Archive of Our Own

The hotel was the kind of place travel bloggers called charming. The rooms, however, were a different story.

"You have got to be kidding me," Dylan muttered, dragging his suitcase through the doorway and immediately bumping his shin against the corner of a bed.

Jun followed behind, took one look at the sliver of carpet between the two single beds, and let out a long, suffering sigh. "Three nights."

"Three nights," Dylan echoed grimly.

The beds were practically pushed together, separated only by a strip of floor barely wide enough to set down a pair of shoes. Dylan threw his bag onto the mattress closest to the window with a heavy sigh, and Jun rolled his eyes.

"Don't snore," Jun said.

"Don't talk to me," Dylan shot back, and that was that.

The first two nights passed in a kind of uneasy ceasefire. They moved around each other like they were forced to share space—elbows tucked in, eyes averted, the occasional muttered sorry when their hands brushed reaching for the same outlet. Dylan slept with his back to Jun's bed and tried not to think about how he could hear him breathing.

Then came the last show.

London roared for them. Dylan stood at the edge of the stage during the final song with his throat tight and his eyes burning and Jun, three meters to his left, was glowing under the lights. When the confetti dropped, Pepper pulled them all into a sweaty, shaking group hug at center stage, and Dylan felt Jun's arm slip around his shoulders, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, and he didn't pull away.

Neither did Jun.

The afterparty was at a little bar tucked into a side street in Soho. Dylan claimed a corner and worked through his beers, the glass cold and slick under his palm, condensation soaking into the napkin beneath it. He watched Jun across the room.

Jun, who had a glass of red wine in one hand and his elbow propped on the bar, leaning toward the bartender with that crooked, knowing smile he used when he wanted something. The bartender—dark-haired, dimpled, freckled and infuriatingly cute—was laughing at whatever Jun had just said, and Dylan took a very long pull of his beer and pretended his chest didn't feel like it was being slowly crushed.

"You're so obvious it's adorable."

Dylan jumped. Nano had materialized beside him, sucking innocently on the straw of something violently blue and garnished with three cherries, his eyes glittering with delight.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mhm." Nano took another sip, never breaking eye contact. "My OTP is thriving tonight."

"I will end you."

"You'll have to catch me first, P’Dylan." Nano patted his cheek with a small, cool hand and drifted away, humming.

Dylan finished his beer.

They left the bar around two in the morning, spilling out onto the cobblestones in a loose, laughing cluster, and somebody suggested they walk back to the hotel "to enjoy London." It was a ridiculous idea. It was at least forty minutes on foot, but nobody objected.

The night air was cool and damp against Dylan's flushed face, and the streets were mostly quiet except for the distant rumble of buses and the soft scuff of their sneakers on stone. Thame was singing under his breath. Pepper kept stopping to take blurry phone pictures of every illuminated landmark they passed. Nano was walking backward in front of them, talking with his hands, and the streetlights kept catching in his hair like a halo.

Dylan walked beside Jun. He didn't remember choosing to. It had just happened, probably because he was tipsy at best which helped lower his guard was down. Now their shoulders were almost touching and every few steps the back of Jun's hand would graze his—a phantom of a touch—and Dylan's whole arm would light up with it. He kept telling himself it was an accident.

He noticed the way Jun's knuckles were warm even in the cold air. He noticed the faint smell of wine and cologne. He noticed, when he risked a glance sideways, that Jun was smiling. His usual sharp little smirk was gonr, replaced by the corners of his eyes crinkled, his mouth open in a goofy laugh at something Thame had said, and the streetlight caught him at exactly the right angle and Dylan—

Dylan was in trouble.

He hadn't seen Jun look this light in months. Maybe years. There was something about him tonight—untethered, easy—and Dylan's stupid, drunken, traitor of a heart did a slow, painful flip inside his chest. He looked away quickly, before Jun could catch him staring. He was definitely drunk. He had to be. There was no other explanation for the thoughts currently moving through his head, no way his sober brain would let him dwell on the curve of Jun's jaw or the warmth still radiating from where their hands had just brushed for the fifth time in as many minutes.

