he knows enough about finances to know that it isn’t enough. It can’t be enough.

Beside him, Jisung, young and hanging on to every word Donghyuck says, nods absentmindedly. He snips fruitlessly at a vine, the blades of his pruning shears blunt. Renjun doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he needs to dig up the plant, roots and all ‒ otherwise, the ivy will just grow back. “Yeah. The flight route is kind of redundant, isn’t it?”

Probably, Renjun tacks on privately. His thoughts idly turn to the world that lies beyond the province. Probably, because for every flight in, there is a flight out.

<<<

Yangyang pulls him aside before he’s whisked away through the lobby doors and into the waiting taxi, fingers pressed to the inside of Renjun’s wrist. “I left something upstairs for you.”

“Again?” Renjun can feel the calluses on Yangyang’s fingers, rough and hot. “You really didn’t have to.”

“I know.” Yangyang’s face is open, bright in its earnestness. “But I wanted to.”

Afterwards, Renjun volunteers for housekeeping duty and heads upstairs. When he unlocks the door to Yangyang’s room, he finds a paper bag sitting on the desk. Inside are some neatly folded bills, a small candle that smells floral and sweet, and another postcard of a little street lined with shops, lanterns strung between them to form a sea of red.

Renjun

Thank you (again) for the hospitality. I hope it’s not weird that I keep saying that. I do mean it.

The weather is getting colder, and I hope you can keep warm with this candle. I got it during my last layover, thinking of you. You can tell me if you like it when we see each other next.

See you soon,
Yangyang

P.S. If it smells bad, blame Kun. He swears by the scent and nearly bought out the whole store.

A part of him wonders: how can you have met someone only twice and already feel this? This budding interest, the cautious desire sparking low in your gut. It could be a flight of fancy, or wishful thinking. Donghyuck would probably tease, crow with laughter. Say, for the millionth time, that Renjun has an uncanny tendency to fall in love twenty times a day.

And yet.

The tremble of a petal. A smile like the sun. I got this during my last layover, thinking of you.

A seedling materialises in the landscape of Renjun’s chest, blooming, reaching. Chasing the light.

>>>

It goes like this: every other week, a trio of pilots fly in and stay at the hotel for one night. The line-up rotates ‒ Ten and Sicheng never come at the same time, and sometimes an older captain will take over from Kun ‒ but Yangyang is a constant fixture. Through some unspoken agreement between Renjun, Mark and Donghyuck, Renjun is always the one to take Yangyang’s suitcase and lead him to his room, pressing the button for the tenth floor. They’ve stopped squeezing in with the other pilots and bellhops; it’s true that the elevator is old and probably can’t take everyone’s combined weight, but Renjun can’t deny that he’s secretly pleased at having Yangyang’s company all to himself.

Renjun learns that Yangyang is his age. That he likes collecting postcards, a token from every country he’s visited. That his mother used to bring gifts from home to share with the staff of places they stayed, and he’s picked up the tradition from her. That, without fail, he’ll jump whenever the elevator stalls on its way past the third floor, fingers squeezing Renjun’s shoulder in alarm before retracting quickly.

Renjun lets himself savour these moments, even if they only last the five minutes between the lobby and the suite he’s labelled as Yangyang’s. Sometimes, Renjun will be called to bring more water or towels to his room, and he’ll linger for a few moments longer than necessary just to see Yangyang looking soft and cosy in a bathrobe or his pyjamas, his hair unstyled and shower-clean.

Donghyuck, of course, notices.

“I want to switch,” he whines one afternoon after they've sent the pilots off. He’s settled himself in the chaise lounge in Yangyang’s vacant suite as Renjun strips the linens from the bed. “C’mon, let me help Yangyang out for once. It’s not fair that you get cool presents from the hot pilot all the time.”

Renjun sighs, folding up the bedsheets. They smell faintly of what he supposes is Yangyang’s cologne, clean and fresh with just a hint of earthiness. “They’re not just for me, Hyuckie, they’re for everyone at the hotel.”

Case in point: Renjun had shared Yangyang’s latest gift, a packet of mung bean paste pastry, with Donghyuck for lunch. He’s starting to regret his generosity already.

“Then how come he doesn’t just leave it at the front desk? Or tell everyone about it?” Donghyuck wants to know, kicking his feet up even though his shoes are still on, the menace. “You know, so everyone can get an equal share.”

“What do I look like, a psychic?” Renjun strides over to shove Donghyuck’s feet off the upholstery. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Donghyuck, predictably, ignores him. “What about those love letters he slips you, then, huh?” he counters, one eyebrow raised. “I’m pretty sure those aren’t for everyone.”

Unbidden, a fragment of a sentence surfaces. Thinking of you. Renjun shoves the thought deep, deep down and reminds himself to stop reading the postcards at work, where anyone (but especially Donghyuck) might be lurking. “Those are just notes. Saying thank you, here’s a token of my appreciation, etcetera. You know, stuff like that.”

Donghyuck is, however, nothing if not relentless. “Oh yeah? Then how come every time you read one I see you smiling like a dork?”

“I do not,” Renjun hisses, but one look in the mirror is all it takes to know that the flush of his skin has betrayed him.

Donghyuck sits up with a triumphant cry, pointing at Renjun’s red face. “Aha! So you admit it! They are love letters! Ooh, Renjun’s in ‒ ”

The pillow Renjun launches in Donghyuck’s direction hits him square in the face, and Renjun watches with satisfaction as he topples over the edge of the chaise lounge with a squeal. Serves him right.

<<<

When Renjun had first started out, one of the first things his manager had done was to bring him outside.

“It’s ruining the look, and it might cause some issues with the structure,” his manager says, pointing. “Think you can remove it?”

He’s talking about the ivy creeping up the front of the hotel, thick and lush. It winds its way around the lobby doors and windows, engulfing the green paint of the hotel’s exterior that tries valiantly to peek out. Renjun has to crane his neck before he can spot where the vines end.

It’s a mammoth task. “I can try?” he says, unsure.

It seems to be good enough for his manager. “Good boy,” he says. He claps Renjun on the shoulder and leaves him to it.

Renjun spends his first day on the job researching, and the following weeks outside, painstakingly removing as much as he can. His mother’s old gardening books tell him that ivy is a weed and that it has a tendency to overrun, smothering everything in its path if one isn’t careful. The only way to eradicate it is to dig up its roots and cut them off at the stem, letting the vines die a natural death.

It’s bitter work, uprooting the plants, then sawing them off at the base of the stem. Renjun feels he’s doing the hotel a disservice ‒ the ivy is thriving, and he thinks it adds character to their quaint little hotel in the mountains. Soon, the vines he’s attended to start to wither away, turning from lush green to a sallow brown. For some reason, seeing the dried, wilted carcasses fills him with waves of melancholy.

And so, unbeknownst to his manager, Renjun leaves some roots intact. No one will notice the baby ivy amongst the shrubbery. He’ll come back and trim it, if he has to. Nothing that beautiful could be so damaging.

>>>

The lobby is empty this time of night. Most of the guests are either fast asleep in their rooms, or down in the hotel bar having a nightcap. Jaemin, initially working in the kitchens, has had to learn quickly to keep up with their guests’ metropolitan tastes, and seems to be doing well so far judging by the number of customers he receives each evening.

Renjun, on the other hand, is not as occupied. He sits behind the front desk, the cup of coffee in his hands growing cold and staring at nothing in particular. The lamps are turned down low, casting the corners of the lobby into shadow and turning the atmosphere amber. Time during the twilight hours feels like honey flows, slow-moving and syrupy. He feels stretched out, each movement taking a little more effort, becoming more languid than the last.

It’s snowing outside, too. Renjun had caught the first fall of it just as he had arrived for his night shift, tiny snowflakes melting the moment they landed on his coat. His vantage point from Jeno’s usual seat gives him a clear view of the large lobby windows, and he can make out the flurries falling in rapid succession. It’s almost hypnotising, the way the snowflakes move and cling together, spiralling down to coat the ground in a layer of white. Renjun lets himself look for far too long, and feels his eyelids grow gradually heavier along with the snowfall.

He’s on the precipice of dozing off when he catches a sudden movement in the corner of his eye. Someone strides purposefully from the direction of the elevators, bypassing the front desk and heading for the lobby doors. He’s dressed like he’s going out ‒ boots, and a thick woollen coat. A pair of pastel pink earmuffs is perched atop his head.

Renjun is suddenly wide awake. “Yangyang?”

Halfway to the doors, Yangyang stops and abruptly spins on his heel, eyes darting around. It’s only when they settle on Renjun that he visibly relaxes.

“Renjun!” he calls, voice carrying easily across the silent lobby, and then he’s walking over. “Jesus, I thought I was hearing things. I didn’t see you there.”

It occurs to Renjun that he’s still sitting down, and that this way, the top of his head would barely peek out from behind the front desk. He stands up and dips into a shallow bow. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Yangyang waves the apology away with a gloved hand. “It’s fine. What’re you doing here so late? I thought you went home by this time.”

“Night shift,” Renjun answers, only slightly distracted by a little voice in his head, the one that perks up and sniffs the air in hope. You notice when I’m not around? “And I could ask you the same question.”

“Uhm.” Yangyang fidgets, and when Renjun glances down, he realises that he’s only wearing his pyjamas under his coat. They’re nothing fancy, just plain white cotton with thin blue stripes, the cuffs of his pants stuffed into the tops of his boots. Clearly, Yangyang was going somewhere in a hurry.

Yangyang notices the direction of his gaze and pulls his coat tight around him. He looks sheepish. “I… It’s stupid.”

“What?” Renjun’s curiosity is peaked. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it is,” Yangyang insists. “And you’re going to laugh at me.”

“I swear I won’t.”

Yangyang looks doubtful, but Renjun’s expression must be sincere because it doesn’t take a lot more to persuade him. “This sounds incredibly lame, but ‒ I couldn’t sleep, and I saw that it just started snowing. And I guess I just wanted to go outside and… see it.”

Renjun blinks. He imagines Yangyang, tucked away in bed only to leap out at the sight of the snowfall, not bothering to change out of his pyjamas in his eagerness, tripping over his boots in his haste and then ‒ he can’t help it. A small giggle bubbles out of him.

“Hey!” Yangyang reaches across the space between them to lightly shove Renjun’s shoulder in mock indignation. “You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

“I’m not! I just think…” Renjun hesitates for the tiniest of moments, then decides to throw caution to the wind. “I just think it’s cute that you rushed all the way down here to see the first snow.”

Yangyang’s eyes widen, and a hot flush ‒ panic ‒ lights up in Renjun’s chest. But then Yangyang’s face turns as pink as his earmuffs, and the feeling in Renjun’s chest mellows into a bright, molten glow. “Oh.”

Renjun swallows. “Yeah.”

They’ve both leaned in slightly during the course of their conversation, and Renjun is keenly aware that there’s only the front desk standing between them. Yangyang’s hand rests on the countertop, pinky just a hair’s breadth apart from where Renjun’s own is. Time goes from syrupy to still, and he holds his breath, like one wrong move could shatter the moment. Outside, the snow continues to fall.

Yangyang looks away first, over his shoulder and through the windows into the night. When he turns back around, his bottom lip is caught between his teeth, flushed red and dark in the low light. “Listen. Are you doing anything right now?”

“Not really.” Renjun does his best to keep his voice casual. “Why do you ask?”

“Want to come with me?”

There are many reasons why Renjun shouldn’t. Yangyang is a guest, and for all of the quiet moments between them, for all of the gifts and postcards, he doesn’t know him, not really. Then there’s the fact that he sort of hates the cold, and he hasn’t got any gloves or a hat on him. He’s also the only one on duty tonight ‒ what if someone calls, needing something urgent, and there’s no one there to answer?

“Okay,” Renjun says anyway. The assent rolls off his tongue far too easily, like the first step on a slippery slope. “Let me get my coat.”

“Oh my god,” Yangyang says. “I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

Renjun might be okay breaking a handful of rules right now, sneaking out with an esteemed hotel guest while still on the clock, but he’ll be damned if he lets either of them break their necks in the dark. The moon is clouded over tonight, and the streetlamps don’t extend past the front driveway.

He holds the old lamp out in front of him, careful to sidestep any loose stones as he makes his way to their destination. The flame, caged in glass, flickers merrily and remains steady with each step. “It’s not much, but it should give us enough light to see by.”

Yangyang hums in acknowledgement and falls into step beside him as they leave the glow of the streetlamps behind, heading towards the back of the hotel. They keep close together, the arm of Renjun’s hotel-issued polyester jacket brushing against the wool of Yangyang’s coat. There’s no one outside roaming the grounds this late at night, and only the twin crunch of their boots whips through the darkness.

“Where are we going?” Yangyang turns to ask, and promptly stumbles over his own two feet. Renjun’s arm comes up flush against Yangyang’s back as he gets his bearings. “You’re not, like, going to bring me to some back alley and murder me, right? Or leave me there?”

“Patience,” Renjun scolds lightly. “You wanted to see snow, right? It’ll be worth it. Trust me.”

“Says the guy who’s leading me into the darkness with a creepy old lamp,” Yangyang mutters, but he clings to Renjun for the rest of the way, his fingers digging into the crook of his elbow.

It turns out that Renjun hadn’t needed the lamp after all. When they round the back of the hotel, Yangyang must be able to see just fine, because his mouth falls open in surprise. Warm light spills from the hotel room windows to reveal that the meadow is already blanketed in snow, white and pristine as freshly-laundered sheets. If Renjun squints, he can make out the mountains in the back, black and looming against the navy sky. The snow always falls the thickest here, making it the prettiest place in their province during winter. He hopes Yangyang likes it.

“Oh my god,” Yangyang says again, excited. “Can I ‒ ?”

Renjun isn’t sure of what he’s asking, but he nods anyway, and Yangyang takes off into the snow. His boots sink into the slush, then the soft grass, ankle-deep almost immediately, but he keeps going until he’s some distance away, just on the edge of where the light pools and melts into the shadows.

Yangyang tips his head up against the snowfall, hands outstretched, and Renjun is reminded of the first time they met. He’s no less transfixed. Yangyang is graceful like this, bathed in the secondhand glow of artificial lights and following the dance of the snowflakes, sometimes stooping low and stretching high. He looks over every once in a while, waving and smiling, so excited and carefree. Yangyang sticks his tongue out to catch a snowflake, and when he manages to do so, the giggle he lets out is high and breathy and happy. It makes the glow in Renjun’s chest flare.

Renjun can’t take his eyes off him. He looks like an entirely different person when the weariness from the long-haul flight is shaken from his bones, and the way he frolics in the snow is childlike. Renjun is reminded of how he used to rush to the meadow with Jeno and Donghyuck during winter, hand in hand and their little sleds in tow, playing and shoving snow down each other’s clothes until they were so cold that their teeth started chattering and their noses were running red. His heart pangs when he realises can’t remember the last time they had come to the meadow together.

He’s pulled back to reality by, of all things, a snowball, hitting him square in the chest. It doesn’t hurt much, but he jumps from the shock of it. “What the ‒ ”

A hiccuping laugh comes from his right, and when Renjun wheels around, he finds Yangyang standing a couple of metres away, laughing so hard his eyes are reduced to slits.

“You ‒ ” Renjun sputters. “I can’t believe you ‒ ”

“What?” Yangyang taunts, evil and beautiful all at once. He’s already reaching down for another snowball. “You can’t believe I what?”

“I thought you wanted to see the first snow, not have a snowball fight!”

“Why not both?” Yangyang swings an arm back. “Come on, don’t be like that!”

Renjun has enough wits about him to dodge the second snowball, but he nearly slips and falls while doing so. “No, I’m not going to!”

“Aw, Renjunnie,” Yangyang coos, teasing, “Are you scared you’re going to lose to me, or something?”

Renjun’s heart hammers in his chest. He’s caught between wanting to glare at Yangyang, who’s still grinning like a maniac, and hiding the furious blush spreading across his face at the use of his nickname. He hadn’t known Yangyang could pull two completely different emotions from him in one short sentence. He hadn’t known that he kind of enjoys it.

“Fuck this,” he grumbles to himself, and squats down. Yangyang may be the one who started it, but he’s going to be the one who ends it. His fingers are already cold, the gloves he had pilfered from the lost and found box affording no relief, but they go absolutely numb as the ice slowly soaks through the scratchy wool.

Not that Yangyang needs to know that. Yangyang, who cheers from across the glade, “So you do know how to fight back!”

Renjun straightens up, packing the snow as tightly as he can. “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you, just because you’re a guest.”

A smile spreads across Yangyang’s face, slow and sharp-toothed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

It’s wiped clean off his face when Renjun launches his snowball at him, and he has to pirouette away to avoid it. And then they’re running, kicking up snow, pelting handfuls of the stuff at each other when they get too close for comfort. They take turns pursuing each other around the meadow, the occasional snowball landing true, laughter rising up between them and mingling with the falling snow. Renjun’s sweating, freezing, and there’s a stitch in his side, but he can’t stop smiling. He’s never felt so alive.

“Ready to give up?” he calls, hefting a hulk of a snowball in his hands.

Yangyang groans. He’s been pausing for breath more frequently, and there’s sweat dripping down his temple. “I didn’t know you were gonna be so competitive!”

He’s doubled over, talking to the ground, and it’s the perfect opportunity. Renjun draws his arm back and lets his snowball fly. It travels the distance between them in a gentle arc until it makes contact with Yangyang’s side, exploding into a cloud of white. Yangyang shrieks, taken aback, and promptly slips and falls to the ground with a thump.

Renjun curses and immediately starts towards him. “Oh, shit. Yangyang?” He has to whisper-yell, just in case someone in the hotel hears him and thinks to look outside. “Are you alright?”

Yangyang’s reply is muffled. “Yeah. Can you help me up?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

Renjun reaches where Yangyang is laying in the snow. He’s fallen on his back, but seems to be okay, judging by the ghost of a laugh still etched on his face. His hair fans out behind him, threaded between emerging blades of grass and catching the snowflakes as they fall.

“Thanks.” Yangyang takes Renjun’s offered hand and pulls himself up. He pats himself down and dusts off his gloves, grinning at Renjun. “Nice one.”

“It was a lucky shot.”

“Still.” Yangyang looks him dead in the eye, and the intensity of it makes the glow in Renjun’s chest fire up to a blaze. “You’re something else, aren’t you?”

There are snowflakes still woven through his hair, constellations against the backdrop of a moonless night. Renjun doesn’t know what possesses him, but he steps closer and reaches a hand up before he can think about it, fingers threading through the strands. Yangyang inhales sharply through his nose as he works, gently shaking the snow from his hair, soft and wispy beneath his fingertips. Because he can’t resist, he lets his fingernails scratch lightly across his scalp, and is rewarded by Yangyang shuddering infinitesimally and his eyelids fluttering shut.

Renjun draws his hand back once he’s done. He thinks he should take a step back for good measure, but his feet stay rooted. “You, uh. You missed a spot.”

“Thanks.”

Neither of them move. Yangyang’s eyes are hooded, dark like molten chocolate. Snow continues to fall around them, settling back into Yangyang’s hair like it never left. Renjun makes no move to brush it away this time, doesn’t dare to, not when he realises, with a stunning clarity, that all he wants to do is to cup his hand around the back of Yangyang’s head. Pull him down. Find out whether his mouth tastes as sweet as it looks. Heat courses through him, and suddenly the air feels charged, electric, like each moment has been building up towards this, and maybe it has.

It must be too much for Yangyang, or perhaps not enough.

“It’s getting colder,” he says. “Do you want to come upstairs?”

Renjun’s heart leaps. He waits for Yangyang to tack on an excuse, like Come warm yourself up or even I make a mean hot chocolate. But Yangyang simply looks at him, open and earnest, his intention very clearly written across his face.

Renjun takes a moment to allow the weight of what will happen next to settle into him. His breath comes out in clouds that fade away as soon as they appear. “Okay.”

>>>

In theory, Renjun is aware of how this arrangement is supposed to work.

Help Yangyang with his luggage after checking in. Finish his shift and clock out. Take the elevator up to the tenth floor, where Yangyang will let him into his room and greet him with a kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth. Stay, until they’re finished. Leave, before he falls asleep in Yangyang’s arms or tucked between sheets they’ve fucked in.