A small shoulder bumped his.

"Go on," Nano whispered, almost too quiet to hear, and then he was darting around them and slotting himself on Jun's other side and catching Jun's hand in his own with the casual affection of the youngest.

Dylan's heart was beating in his ears. Before he could let himself think about it, he reached out and let his fingers slip between Jun's. Like it was nothing. He grabbed Thame's hand on his other side and started swinging their arms forward and back in an exaggerated arc, launching into a goofy, off-the-cuff freestyle about the greatest tour of their lives. Thame was laughing, and Pepper was filming, and nobody seemed to notice that Dylan's whole body had gone electric where Jun's fingers were threaded through his.

Jun's hand was warm, and his palm was a little rough where it had calluses from gripping weights. His thumb was pressed against the side of Dylan's index finger, and Dylan was drunk and dying and he never wanted this moment to end.

Eventually, of course, it did. The boys peeled off, dropping hands, scattering ahead to point at a fox crossing the road. Dylan should have let go.

He didn't. He waited, breath held, for Jun to pull away first, but Jun didn't either. If anything, his fingers tightened with a small squeeze.

They walked the rest of the way hand in hand. Silent. Dylan didn't trust himself to speak.

Back at the hotel, the spell didn't break so much as deepen. Dylan didn't know how to act. There was something thick in the air between them, something that had nothing to do with their usual sniping, and he was too drunk and too undone to make sense of it. He just knew that he wanted to crawl into one of those tiny stupid beds with Jun and not come out for a weeek.

They took turns in the bathroom. Brushed their teeth. Said nothing. Dylan changed with his back to Jun's bed and his pulse pounding in his throat. He climbed under the covers and reached for the lamp.

Darkness.

Inside Dylan's head, it was deafening. Sometimes it really hurt. Being this close to Jun and this far from him at the same time. Lying an arm's length away in the dark and not being allowed to reach.

The sheets rustled. Jun shifted. Then shifted again. Then again.

"Are you asleep?" Jun's voice was low.

"With you tossing and turning every fifteen seconds, it's kind of hard."

A soft huff of laughter. Then: "Sorry. I just—I can't wrap my head around it. We launched a world tour by starting in Europe, of all places. That's insane, Dylan. And now it's already over. Tomorrow—well. Later today, I guess—we go home and just… move on." A pause. "I don't want to. I want to stay here. I feel freer here. Happier."

Dylan stared at the ceiling. "It's the adrenaline. Everything feels new. Like a shiny toy. Give it a week and the spark wears off."

"Okay, Mr. Philosopher. No need to be such a party-pooper." Jun's voice was warm, affectionate even, and then, quieter: "You know, some things never lose their spark. Like you and me."

Dylan's stomach dropped.

"…What do you mean, Jun?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Jun's voice was so soft now, so close, like he was speaking right into Dylan's ear from across the gap. "We still bicker like it's day one. You keep pretending you hate me while looking at me like I'm the seventh wonder of the world. I keep playing along while staring at your mouth and wondering if it tastes as sweet as it looks."

Dylan stopped breathing.

"Jun—I'm too drunk to be doing this. Please shut up."

A long pause. A sigh.

The rustle of sheets.

Dylan's heart was suddenly so loud in his ears that for a moment he genuinely thought he'd gone deaf to everything else. He heard footsteps, then felt the shift of weight on his mattress, the soft tug of his comforter being lifted, and Jun's body sliding in beside him in the cramped space of the single bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting the pretending on pause." Jun's voice was right against his temple, warm. "We just finished a successful European tour. I'm happier than I've maybe ever been. We're living our dream. And the only person I want to share it with is you. And I think—I think you want that too."

Dylan couldn't breathe. Jun's body was pressed against his side from shoulder to hip and the heat of him was unreal, sinking through Dylan's t-shirt like sunlight, and Dylan couldn't stop himself from turning his head, trying to find Jun's face in the dark.

"We're both drunk," he tried. The words came out thin.