What they have is suspended between some odd combination of time and space and reality, only existing within the four walls of Yangyang’s room. Yangyang is to him what guests are to this hotel: travellers passing through, their presence fleeting and temporary.

It doesn’t matter how many nights he spends mapping the contours of Yangyang’s body. It doesn’t matter that he memorises all the ways to make Yangyang gasp, to tip him over the edge. It doesn’t even matter that when he looks at Yangyang, he can feel the vines of his feelings twisting, twisting, squeezing his heart. When it comes down to it, Renjun, to Yangyang, is simply a means to an end.

Renjun would do well to remember he isn’t a destination. He’s barely even part of the journey.

<<<

The first thing that Yangyang does is rip his earmuffs off and throw them somewhere into the depths of his room.

The second is to pin Renjun up against the wall of the entryway.

Renjun goes easily. He slams into the wood, can feel it against his back, cold and unyielding, and it’s hot, so hot, being manhandled like this, Yangyang’s grip careful but firm on his shoulders. Yangyang starts to lean in, breath fanning across his face, and Renjun’s heartbeat pounds in his ears. All the anticipation that’s been building up since they left the meadow behind them starts to fizz until Renjun can feel it in his fingertips and all the way down in his toes.

And then Yangyang, his lips just an inch away, stops short.

Renjun could scream from the frustration of it all. He tries to close the distance, but it’s no use ‒ he’s pinned in place, Yangyang’s hold too strong. Yangyang notices, and his lips curve up wickedly.

“Eager, aren’t we?”

“Wh ‒ stop that.”

“Stop?” Yangyang’s grip around him loosens, ever so slightly. “That’s too bad, I was ‒ ”

“Shut up,” Renjun growls, and surges forward.

There’s no finesse, no elegance in the kiss, only heat and pure want. It’s so forceful that their teeth clack together. Yangyang stumbles back slightly, and their noses bump as they figure out which way works best. They separate, then come back together, each wrestling a little less for control, and it’s better, much better, with the way Yangyang fits a hand under Renjun’s jaw, tilting it up, coaxing his mouth open and twisting their tongues together.

They move into the bedroom, losing their coats along the way. Renjun squeaks when the back of his knees hit the edge of the bed, but Yangyang catches him as he falls, gently lowering him onto the duvet.

“Wait, let me just ‒ ” Yangyang shucks off his pyjamas, soaked through from the snow. Renjun catches a glimpse of surprisingly broad shoulders tapering down to a skinny waist before Yangyang crawls into bed, over Renjun, an arm on either side of his head and effectively caging him in.

There’s less urgency when Yangyang captures his lips again. The kiss is soft and indulgent, less like a firework burning bright and more like the slow-creeping heat of a summer afternoon. Renjun feels himself unravel slowly, the tension from the day’s work gradually melting away into the mattress beneath him. Yangyang makes quick work of Renjun’s uniform while he’s pliant, leaving them in a heap on the floor until he’s just in his underwear. Renjun pants lightly throughout, hands fluttering over Yangyang’s back as Yangyang leaves a trail of kisses down his jaw, his neck, then back up to his cheek, one hand dipping beneath his waistband, teasing. Every single one of his nerve endings is slowly, inexplicably, being lit on fire.

And then Yangyang bites down ‒ hard ‒ on his earlobe.

Renjun seizes up immediately. He gasps, mouth falling open, hands flying up to tangle themselves into Yangyang’s hair, still slightly damp with melted snow. His back arches up, body pressing up against the firm, warm line of Yangyang’s body.

“Oh.” Renjun can hear the smugness in Yangyang’s voice. His breath tickles against the shell of his ear. “You liked that.”

Fuck, if that isn’t hot. Renjun’s mouth moves of its own accord. “Do it again,” he demands.

“So bossy,” Yangyang murmurs, but he complies, and this time, he adds a swirl of his tongue to soothe the burn.

Renjun is getting light-headed. They’ve barely done anything, but all of his blood is rushing south and he’s painfully aware of how hard and leaking he already is. When Yangyang cups a hand around him through the fabric of his underwear and squeezes, Renjun feels like he’s about to burst out of his skin.

Yangyang’s hands hover above his waistband. “Can I…”

Fuck. “Yes.” Renjun just manages to swallow down the please that threatens to follow.

Yangyang flashes him a grin, predatory, then tugs. Renjun helpfully lifts his hips up, his underwear sliding off, Yangyang’s following while he’s up, and he can’t help but blush as they pause to take each other in. Yangyang is all smooth skin and lean muscle, his cock hanging heavy between his legs, thin and flushed red. The single lamp illuminating the room bronzes him gold, and he’s so beautiful that Renjun’s mouth waters.

“God. You,” Renjun says, unable to form the words.

“Me? Look at you,” Yangyang says roughly, and any self-consciousness Renjun may have had about the softness of his belly or their state of undress is immediately dispelled. He climbs back over Renjun, bracing himself on one elbow while his free hand trails down Renjun’s stomach. Yangyang takes the both of them in hand, long fingers wrapping around them easily, and when he rolls his hips carefully, the noise that’s dragged out of Renjun’s throat is truly embarrassing.

“I ‒ ” Renjun’s hands scrabble uselessly at Yangyang’s shoulders, arms, back. He’s dizzy with desire, unable to verbalise what he wants. “I haven’t ‒ ”

Yangyang presses his lips to the pulse point on his neck. “Relax. Let me take care of you.”

The embarrassment over his inexperience is punched out of his head when Yangyang draws back and snaps his hips forward, once, twice, Renjun losing count quickly. His hands settle around Yangyang’s neck, threading through the strands at the nape, eventually finding it in himself to buck his hips upwards each time Yangyang bears down. The friction between the two of them and Yangyang’s hand is delicious and burning, the slide aided when he licks a stripe up Yangyang’s palm, messy and wet, before it returns to the space between them.

“Don’t,” Yangyang pants when Renjun bites down on a moan after a particularly vicious thrust. His temple glistens with sweat, and when Renjun kisses it, he can taste salt. “Let me ‒ let me hear you.”

Yangyang’s hand twists just so, and Renjun makes sure not to hold back, keening high and throaty, so sudden that Yangyang laughs. When Yangyang drops his forehead to his, Renjun leans up, kissing wherever he can reach until they’re both too caught up in their movements, only able to pant into each other’s mouths. Renjun’s burning up, kindling to Yangyang’s lit match, heat pooling and coiling in his belly. It’s so good, it’s so fucking good, surrounded by nothing but Yangyang and heat and the smell of sweat and sex, and when Renjun closes his eyes all he can feel is Yangyang, Yangyang, Yangyang.

Without warning, Yangyang moves to his ear and bites, and that’s all it takes. Renjun gasps, eyes flying open as his orgasm cuts through him, white-hot and sudden, spreading all over Yangyang’s fingers and onto their stomachs.

Yangyang trembles beneath his hands, still twisted at the base of his skull. He buries his face into the crook of Renjun’s neck, sucking and biting and licking at the skin there. His movements start to grow erratic. “Renjun. I’m ‒ I’m gonna ‒ ”

He comes not a moment later with a grunt. Renjun rocks him through it, breathes in tandem with him as he spills hot and sticky, adding to the mess between them. Yangyang manages to roll to the side before collapsing onto the bed.

They lay there, boneless, breaths slowly evening out and coming down from their respective highs. Eventually, Yangyang gets up and goes to bring a damp washcloth, cleaning them both up with quick, efficient motions. They dress in silence, movements slow ‒ Renjun picking his clothes off the floor, Yangyang shrugging on a bathrobe ‒ and before Renjun can turn tail and run to mull over the magnitude of what has just happened, Yangyang stops him.

“That was fun,” he says. There’s a glow to his skin as he leans heavily against the doorframe, none of that biting urgency as they tumbled into bed. “Same time in two weeks?”

Renjun’s heart leaps beneath the paper-thin skin of his chest. It takes all of his self-control to keep his expression smooth as he turns the offer over in his head. Yangyang wants to do this again. Yangyang wants to do this again.

“Okay,” Renjun says, the carpeted floors soaking up the sound. “It’s a date.”

>>>

It takes Renjun six clandestine visits to realise he’s in love with Yangyang.

It takes Yangyang the same amount of time to dispel any notion that they could be anything more than what they are.

Renjun finally works up the courage around the beginning of spring. He makes sure he’s facing away, voice deceptively casual, when he asks him. “You don’t ‒ you don’t have someone waiting for you back home, do you?”

“Hm?” Yangyang’s voice is raspier than usual, a consequence of Renjun fucking into his mouth senseless. It wasn’t even his idea ‒ Yangyang had dropped to his knees as soon as the door had closed behind Renjun, urging him on with muffled moans each time he had thrust forward and a vice grip around his thighs, and, well.

Who is Renjun to deny Yangyang of what he wants?

He would never admit this to anyone, but hearing the abuse he’s wrecked on Yangyang’s throat is strangely satisfactory. Evidence that Renjun was here, was with Yangyang, even if all other traces of his presence will be erased from the room.

“A boyfriend? Girlfriend?” Renjun tries to keep his tone airy. “Any jealous spouses I should be aware of?”

“Oh.” Yangyang laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and Renjun feels a spark of hope. “No. Relationships… they’re not for me. I tried it once, but it didn’t work out so well. Something about never being there and the long distance, you know? I don’t think they’re for me.”

Renjun’s heart plummets. He pauses, midway through slipping his shoes back on, and glances over his shoulder. Yangyang lounges on the bed, propped up against the pillows and with his arms crossed behind his head, but the eyes fixated on the ceiling are sharp and sober. He’s gorgeous like this, as gorgeous as the first time he laid eyes on him. He looks untouchable, and that’s one thing Renjun has come to learn. Even when Yangyang is near, pressed up against him, inside him, in reality, he’s so very far away.

Already it hurts when he shifts his weight from where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. There are visible bruises littered across his body from today, from when Yangyang had gripped too tight or bitten too hard. Each time they come together it’s a test of limits, Yangyang pinning, pushing, pulling, taking a little more, until they’re both spent and sated and undone.

In the last few months, Renjun’s body has ached in more ways than he had thought it could. What’s one more?

“Right.” Renjun reaches down to tie his remaining shoelace into a bow. His fingers shake. His voice comes out steady. “Thank you for telling me.”