"Nothing better than a little liquid courage to finally take what you want."

Dylan didn't even know how Jun found his face on the first try, in the pitch dark, but suddenly there was a hand on his cheek. Jun's hand, fingers cool and gentle, brushing his hair back from his forehead, tracing the shell of his ear with a slow, distracted tenderness that made Dylan's whole body go boneless. His breath caught. His protest died on his tongue. He let his eyes slip shut and let it happen, let Jun's thumb stroke the soft skin in front of his ear.

He'd had dreams like this. Dozens of them. Hundreds. He'd always somehow known, in the deepest part of him, that Jun would be this gentle and caring. The knowing had always been the worst part, the part that made his walls hardest to keep up.

"There's so much we should talk about," Dylan whispered, eyes still closed. His voice was unsteady. "This isn't some—some fling you can dismiss tomorrow and pretend never happened."

Jun's thumb traced the curve of his lower lip.

Dylan stopped fighting.

He was so tired. Tired of pretending. Tired of the yearning that lived in his chest, tired of the jealousy clawing at him every time someone else made Jun laugh, tired of acting like Jun was his enemy when he craved his company, tired of the doubt and the fear. Jun was right here. Jun was willing. And Dylan's resolve, frankly, had never been weaker.

So he turned his face into Jun's palm and kissed his thumb. He let his tongue dart out, just enough to taste skin. Jun shifted closer until Dylan could feel his breath on his mouth.

"I'm about to kiss you, Dylan."

"No shit, Sherlock," Dylan whispered, and grabbed a fistful of Jun's t-shirt and pulled him the last impossible inch.

Everyone always talked about Dylan's lips. Plump. Made for kissing, the fans would write in comments under his selfies, and Dylan would roll his eyes and pretend not to see them.

Dylan was now ninety percent sure that Jun's lips were the better ones.

They were softer than they had any right to be. Warmer. They slotted between his like they had been built for exactly this, and Jun kissed him slowly at first, and then he kissed him again, deeper, and Dylan tilted his head to give him more.

He was burning. The alcohol in his blood, the heat of Jun's mouth, the close press of him under the covers—it was all suddenly too much, suffocating, and Dylan kicked the comforter off them in one frantic motion and pulled Jun closer, dragging him to the middle of the narrow bed before climbing up to straddle his chest so he could keep kissing him without dying of heatstroke.

Jun tasted like expensive wine. Dylan licked into his mouth and chased the fruity taste.

He shifted his weight back, just a little, trying to find a more stable position, and his ass dragged across something firm.

Oh.

Dylan smiled against Jun's mouth. Deliberately, he rolled his hips back again—and this time Jun gasped into the kiss, his teeth catching on Dylan's lower lip, his hands flying to Dylan's waist and gripping hard.

"You're not playing fair," Jun rasped.

"You started it! You should never have done this, Jun."

"I beg to differ."

And before Dylan could fire back a retort, Jun moved—a sudden, fluid surge of strength that flipped them in the cramped little bed, pinning Dylan flat against the mattress with Jun's weight settling between his thighs. Dylan barely had time to gasp before Jun rolled his hips down, dragging the hard line of him against Dylan's, and Dylan saw stars.

He could have died, right there, in a too-small bed in a too-small hotel in London, with Jun's mouth on his throat and Jun's hands in his hair and Jun's body finally pressed against his, and it would have been worth every single second of the wait.

Jun rolled his hips down again, and Dylan made a sound he didn't recognize as his own.

It was muffled against Jun's mouth—Jun who was kissing him like he'd been starving for it, like the past three years of barbed remarks and pointed silences had been nothing but a long, exhausting détour around exactly this. Dylan's hands found their way under the hem of Jun's t-shirt and spread flat against the small of his back, and the skin there was so warm and so smooth that he made another embarrassing sound and felt Jun smile against his lips.

"Shut up," Dylan breathed.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking something smug."

"Always."

Dylan laughed—actually laughed, breathless and giddy—and Jun caught the laugh with his mouth and swallowed it, and somewhere in Dylan's chest something that had been wound tight for years finally went slack.