<<<

Renjun hasn’t done anything but glare at his latest artwork, propped up on his easel, for the last hour. He should really finish working on this, now that he finally has the day off and the sun is still up, but he can’t help but look at his piece with dissatisfaction. He feels terribly uninspired ‒ the forest green and brown brushstrokes look half-hearted and uninteresting, and there are still scores of white canvas left to fill.

Maybe it isn’t him, though. Maybe it’s his clients, who always want the same thing: valleys and mountains and rivers with the odd stork flying in the background, and god, he’s bored.

He’s so bored.

Renjun sighs, throwing his paintbrush down in frustration, and pulls a scrap of paper towards him instead, intent on drawing something, anything other than the generic landscape pieces that are always asked of him. He picks up a pencil, idly thinking of sketching a scene: Jeno with his new hairstyle, Donghyuck laughing at the wonky line at the back of his head because the barber had sneezed midway through the appointment. Except the portrait that bleeds into the paper is softer, more intimate: a smaller nose, hair fanning across the pillow, lips stretched into a wide grin ‒

The lead of the pencil breaks. Ears burning, Renjun crumples the unfinished drawing of Yangyang into a ball and tosses it into his wastepaper basket.

He should really get back to his painting.

>>>

“So,” Yangyang says. “What do you do?”

Renjun sets the kettle to a boil, then looks over at him. Yangyang is still in bed, the sheets artfully draped across him like in old oil paintings he used to see in books. “You know what I do. I work here.”

“Not that,” Yangyang huffs. He turns on his side, propping himself up on an elbow. “I meant, like, what do you do? For fun?”

“What is this? Twenty questions?”

“I mean, I guess?”

Renjun looks at him cautiously. “I wasn’t aware we were getting to know each other.”

Yangyang blinks. “Aren’t we?”

Renjun’s stomach twists unpleasantly. He thinks he’s done well, so far. It’s easy to keep his thoughts and feelings at bay when Yangyang is halfway across the world, flying back and forth between exotic countries. Less so, when Yangyang is here and real and holding him so close he can feel each flicker of his pulse.

You can always end this, the little voice in Renjun’s head says. Get to the root of your problem, and cut it off. You don’t have to keep coming back. What’s stopping you?

Yangyang must see the look on his face, because he deflates. “I just wanted to ‒ you know what, never mind.”

He flops back down on the bed. Renjun stands in the middle of the room, stuck. The kettle continues to bubble away, oblivious to the abrupt silence.

What do you do for fun? Renjun contemplates the question and cycles through his routine. On weekdays, he wakes up. Clocks in at the hotel. Grabs lunch with Jeno or Donghyuck. Works, and goes home before the sun sets or before the sun rises, depending on which shift he takes. On weekends, he launders and irons his uniform. Tends to the plants in his garden, full and blooming now that spring is in full swing. Switches on the radio and draws or paints, if the inspiration strikes him or if there’s a commission due, a cup of tea and silence for company.

He’s struck with the sudden realisation of how very small and monotonous his life is. How very dull Yangyang must find him.

The thing in his stomach twists again, and he fights it back. “I paint.”

“Really?” That gets Yangyang’s attention. “What kind of stuff?”

Renjun turns back around, reaching for two teacups and saucers. “Landscapes, mostly. People here like that sort of thing. I get commissions, from time to time.”

“Yeah?” Yangyang gets off the bed and pads over, pressing himself up against Renjun’s back and snaking an arm around his waist. When he breathes, puffs of hot air tickle the back of Renjun’s neck. “How about people? Would you sketch me if I asked?”

“No,” Renjun says immediately, flushing at the memory of a half-finished drawing tossed in the trash. “Don’t be so full of yourself.”

Yangyang burrows into the crook of his neck in spite of his answer. Renjun feels his smile against his shoulder. “Okay.”

The kettle comes to a boil, and Renjun shuts off the hotplate. This trip’s gift is a tin of chamomile tea. Renjun adds a bag to each teacup, and watches as the tea steeps into the hot water, slowly turning it daffodil. They carry their teacups to bed, and Yangyang scoots over until their sides are pressed up against each other. The brew smells faintly of flowers and honey, and when Renjun takes a sip, the taste is comforting yet delicate.

Yangyang watches him drink. “You like it?”

Renjun takes another sip before answering, letting the brew roll over his tongue. It’s fantastic. “It’s nice.”

Yangyang presses his lips together but his smile still breaks through, almost like he can see right through Renjun. In a startling move, he reaches out to twine their free hands together. “Only the best for you.”

Yangyang, Renjun has come to realise, will say and do things like that, casually and often. Things that rightfully belong in a relationship, or said to someone who is a viable romantic prospect, when they are neither of those things to each other. Renjun knows better ‒ should know better ‒ but he can’t help but soak it up like a cat in sunshine.

“Next time,” Yangyang says, squeezing Renjun’s hand, “will you show me something you’ve painted? Something you’ve created?”

He looks so earnest. Almost like he cares. Renjun can feel his resolve crumbling, but it doesn’t feel like defeat. Instead, he thinks of ivy, thriving, growing into the cracks of his heart.

He lifts his teacup to his lips. “Maybe someday.”

>>>

When Renjun leaves Yangyang’s room, well past his shift and in the middle of the night, the last thing he expects is to run into Donghyuck in the hallway, his mouth hanging open.

“What the fuck,” Donghyuck says.

Renjun tries, and fails, not to startle. “Wh ‒ What’re you doing here?”

“The lady down the hall says there’s no hot water again,” Donghyuck parries back easily. “What’re you doing here so late?”

“I ‒ ” Renjun fumbles for an excuse as he takes stock of himself. The jacket of his uniform is slung over his arm. His lips are shamefully swollen red, from all the times Yangyang had caught them between his teeth. He hadn’t even bothered to tidy his hair, figuring no one would catch him sneaking his way back to the employee changing room this late at night. “I was just ‒ ”

Donghyuck, never one for patience, takes pity on him. “It’s okay, I don’t need the details. But,” Donghyuck’s eyes drift to the low neckline of Renjun’s shirt, which does nothing to conceal the hickeys sucked into his collarbone, and his expression is equal parts mischievous and disapproving, “it sure looks like you had a good time.”

Renjun could strangle him. “Hyuck!”

“What?”

“We’re not having this conversation out here!”

“Fine.” Down the hall, a door opens, and the unmistakable rush of water can be heard. A guest’s head pokes out of the room, looking up and down the corridor. Donghyuck grimaces and jabs his finger in Renjun’s direction before he starts towards the room. “Since some of us are actually working the job they’re paid to do, you’re going to buy me lunch and tell me all about it.”

<<<

Renjun sighs gustily, dropping his pencil for what feels like the hundredth time. “Hey, you know you need to stay still for this to work, right?”

“I’m trying!”

“Well, try harder.”

Yangyang pouts. It takes all of Renjun’s effort not to stand up to cross the room to kiss it off his face, and then a little more when Yangyang actually complies and goes still and slack against the headboard of his bed.

Renjun picks his pencil back up. “Just a few more minutes, alright?”

“Mmmmph,” comes Yangyang’s response as he dutifully keeps his mouth closed. Renjun has to hide his smile behind his sketchbook.

The lights are turned down low in the room. Yangyang calls it mood lighting, says he prefers it after spending long-haul flights staring at a dashboard of colourful buttons that make his eyes water. Renjun has no reason to object. He gets to work on depth and perception and shadows from his spot on the chaise lounge, shrouded in darkness and away from the lamps. More importantly, he gets to shamelessly drink in the sight of Yangyang lounging on the bed until he gets his fill, all under the pretext of sketching him.

Still, Yangyang catches him looking. “You’re staring.”

“How else am I going to finish this?”

Yangyang smirks. “You haven’t drawn anything for the last minute.”

Renjun flushes and resists the urge to chuck his pencil at Yangyang — that would only give him the satisfaction. Instead, he takes a deep breath and refocuses on details, parts of the whole: a flash of bony ankle from where Yangyang’s pyjamas have ridden up. The beads of condensation starting to form on the outside of the glass in his hands, a product of the summer evening heat. The slight dimple in Yangyang’s cheek as he grins lazily at him.

Time in this room, with Yangyang, always seems to pass too quickly. Renjun loses himself in his drawing, occasionally glancing up for reference, ducking his head down whenever he catches Yangyang’s twinkling eyes. Once he’s satisfied, he lays his pencil down. “I’m done.”

“Let me see!” Yangyang leaps off the bed and circles around the back of the lounge. He doesn’t say anything for so long that Renjun starts to feel slightly anxious. When he twists in his seat to look, Yangyang’s expression is uncharacteristically pensive.

“It’s good,” Yangyang says at last.

Renjun quirks a brow, only slightly disbelieving. That pause was far too long. “Thanks?”

“You do commissions, too, right?”

“Sometimes. For old aunties and uncles. I told you that they like landscape paintings, remember?”

Yangyang hums, contemplative. “Have you ever thought of applying to art school?”

Renjun would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it once or twice. Except there weren’t many options for a kid hailing from a small town, one that he had never left in his life, with nothing more than a dream and a handful of drawings. He had debts and funeral expenses to pay, too, after his parents passed, and the only thing on his mind at the time had been finding a stable job.

And then he had gotten comfortable in the little space that life had given him to breathe, the years had passed, and he never thought to look beyond.

“Not really. I don’t ‒ I’m not trained, or anything.”

Yangyang cocks his head. “That’s the point of art school, though?”

“All the good schools are abroad. I didn’t really have the funds for it at the time.” It comes out weirdly defensive, and Renjun bites his lip to stop himself from saying more.

“What about now?”

Renjun frowns. “What about now?”

“There are more and more airlines opening up routes to the country. And you’ve been working here for a while, haven’t you? You have money?”

Renjun’s heard that the big cities in their country are getting more flights in. And he’s built up a modest nest egg for himself, partly because of the tips and other shifts he’s picked up at the hotel, with the small increase in tourists carried in by the fortnightly flights. He’s no longer the kid who was so desperate for a job that he tagged along to the interview at the hotel when Donghyuck and Jeno said they wanted to work there. He’s older now. He’s got savings, a handful of clients, and enough drawings and paintings and sketches to make up a portfolio.

“Yes, but ‒ ”

“You could go,” Yangyang says. “What’s stopping you?”

Renjun feels exposed under the weight of his gaze. He can already feel himself curling up so the softest parts of himself are hidden away. It must seem bizarre to someone like Yangyang: so big and bright and beautiful, always on the move, dozens of stamps from different countries painting the pages of his passport rainbow. How does Renjun explain to someone like that that there’s a certain comfort and safety of remaining in the very place he grew up in? The deep-rooted fear of taking a risk and leaving behind everything and everyone he’s known?

It’s an innocuous enough question: what’s stopping him?

Everything, Renjun wants to say. Nothing. Me.

“Nobody leaves this town,” he says, distilling it down into two sentences, the words sticking in his throat. “Nobody has, in a long while.”

A flicker of something passes across Yangyang’s face, too quick for Renjun to catch. Before he can chase it, Yangyang places a hand on his shoulder, and Renjun feels his warmth bleed through the thin cotton of his top.

“I mean, I’m not an artist or anything,” Yangyang says. “But if this is something you’re passionate about, something you want… You should consider it.”

There’s something about the way Yangyang is looking at him ‒ sincere, heated, an undercurrent of tension clear in the way his fingers tighten imperceptibly around Renjun’s shoulders.

Renjun opens his mouth, but he has no idea what he’s going to say. Yangyang doesn’t wait around for it. He gives Renjun’s shoulder one last squeeze, and then he’s already drifting away, back to bed. “Just ‒ think about it. If you want.”

Tomorrow, Yangyang will leave him again, a dandelion seed taking to the currents of the wind. And Renjun, with his roots strong and unmoving, will watch him go from the ground, waiting, wanting.

Oh, how Renjun wants.

>>>

“You know,” Donghyuck says, tone light, half-teasing, half-not. His congee sits untouched in front of him. The steam rises from its surface and into the space between the two of them, mingling with his words. “I was kidding about the love letters.”

Summer is ending soon, but the air that rises from the ground is still unbearably humid and clings to Renjun’s skin. It’s far too hot for congee, in his opinion, but Donghyuck was in the mood for it, and Renjun hadn’t had the energy to fight him on his food choices.

“I told you,” Renjun says. “Those aren’t love letters.”

“So you guys aren’t together?”

Renjun can’t meet his eyes. “We ‒ we have an arrangement.”

“You mean you guys fuck.”

Trust Donghyuck to be so blunt. Renjun swirls his spoon in his bowl, watching the rice grains and scallions spin around each other. “If you want to put it so crudely, then yes.”

Renjun loves Donghyuck. He might be the best friend he’s ever had. But that comes with its own set of disadvantages. Donghyuck sees right through Renjun; sees the yearning, the love that’s not reciprocated, and his face crumples in understanding. “Oh, Renjunnie.”

Renjun takes a mouthful of congee without cooling it, the broth scalding his tongue, and maybe he can blame the tears that suddenly well up in his eyes on that. He manages to swallow it down, and when Donghyuck swims back into vision, he doesn’t look as pitying as Renjun expected. Instead, he looks concerned, forehead creased in worry.

“The flight route,” Donghyuck says cautiously, and Renjun feels his stomach drop. “You’ve heard the rumours that…”

“And?” Renjun’s heard the rumours. That doesn’t mean they’re true. “What about them?”

Donghyuck raises his hands, conciliatory. “Hey. I’m not ‒ I’m just being realistic.” His tone is gentle, like Renjun is fragile and made to be broken. Renjun hates it so much. “I just… Are you sure this is what you want?”

A series of images presents itself: Yangyang’s smile reserved for moments in the middle of the night, sleep-soft and unbridled. Yangyang hooking a chin over his shoulder, watching him steep tea from a distant land. Yangyang cupping his face, licking at the seam of his mouth until he opens up, kissing him so softly, so sweetly, a forest fire burning him slowly from the inside out.

Renjun hunches over his bowl and cups his hands around it, letting the warmth leach into his skin. Summer is ending soon, and if the rumours are true, there isn’t much time left. “It’s not about what I want. It’s about what I can have.”

>>>

“You know, I saw you looking at me, that first day.”

The air-conditioning in the suite had given up the ghost earlier. As a coping mechanism, they had dragged the chaise lounge over to the windows, thrown wide open to allow the air to circulate. Renjun sits between Yangyang’s knees, his back pressed up against Yangyang’s front, a glass in his hands. An identical glass dangles precariously from Yangyang’s fingers, too close to the edge of the windowsill for Renjun’s liking. Yangyang’s other hand runs up and down Renjun’s arm, featherlight, the curtains billowing around them from the cool autumn breeze.

Renjun studies his drink, pretending to be unaffected. It’s the one thing Yangyang claims he can make, but he isn’t sure if the slice of lime is for decoration only, or meant to be eaten. “Did you.”

“Yeah.” Yangyang’s fingers run up, down, and up again. “I could tell you were interested, but then you didn’t do anything, so.”

Renjun lets his head loll back, looking up at Yangyang through his eyelashes. “It would’ve been inappropriate for me to have initiated anything.”

“Please,” Yangyang snorts. “You obviously haven’t been to other hotels.”

It makes Renjun wonder, not for the first time, if he’s the first. Did Yangyang make it a habit to find a casual fling in each country he visited? Are there people out there warming a bed, waiting for him to return to them, just like Renjun is? Does Renjun really want to know?

Yangyang presses a kiss to the side of his head, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Anyway. I was happy to take the first step. Cost me a nice postcard and a bar of my favourite chocolate, but it was worth it.”

“Cheesy,” Renjun says, but it comes out tender.

“Don’t lie, you loved it,” Yangyang volleys back, and, well, what is Renjun going to say to that?

He primly lifts his drink to his lips instead. Renjun misjudges how strong it is, the bitter notes giving way to a strong, distinctly sterile burn, and he ends up wincing around the small mouthful he had taken.

Yangyang shakes with silent laughter behind him. “Did I make it too strong?” He leans forward, plucking the lime wedge from the rim of Renjun’s glass and squeezing it over the drink, turning it cloudy. “Here. Try it now.”

The lime cuts through the bitterness of the drink, revealing bright, zesty notes, and it goes down a lot easier the second time. Renjun runs his tongue over his lips, surprised. “Oh. It’s good.”

“It’s my favourite,” Yangyang says, proud. “Now it can be yours, too.”

Some of the juice has run down Yangyang’s fingers and the curve of his wrist, leaving a long, sticky trail behind. Without a second though, Renjun brings it to his lips. He watches Yangyang’s eyes turn dark when his tongue darts out to chase the stray drop and lick the skin clean. Hears his quiet fuck when Renjun takes his fingers into his mouth, careful to curl his tongue around each digit, tasting lime and salt and that something so uniquely Yangyang that he’s gotten himself addicted to.

He pulls off, and is gratified to hear that Yangyang’s voice is pitched low and raspy. “If you wanted to mess around some more, you could’ve just asked.”

Renjun sets down his glass, careful not to spill a drop. “Consider me asking, then.”

They move around each other like it’s second nature, Renjun climbing into Yangyang’s lap, Yangyang’s hands automatically settling around his waist. It’s Renjun’s favourite way to kiss. It’s how he stays in control. He can bear down, hands in Yangyang’s hair, deepening the kiss; or he can bait, pull away when he wants to tease, make Yangyang chase him, swallowing up his pitiful whines when he drops his head back down. It’s a delicious push and pull, Yangyang following him, meeting him every step of the way, the inside of his mouth tasting like the juniper and lemon of his duty-free gin, none of the burn but all of the brightness. Renjun starts to feel dizzy; from the alcohol or the shallow breaths he takes or the desire flickering low in his gut, he doesn’t know.

He stays on top, even as Yangyang works him open, slow and sweet. Stays in control, setting the pace, making sure Yangyang falls apart at the seams first so he’s too blissed out to notice how Renjun looks at him after.

It’s only while he comes down from his high that Renjun allows himself a moment of weakness: burying his face in Yangyang’s neck; breathing in the scent of the hotel shower gel mixed with the natural musk; tangling their legs together. Yangyang runs warm, and everywhere they touch offers sweet relief.

Renjun thinks he could fall asleep like this every night. Thinks he could stay like this forever.

But he can’t. Renjun stretches to create some space between them, braces himself to get up and go. Counts down from ten, then, because he’s stalling, once more.

“I should ‒ ”

He’s stopped by a hand encircling his wrist. When Renjun looks back, Yangyang’s eyes are soft in the moonlight. “Hey. Stay, will you? Just for tonight.”

He said that the last time, and the time before that. Renjun knows it’s dangerous, what he’s doing. Not just because he could get caught ‒ has gotten caught by Donghyuck ‒ but also because the longer he stays, the harder it is to leave.

Renjun can pretend he’s in control all he wants. But in reality, against his better judgement, he’s nurtured what was a small seedling and allowed it to overrun his heart, until he can’t even see past its branches, encompassing in size and filling his head and heart.

The hopeful expression on Yangyang’s face starts to morph into something else the longer Renjun takes to answer. The vines around his heart twist, squeezing urgently, and that’s all it takes for him to cave.

“Okay. Just for tonight.”

He tries not to read too much into the way Yangyang lights up. It’s an awful thing to think, in the face of so much beauty, but maybe Renjun should have done them all a favour and cut it off at the root from the very beginning.

>>>

All Vision Airlines flights to be discontinued due to low demand for the service.

Renjun doesn’t make it past the headline. He sets the newspaper down, careful to align it with the edges of the coffee table he’s just finished dusting. The text, typed out in bold, italicised font, stares back at him mockingly.

He really should have seen this coming.

>>>

“So,” Yangyang says, breaking the silence. “I guess you’ve heard the news.”

Renjun’s fingers tighten around the mug in his hands. He hasn’t taken a sip of it since stepping into the room, where Yangyang had been waiting with lukewarm tea. He had even led Renjun to the bed and sat him down, like he was the bearer of bad news. And maybe he is ‒ he certainly looks like it, with his sombre eyes and slumped shoulders.

That’s ungenerous of Renjun. If he were to look in a mirror, his face would look very much the same.

Renjun nods. What else can he do? “Will you and the rest be alright?”