They kissed for a long time. Long enough that Dylan lost track of where his hands were and where Jun's hands were and which sighs were his and which were Jun's. Long enough that the cramped little bed stopped feeling cramped and started feeling like the only place in the world that mattered. Jun's hair fell forward into Dylan's face every time he tilted his head, and it tickled, and Dylan kept reaching up to push it back behind his ear just for the excuse to touch him there, to feel the soft warm skin of his temple, the curve of his jaw, the faint scratch of stubble he hadn't bothered to shave before sleeping.

Eventually Jun's mouth left his and started moving—down along his jaw, into the hollow of his throat—and Dylan tipped his head back into the pillow and let it happen, helpless and burning. Jun's lips were so soft. Dylan was going to lose his mind over how soft they were.

Jun lifted his head. Dylan could just barely see the shape of him in the dark—the gleam of his eyes, the messy fall of his hair, the wet shine of his mouth, the breadth of his shoulders. He looked half-feral.

"I want—" Dylan started, and then stopped, because his brain was going faster than his mouth could keep up. "I want—do you have—"

A pause. Jun's hand stilled on his hip.

"…No."

"You don't?"

"Why would I have packed condoms for a tour?"

"I don't know, optimism? You really didn’t expect to get laid? This doesn't sound like the charmer I know."

Jun let his forehead drop onto Dylan's collarbone with a soft, defeated groan. Dylan started to laugh, wheezing into the dark, and after a beat he felt Jun start to shake against him too, his shoulders trembling, his breath hot and amused against Dylan's neck.

"This is so unfair," Jun mumbled into his skin.

Jun lifted his head and kissed him again, slower this time, more lingering. Somewhere between one kiss and the next the laughter shifted back into something hungrier, and Jun's hand slid down Dylan's side, dragging the edge of his t-shirt up along the way.

"Okay," Jun murmured against his mouth. "We can—we'll figure something out. I just need—I just need to touch you."

What followed was clothes coming off in pieces, awkwardly, with elbows bumping into headboards and at least one muffled ouch and a stretch of giggling neither of them could quite contain when Dylan got his foot caught in the leg of his sweatpants. Jun finally just hauled the offending garment off and threw it somewhere into the dark and Dylan listened to it land with a soft flump against the radiator.

And then Jun was pressing him back into the mattress again and there was no more fabric between them and Dylan's brain went gloriously offline.

Warm skin, every inch of Jun pressed against every inch of him, and Dylan made a small wounded noise into Jun's shoulder because he hadn't been prepared for how much it would undo him. Jun's chest against his chest. Jun's stomach against his stomach. Jun's leg sliding between his, and the pressure and weight of it, the slow grind that followed—Dylan dug his fingers into Jun's back and held on like he might float away otherwise.

"Okay?" Jun whispered against his temple.

"Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah."

"Just tell me—"

"Jun, if you stop talking and start moving I will literally pay you."

Jun huffed a laugh into his hair and started moving.

It was—it was so much. So much more than Dylan had been braced for. Jun rocked against him in a slow, building rhythm, and Dylan rocked back, and the friction of it, the heat, the dragging press of Jun's thigh exactly where Dylan needed it—he turned his face into the pillow and tried to muffle the sound that wanted to come out of him. They were in a hotel with thin walls. Nano was right next door. Dylan bit down on his lower lip until he tasted copper and tried to breathe.

"Hey." A hand on his jaw, gentle, turning his face back. "Hey. Look at me. Don't hide."

"I'm trying to be quiet—"

"I don’t card. Don't disappear."

And that was somehow worse than everything that had come before, because it was so unbearably tender that Dylan felt his eyes sting in the dark. He nodded, jerky, and let Jun kiss him again, and this time when Jun rolled his hips Dylan let the sound out into Jun's mouth where only Jun could hear it.