Yangyang shrugs. “I guess. They’ll probably just reallocate us to other flights.”

“To ‒ to the cities? Here?”

Yangyang shakes his head, and all of Renjun’s hopes immediately come crashing down. “I don’t think so. This was our only route.”

The lights are turned down low; the heating, all the way up. It’s quiet, save for the buzzing thoughts in his head and the hum of the radiator in the background. They’ve ended up sitting next to each other at the foot of the bed, close but not touching. Yangyang hasn’t looked at him since they sat down, his demeanour tense, eyes hidden behind hair that badly needs a trim. Already, the distance between them seems so much wider than the foot of space between their thighs. Already, he’s so far away.

“Well,” Renjun says, in a poorly thought out attempt to lighten the mood. “At least it’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

It falls flat. “Yeah.” Yangyang exhales sharply, breath fluttering the shaggy ends of his bangs. “Yeah, it has.”

There are bags under Yangyang’s eyes, probably from the stress of the news. Renjun wants to press the pad of his thumbs to them and sweep them away. He sets his mug down instead, tucks his hands under his thighs so he doesn’t reach out inadvertently. “Hey,” he says gently. “You must be tired. We don’t have to ‒ ”

“What? Why?” Yangyang asks, sudden and guarded. “Do you ‒ do you not want to?”

He’s looking at Renjun now. He looks ‒ scared, almost, eyes wide and bright, the corners of his mouth turned down. Or maybe Renjun is being presumptuous, thinking that he knows Yangyang well enough to read his expressions.

Renjun shakes his head. “No. What makes you think that?”

Yangyang relaxes. “Okay. Then why ‒ ”

He cuts himself off, the same scared look back on his face. He looks so small and unsure that Renjun wonders whether ‒

“Yangyang.” He takes a chance and extends a hand into the space between them, palm up. Hovering. Hoping. “Come here.”

It’s as if that’s all Yangyang needed. A familiar feeling unfurls in Renjun’s chest when Yangyang scoots over, closing the space between them instantly. He swings a leg over Renjun’s hips, straddling his thighs, crowding him up against the headboard.

Yangyang kisses him like their very first time, hot and urgent and all-consuming. Renjun tries to follow his lead, but Yangyang moves like lightning, marking up his neck, hands tugging lightly at Renjun’s hair, ass grinding down on Renjun’s half-hard cock, and he can barely keep up.

Renjun hisses when Yangyang catches his lip between his teeth, the bite stinging. “Shhh, slow down.”

“I can’t,” Yangyang pants. His hands are flying all over Renjun’s skin, like he wants to touch everywhere all at once. “I can’t, this is ‒ ”

The last time? Renjun thinks. He swallows thickly, shoving the thought aside for now. He grabs Yangyang’s wrists and presses his lips to the knuckles of his hands, tender, before pulling them close to his chest. Yangyang stills.

“Hey, I know,” Renjun whispers, soothing. “I know. It’s okay. We have all the time in the world.”

“Do we?”

They don’t.

“It’ll be enough.”

It won’t ‒ not for Renjun, anyway. He thinks he’ll never get enough of Yangyang for as long as he lives.

Renjun sweeps at the soft skin under Yangyang’s eye just like he wanted to. Dips his head to kiss the inside of his palm. Pours all of his love out and paints Yangyang’s skin with it. “So let me make it good for you, alright?”

Yangyang’s lips part. He inhales shakily, and the tremor runs all the way down to Renjun’s spine. “Okay.”

Where Yangyang had led, frantic and feverish, now, he follows. Renjun lets him keep sitting astride his thighs, but the kisses turn long and lingering, a fire slowly stoking. They undress slowly, quietly, clothes getting lost to the floor, until there’s nothing but a thin sheen of sweat between them.

Renjun rolls them over gently until Yangyang’s back hits the mattress, and his breath catches as he takes the sight in. Like this, Yangyang’s hair fans across the pillows, black stark against the crisp white of the sheets, his chest heaving from the kissing and the sudden change in positions. His eyes are half-lidded in pleasure, lips curving upwards to match the shape of Renjun’s mouth, long limbs relaxed and languid. All the previous heaviness is gone; left in its place is nothing but the liquid light in Yangyang’s eyes.

“Look at you.” He runs a hand down Yangyang’s face, thumb catching on his bottom lip. “God, Yangyang, you’re so pretty.”

Yangyang flushes, red spreading across his face and down to his neck. He turns to nuzzle his face into Renjun’s hand, uncharacteristically shy. “Am I?”

He likes it. Why hasn’t Renjun said it before? “The prettiest,” he affirms.

It’s made all the more true when he presses his fingers into Yangyang’s mouth, running the pads against the edge of his teeth before Yangyang catches them with a swirl of his tongue. Yangyang looks up at him through his lashes, daring and dangerous, and Renjun has to bite down on his lip to stifle his moan.

Yangyang keeps it up, sucking down Renjun’s fingers, slippery and sensual. He looks at Renjun all the while, unwavering; Renjun can only look back, dumbstruck, feeling the tables turn. When Yangyang moans around his fingers, the sound travels straight down to his cock, and Renjun can’t help but rut up against the bony jut of his hip.

He pulls his fingers out, glistening with Yangyang’s spit, and replaces them with his lips, teeth, tongue. “Fuck. You don’t know what you do to me.”

“I have some idea,” Yangyang answers, one hand wrapping around Renjun’s length and squeezing. Renjun groans and drops his forehead to Yangyang’s shoulder.

Yangyang is hard against his hip, rutting up when Renjun bears down. A bead of sweat trails down Yangyang’s neck. Renjun catches it with his tongue before it can pool in his collarbone, the taste making him heady. He starts to babble, the heat getting to him, his mouth running away from him. “You feel so good.” He sits up, trying to manoeuvre himself onto Yangyang’s lap. His cock presses, hot and insistent, to the curve of Renjun’s ass. “I’m going to make you feel so good, can’t wait to have you inside ‒ ”

Yangyang stops him. “Wait,” he says, breathless. “I want ‒ I want ‒ ”

Renjun watches, dazed, as Yangyang grabs his hand. Yangyang guides it past his stomach, then lower, and lower still, until Renjun’s fingers are pressed up against his hole.

Renjun’s eyes widen ‒ they’ve never done it this way before. “Are you sure?”

Yangyang’s entire face is pink. He looks so vulnerable, stretched out beneath Renjun, exposing what must be the most intimate part of himself to him, but his expression flashes steel. “Yes.” His hand finds Renjun’s, fingers intertwining. “I’m sure.”

A spark of desire burns through his bloodstream. Renjun fastens a hand to his hip, steadying Yangyang, but also himself. “Okay. Okay.”

He’s going to make this good for Yangyang. He wants to make this good for Yangyang.

God, he’s so in love.

He makes sure Yangyang’s looking when he takes him in his mouth, length hot and heavy on his tongue. He makes sure he’s looking, too, when he starts to slowly stretch him open. Yangyang tenses at first, body fighting against the intrusion, but he begins to relax with every bob of Renjun’s head and every kiss Renjun places on the flesh of his groin, to the inside of his thigh. When Renjun adjusts the angle of his fingers to press against the little bundle of nerves, a shudder rips through Yangyang’s body and his hands fly up to find purchase in Renjun’s hair. Soon, Yangyang’s canting his hips to meet every drag of Renjun’s fingers, practically begging for more.

“Please,” he whimpers as Renjun scissors his fingers, marvelling at the way he gives in spite of the tightness. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure?”

Yangyang kisses him in lieu of a response, nipping at his neck and ears, tongue laving over the bites. Yes, Renjun hears, god yes. He pulls Renjun to lie flush against him, nothing but expanses of damp skin, Renjun’s fingers sliding out with a slick sound.

“How do you — ?”

Yangyang settles on his back, pulling Renjun over him, his arms coming up to wrap loosely around Renjun’s neck. “Like this. I want to see you.”

Somewhere between his ears, Renjun’s heart pounds. “Alright.”

It takes what seems like ages. Renjun’s arm trembles as it supports his entire weight, his other hand holding himself steady to line himself up. And Yangyang ‒ Yangyang lies still below him, legs dropping open to form a bracket around his knees. He locks eyes with Renjun; his expression is peaceful, patient.

If Renjun’s not careful, he’ll think it looks a lot like love.

Renjun holds Yangyang’s gaze, pushes in slowly. Immediately, Yangyang’s tight, velvet heat envelopes him; at the same time, there’s a sharp intake of breath, and Yangyang’s hands fly up to grip his arms.

Worry cuts through the wave of arousal sparking in Renjun’s gut. “Are you ‒ ”

“I’m fine.” Yangyang’s head tips back, and he forces his body to relax. “Keep going. Keep going.”

He keeps going. Renjun moves excruciatingly slowly, feels Yangyang relax around him as he closes the gap between them. Once Renjun bottoms out, they both sigh in unison, long and shaky.

“You okay?”

Yangyang’s fingers dig deeper into the soft flesh of his biceps. “Yes. Fuck. Move. Please.”

Renjun obeys. He starts off with a slow build, a heavy grind. The hum of the radiator, the chill of the air ‒ that all fades away, his world shrinking down to the man panting in his arms and the point at which their bodies are connected. He pushes down on Yangyang’s knee when his breaths come faster and shallower, opening him up further, starting to fuck him harder.

It’s not enough. Yangyang wraps his legs around Renjun’s waist to pull him closer, his hips tilting upwards, and on the next thrust he keens, high and breathy, and Renjun’s brain short-circuits.

“There,” Yangyang says, legs tightening around him. “Like that. Just like that.”

Renjun can’t talk; can’t think. All he registers are sensations. The heat rolling off Yangyang’s body in waves. The painful dig of his heels into the small of his back every time he cants his hips backwards, like Yangyang can’t stand the thought of there being more than an inch of space between them. Every cry punched out of his lungs as Renjun drives into him again and again, urged on by more, harder, faster.

Renjun gives and gives and gives. He’s going to make Yangyang remember this. He’s going to make Yangyang remember him.

Their noses brush when Yangyang loops an arm around his neck to pull him closer. Yangyang is trembling, panting, puffs of hot air fanning against Renjun’s face. At some point, his bangs have fallen back over his eyes. Renjun lifts a hand to brush them back, and can’t resist dragging it down Yangyang’s face, feeling his cheek’s warmth in the palm of his hand. His tempo is thrown off, and the arm holding him up burns, but he keeps his hand there anyway.

“Look at you,” he whispers. “So gorgeous.”

“Fuck,” Yangyang says, half-sound, half-air. His hand works between them, stroking over his own length. “Fuck, keep looking at me ‒ ”

“I am.” Renjun leans down to take his ear in between his teeth, moves to capture his lips. “So fucking pretty, all spread out like this, you’re so tight ‒ ”

Yangyang whimpers against his mouth. His hand speeds up.

“Yangyang.” A name; a prayer. There’s an ache building in his abs, his arm, but Yangyang is close, so close, and Renjun’s hips keep snapping forwards. “Yangyang, come for me, baby, I want you to ‒ ”

“Oh my god, fuck,” Yangyang sobs, and then he’s coming, shaking and spilling hot and liquid over his hand, Renjun kissing him long and deep. Yangyang clenches and releases around Renjun as he rides through his orgasm, and it takes all of Renjun’s self-control not to pitch forwards and bury himself deep inside Yangyang, again and again.

He waits for Yangyang to stop trembling, to go lax and limp, and is just starting to pull out when his voice, punch-drunk but crystal clear, slices through the haze. “Don’t stop.”

“What ‒ ”

“I said, don’t stop,” Yangyang growls, and who is Renun to deny Yangyang of what he wants?

Renjun drops his forehead to the pillow, closing his eyes and giving in to the arousal simmering in his gut. He turns to mouth at the juncture of Yangyang’s neck and shoulder in apology as his hips move at a punishing pace, chasing his orgasm, every push into Yangyang’s body sparking electricity through his limbs. Yangyang clings to him throughout it, hands roaming over his back, his shoulders, moaning softly with every drag of his cock.

“Renjun,” Yangyang gasps, so desperately that Renjun feels like all the air has been knocked from his lungs. “Look at me.”

Renjun raises his head off the pillow, sweat dripping into his eyes, and Yangyang ‒ Yangyang is a fucking vision. His hair is matted with sweat, eyes unfocused, skin flushed and dewy. His lips are bitten and kissed raw, and he breathes heavily through them. Renjun’s hips stutter as his eyes roam over his face, committing him to memory.

“Renjun,” Yangyang chokes out again. A hand comes up to cup the back of Renjun’s head, more tender than he’s used to. His eyelashes are wet from the overstimulation. “Come for me. Come on, come on, come on, come on ‒ ”

A tear collects, then spills, from the corner of Yangyang’s eye, and that’s enough to send him over the edge. Renjun’s orgasm crashes into him, so sudden and overwhelming that a hoarse shout escapes him and he swears he sees stars. He gives a few more shallow, erratic thrusts, then collapses onto the bed, half on top of Yangyang.

They lie there, panting, slowly coming down from their respective highs. They don’t say anything for minutes. They don’t look at each other, either ‒ Renjun squeezes his eyes shut, ear to Yangyang’s chest, listening to his thundering heart quieten down. As for Yangyang ‒ there are what feel like fingers threading through his hair, but when he turns to look, Yangyang is staring up at the ceiling, his hands placed firmly by his sides.

Uneasiness creeps up on him. “I should ‒ ”

“No.” Quicker than Renjun’s ever seen, Yangyang rolls out from under him. The sudden absence of warmth reminds him that winter is coming. “Let me.”

He watches Yangyang pad over to the bathroom and shut the door behind him. There’s the sound of running water, and when Yangyang emerges a few minutes later, he’s as clean as a whistle, his hair falling into his face again. There’s a cloth in his hand, which he silently swipes in broad, gentle motions across Renjun’s body. Careful, like Renjun is delicate and made of glass. He certainly feels transparent enough as it is, with the way he holds still and holds his breath, watching Yangyang as he cleans him up.

It hits him, then, that this is real, that this is happening, that this is probably the last time they'll ever see each other. The last time that they'll ever be intimate together. Renjun wonders whether Yangyang is thinking the same thing, too. Whether Yangyang feels as hollow as he does. 

Yangyang moves away once he's done, and they get up and dress in silence, Yangyang pulling on his robe, Renjun slipping on his underwear. Not wanting to be presumptuous, Renjun starts to look for the rest of his clothes, too. They orbit around each other like planets, moving but never touching. More than ever before, Renjun can’t help but measure the distance between them in continents and flights and timezones, even though Yangyang is right in front of him, only an arm’s length away.

It’s Yangyang who reaches across the space this time. He clutches Renjun’s jacket to his chest from where he’s picked it up off the ground, knuckles white. His voice is soft. Small. “Stay with me,” he says. As if Renjun is the one who’s leaving.

Renjun’s heart cracks wide open. He pries the jacket from Yangyang’s fingers and tosses it onto a chair. Presses a kiss to the crown of Yangyang’s head. Promises, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Holds him tight, until the morning light.

>>>

“I guess this is it,” Yangyang says.

The taxi is waiting downstairs. His suitcase is packed, gripped tightly in his hand. Renjun doesn’t remember when he had stopped carrying it for him.

“I.” His mouth is so dry. “I guess it is."

“If you…” For once, Yangyang struggles with his words, a little bit of Renjun bleeding into him. “If you ever decide to come to Germany. You know where to find me, right?”

Jeno is in charge of the guest records. If Renjun wanted, he could ask for and get Yangyang’s address, no questions asked. “Yes.”

Yangyang smiles, pained and knowing. “But you won’t, will you?”

It scares him that Yangyang knows him like this, that he can anticipate his next move. Maybe that’s what happens when you’ve spent all your adult life expecting people to pass through you, to not give you a second look. It makes sense, that the one person who has some semblance of permanence in your life could know you so intimately. It’s maybe the scariest thing that has come out of this whole arrangement.

Renjun is as gentle as he can be without shattering. “I’m not big on going places. My life is here. I can’t just ‒ go.”

Yangyang looks down at his shoes. Black Oxfords with a pointed toe, polished and pristine, worth more than what Renjun makes in a month. “Okay.”

The hand around his suitcases tightens. Renjun can hear him as clear as day: can’t? Or won’t? How would you know if you don’t even try? He doesn’t have an answer for that. He doesn’t have an answer for a lot of things, nowadays.

Yangyang reaches into the pocket of his blazer, withdrawing a thin brown envelope. “I didn’t forget,” he says.

Renjun’s heart pounds at the sight of it. “I didn’t think you did.”

“It’s just ‒ just the postcard, this time. Do me a favour and don’t read it until I’m gone, okay?”

Renjun wets his lips. Nods. He takes the offered envelope. “I won’t.”

Outside, a door slams shut, followed by hurried footsteps passing the room. Yangyang turns his head slightly towards the sounds.

“I should go,” he says.

Renjun knows this. Knows that he needs to let him go. But it doesn’t make it any easier, and when he speaks, it comes out as a whisper. “Okay.”

Yangyang flexes his fingers around the handle of his suitcase once, twice, turning sharply to the entrance. He lingers by the door, the handle grasped lightly in his free hand, as if he knows that the moment he steps foot outside, everything that exists between them will crumble into ashes and be swept away.

“Safe travels,” Renjun says to Yangyang’s back.

Their relationship had only ever existed within these four walls, away from prying eyes and protected so well. So it’s fitting that it ends here, in the same place it started. No theatrics, no dramatic ending. Just Yangyang’s eyes, brown and big and bright as he looks at him one last time. The door clicking shut softly behind him as he walks away. Renjun choosing to let him go.

The breath he lets out is shaky. The back of his knees hit the edge of the bed, and he goes down easily. When he looks up, there’s a crack on the ceiling, jagged and ugly, so familiar that Renjun wonders if there’s a matching one inside of him.

I’m not big on going places, is what he wanted to say. But with you, I’m willing to get lost. With you, I feel like I’ve been found.

>>>

When it rains, Renjun learns, it pours.

“The hotel is shutting down,” his manager announces flatly, and Renjun feels his world tilt sideways.

He had known it wasn’t going to be good news, not when all the employees on shift had been called to the big ballroom for a meeting, the one that no one had rented since Zhong Chenle’s coming of age party, the one which had spewed dust and spat out cobwebs when they unlocked the doors for the first time in years. But this ‒

Anxious murmurs and shocked cries erupt around him as the news settles. Renjun glances to his right, and finds one of the kitchen aunties has buried her face in her hands, quietly sobbing, her thin, bony shoulders heaving.

He quickly averts his eyes and grips the edge of his seat, taking a deep breath in. Drags his fingernails through the runs in the fabric of the old banquet chair, willing himself not to cry. Hoping it’s just a bad dream.

It isn’t. His manager waits for them to settle down, then starts to run through things like severance payments and the last day of operations. Renjun should be paying attention, but all he can think about is this hotel, where he’s spent his childhood and most of his adult life, and all of its flaws.

An elevator that gets stuck on the third floor. Taps for hot water that run cold. Ivy, resilient and growing up and out no matter how much time he had spent weeding. A crack in the ceiling in a room he’ll always remember as Yangyang’s.

He’d never gotten around to fixing that.

The expansive ballroom suddenly feels suffocating, everything shrinking down to the way his heart flutters, quick and erratic, in his chest, and Renjun finds he can’t be there any longer. He stands up, ignoring the heads that snap his way, and darts for the door.

Outside, the world is blanketed in white — perfect, pristine, untouched by the news. Renjun’s feet take him to the meadow behind the hotel, the snow beneath his soles turning to slush, and he stumbles more than once when his foot gets caught in the hem of his coat. He feels dizzy, displaced. Like his entire world has been forcibly ripped out from under him, leaving him disoriented, gasping, and very much alone.

Except maybe he isn't.

“Thought we’d find you here.”

Renjun doesn’t ask how, doesn’t turn around at the voice, or at the unmistakable crunch of two sets of footsteps. Jeno and Donghyuck come up beside him to flank him, their presences warm and familiar. Donghyuck whimpers, soft and small, before leaning his head on Renjun’s shoulder. His hair tickles. On Renjun’s other side, Jeno threads his gloveless fingers through his.

The world keeps spinning. Together, they watch the sun dip behind the mountains, her long rays reaching out to kiss their cheeks in goodbye. The sky gradually bleeds from orange to pink to indigo. At some point, Donghyuck lifts his head and wipes his snot off with the back of his hand. Jeno never lets Renjun’s hand go.

They remain standing in the meadow long after the sky turns black. Dandelion seeds, scattered to the wind. All thinking the same thing: where are we going to go now?

<<<

“Paris,” Yangyang says. “I got them in Paris.”

Renjun looks down at the case, sturdy and made of brown leather. Fanning out across the red velvet interior, each with a dedicated holder and in a different shape, are paint brushes. He counts eight of them.

“This is,” Renjun starts to say, only to find himself at a loss for words.

“It’s nothing.” Yangyang says quickly, then pauses. “Okay, not nothing, it’s something, but ‒ just ‒ I saw them in the window, and they looked really nice, so…”

Renjun strokes the handles of the brushes, made of polished, rounded wood. The tips are made of sable, the bristles bending, bowing, when he strokes a finger across them. They’re so very soft. They must have cost Yangyang a fortune.

“I was thinking — if you ever go to art school — ”

A wave of nausea overwhelms him. “I won’t.”

Yangyang’s face is blank. He watches him carefully. “Okay. You don’t have to use them, if you don’t want to.”

It’s not that he doesn’t want to. Renjun should be down on his knees in thanks. He should be grateful. The gift is thoughtful. Sentimental. Far too intimate. Renjun wants to throw up at the thought of Yangyang strolling the streets of Paris, casually purchasing something that he needs, that would make him happy, when he’s nothing to him, nothing more than a ‒

Renjun snaps the case closed, the sound ringing out sharply. He pushes the case away from him. “I can’t accept this.”

“Renjun — ”

“It’s too much — ”

“ ‒ please ‒ ”

“ ‒ you don’t understand ‒ ”

Renjun is cut off when Yangyang reaches over to grab his hands. He looks down at them, and, wildly, can’t help but think that they fit perfectly together.

“Renjun.”

Renjun looks up. Yangyang’s eyes are gold and beseeching in the late afternoon light. He could get lost in them. Bury himself in them forever.

“Please,” Yangyang says quietly. “It’s just a gift. Take it.”

There’s a certain finality in the way he says it that Renjun doesn’t have the heart to reject. The case slides back towards him. Renjun takes it, cradling it to his chest, heart pounding against the leather grain. He drops his gaze; doesn’t meet Yangyang’s eyes. “Okay. Thank you.”

The brushes will sit on his desk, untouched, for the rest of the year. Yangyang never asks him about it the next time they meet, never asks up until he leaves for good, and Renjun never tells.

>>>

They work together in silence, moving from floor to floor, room to room, stripping them of everything that can be salvaged. That is, until Jeno says suddenly, “Do you know what Ten told me before he left?”

It’s the first time that any of his friends have mentioned the pilots since their departure months ago. And why would they? They hadn’t known them ‒ or one of them ‒ as intimately as he did. Renjun glances at Jeno out of the corner of his eyes, trying to work out what’s going on, but he looks unaffected, sweeping across the room to collect all of its knick-knacks.

“Ten? I didn’t know you two were close.”

Jeno shrugs, unplugging a lamp and stuffing it into his already overflowing box. “He was nice. We made small talk.”

Renjun turns back to his box, the one he’s somehow supposed to fit all the pillows of this room into. He pushes at the top pillow, ploughing all his weight into it. Does he really want to know?

Jeno, clearly, doesn’t care what he thinks. “He said pilots don’t usually fly the same route more than a handful of times,” he continues conversationally. “Most of them want to travel and visit as many places as they can.”

“And?” Renjun is tired. Tired of this conversation, of having to shut down this hotel with nowhere to go, of… everything. “What’s your point?”

“Haven’t you noticed that after last winter, Yangyang never missed a flight here?”

Renjun stills. The pillow he’s been trying to cram into his box for the last few minutes rises up steadily, like bread in an oven. He abandons it, and looks up only to find Jeno’s kind eyes already on him. “Really.”

“Yeah,” Jeno says, face serene. “Really.”

Inexplicably, a lump rises in his throat. “What are you trying to say?” Renjun says thickly. “You know as well as I do there’s nothing here.”

“Are you sure about that?” Jeno isn’t looking at him anymore. He casts his gaze out the window, the glass frosted over from the cold. The mountains are once again blanketed in snow. “It seems like he found something worth coming back for, again and again.”

>>>

“I’m going to the city to find work at one of the hotels there,” Jeno had said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“The aunty at the corner shop says she has a relative who owns a restaurant there,” Donghyuck added. “I’m going to apprentice under the chef. There’s a spot for you, if you want.”

It hasn’t really sunk in yet, that his friends are leaving, and soon. The last remnants of Renjun’s old life, off to chase big opportunities in bigger cities.

And what about Renjun? He’s stuck. Inert. Sitting on his bedroom floor with all the postcards Yangyang has ever left scattered around him. He pours through each one, their contents growing less formal and shorter as the year went by. He understands ‒ what does one say to the person he’s been regularly sleeping with for close to a year? What was there left to say when their bodies did most of the talking?

With all the time in the world, he sifts through the postcards slowly. They show oceans, forests, mountains, cities, structures built by man that would have been impossible a decade ago. The one in his hand depicts a wide swathe of desert and pyramids dotting the horizon. He recognises it as the last one Yangyang had ever given to him.

So many places. A world out there, his for the taking.

Renjun traces Yangyang’s parting words with his finger. Just a single line. Eleven words. Ink smudged slightly from the meat of Yangyang’s hand.

He thinks about what he wants. About what Jeno had said as they packed up a hotel and their memories of it. About the ivy creeping up the facade of the hotel, a leather case full of paintbrushes, and a pilot with a smile like the sun.

Renjun takes a deep breath, and makes a decision.

<<<

Renjun

One day soon, I hope you find the freedom to fly.

Yours
Yangyang

>>>

The airport in the city is big.

The airport is big and hectic and loud and crowded and someone’s suitcase nearly rolls over his foot but it’s okay because ‒

It’s exhilarating. The people who pass him have a goal, a destination. And now Renjun’s one of them.

He’s never felt so alive.

His plane doesn’t seem to be ready yet, so he finds an empty seat at the waiting area just outside of his departure gate. Outside, the sun is setting, bathing the airplanes on the tarmac in pink. Renjun watches them with a mixture of fascination and apprehension ‒ the airplanes look so flimsy, with their little propellers. How on earth are they going to stay up in the air?

There’s a tap on his shoulder, and when he turns, the woman sitting next to him gives him a kind smile. “Nervous?”

Renjun immediately stops jiggling his leg. “Ah,” he says, embarrassed. “Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” the woman says, but it isn’t unkind. “Are you a first-time flyer?”

He nods. “Yeah, I’ve ‒ I’ve never left home before today.”

“Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Are you going on holiday?”

“Not exactly.” When Renjun laughs, he feels as light as air. “It’s more of ‒ how should I say this. Someone I used to know used to travel all around the world, and he’d give me postcards of these gorgeous landscapes of wherever he’d visited. I told him I couldn’t believe these places existed. And when he asked me what was stopping me from doing the same thing and following my dreams, I didn’t have a good answer. So here I am.”

“Oh? Are you going to visit him, perhaps?”

Renjun is indebted to Yangyang in many ways. He had opened his eyes to possibilities beyond the mountains and valleys of his small town, encouraged him when he doubted himself, and shown him what it was like to fall in love. Yangyang will always have a special place in his heart.

But now, Renjun needs to figure out who he is, and what he can be.

Renjun hugs the leather case holding his brushes closer to his chest. “No,” he answers, smiling. “I’m going to art school. I’m going to Paris.”

>

>

>

As a general rule, Renjun tends to avoid airport bars. In his experience, they’re crowded, serve overpriced food, and are somehow always as far from his gate as they can possibly get.

Tonight, though, he has a little extra time to kill. Renjun studies the directory and heads for the nearest bar, picking a spot at the counter. He orders himself a glass of wine, fishing a pencil and his sketchbook out of his carry-on while he waits. His fingers are still buzzing from the commission he did in Bavaria, itching to sketch something. They beat a steady tattoo into the wooden tabletop, seeped in the drinks of passengers past, as he looks around for inspiration. 

A familiar wash of navy catches his eye, and his heart stops. A trio of pilots in uniforms pass the bar, speaking animatedly in a language foreign to his ears, their sleek square suitcases rolling soundlessly behind them. One of the pilots has a pair of aviators hanging from his pocket, and it’s only then that Renjun realises that he’s looking.

He forces himself to turn away ‒ heart in his throat, the tips of his fingers burning, he snatches up his glass and drains its contents in one gulp. The wine is cloying, coating the inside of his mouth. A stray drop falls onto his sketchbook, and Renjun lets the red seep into pristine white paper.

It’s been years. It’s been years, and he’s still searching. He had dug his fingers into the soil and uprooted his life, kicking up dirt and stone, giving himself up to the wind. Even with no ties to anything, even when he’s left the ground far, far behind, Renjun still cannot stamp out the feeling in his chest that aches like old bones when he thinks about a love that began and ended in winter. In pockets of stillness like these, Renjun feels a pull on the tin-can telephone of his heart. Someone on the other end, hidden around a corner, unseen, tugging insistently on the line until he lifts his can to his ear. Hello, he imagines them saying, a perfect smile and an unfinished love. Are you there? Are you there?

Renjun closes his eyes, the urge to draw evaporating. The sketchbook is shut, returned to his carry-on. There’s plenty of time till he has to leave, but he pulls out his wallet anyway and signals the bartender over.

Instead of the bill, the bartender slides a glass in his direction. Renjun looks up at him in confusion. “Excuse me, I didn’t order this.”

“On the house,” the bartender says. “It’s been paid for.”

“Paid for?” Renjun repeats. “By whom?”

The bartender is already walking away without a second look. Renjun frowns, and glances down.

The drink looks clean. Understated. Poured into a crystal tumbler with a lime wedge sitting on the lip of the glass. In spite of himself, he leans forward to take a sip from the tiny straw, and when the familiar taste of juniper and lemon coats his tongue, he knows.

Hello. A tug. A tin can to his ear. I’m here. I’m here.

A hand falls on his shoulder, and Renjun turns around.