It went on like that for a long time. Long enough that Dylan started to lose the edges of himself, started to feel like he was made of nothing but the places Jun was touching him and the slow inexorable pressure building low in his stomach. Jun was breathing hard above him, his rhythm getting less measured. Dylan, with his too-sharp tongue and his own stubborn heart, was the reason Jun was coming apart in the dark of a tiny London hotel room.

"You can—" Dylan whispered, and his voice cracked. "Jun, you can use me. I want you to. I want—"

Jun made a small, desperate sound into his throat and Dylan felt it everywhere.

He didn't have words for what happened after that, exactly. Just impressions. Jun's hand sliding down between them and adjusting the angle, and the new slick heat of being pressed flush together with intent, and the way Jun's breath went ragged in his ear. Dylan turned his head and kissed any part of him he could reach—his jaw, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, the soft place behind his ear—and murmured nonsense into his skin, half-formed encouragements, and litanies of Jun, Jun, Jun, Jun. Jun's hand was braced beside Dylan's head and his knuckles had gone white with the grip, and Dylan reached up and laced his fingers through Jun's and held on.

When Jun came undone above him, it was with Dylan's name on his mouth and his face buried against Dylan's neck, and Dylan held him through it with both arms. Jun's whole weight was on him, heavy and sweat-slick and trembling, and Dylan thought he could happily die like this—pinned, breathless, used, kept.

Then Jun lifted his head and kissed him slow and filthy.

Jun moved down his body in a series of unhurried kisses—collarbone, sternum, the soft skin below his ribs, the jut of his hipbone—and Dylan tracked him despite the darkness and tried very hard to remember how to breathe. Jun took his time. He was making a point. That all those months of pretending and circling and not-saying were being answered, now, with this patient worship, and Dylan was not going to survive it.

When Jun's mouth finally found him, Dylan made a sound that didn't even feel human and slapped a hand over his own mouth on instinct. Jun reached up without lifting his head and gently pried Dylan's hand away, pinning it against the mattress, threading their fingers together.

He couldn't have hidden, even if he'd wanted to. Whatever Jun was doing—whatever combination of pressure and teasing slow-building intent he'd brought to it—was so far beyond anything Dylan had ever experienced that it short-circuited every defense he'd ever built. He was reduced. He was a single live wire of sensation, pinned to bed by Jun’s hands and Jun's mouth on him and the dawning knowledge that he was ruined. That nothing else, ever again, was going to come close to this. That he was going to spend the rest of his stupid life chasing Jun's lips.

He gasped Jun's name when he came, and Jun squeezed his hand, and Dylan stared up at the dark ceiling with tears prickling the corners of his eyes for no reason.

Afterward, they lay tangled together in the narrow bed, sticky and sweaty and too warm and absolutely not willing to move.

Jun had pulled the comforter halfway back over them after they’d cleaned up, and was now draped along Dylan's side with his head on Dylan's chest, one leg slung over Dylan's, his fingers tracing slow lazy patterns on Dylan's stomach. Dylan was running his hand through Jun's hair, over and over, and trying to commit the texture of it to memory.

"Your lips," Dylan voiced into the dark.

"Mm?"

"Are unfair."

Jun huffed a sleepy laugh against his collarbone.

"I'm serious," Dylan insisted. "I'm going on record. Right now. In this bed. Everyone always goes on about my mouth and they have no idea. They've been wrong this whole time."

"You really are drunk."

"Not anymore. I sweated it all out. I am making a sober declaration."

Jun lifted his head. Dylan could feel him grinning even before he could see it. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Dylan pushed Jun's hair back from his forehead with both hands and held his face there, looking at him despite the darkness. "And I'll be damned if I ever let anyone else find out."

The grin softened into something smaller that hit Dylan square in the chest.

"Possessive," Jun murmured.

"Extremely."

"Good." Jun leaned in and kissed him. "Because I wasn't planning on letting them."

Dylan closed his eyes.

Jun's breathing was already starting to slow against his neck, sleep pulling at him, and Dylan held him tighter and listened.

There was so much they hadn't said. So much they would have to say, eventually. Dylan knew, even drunk on afterglow, that the morning was going to be different.

But right now there was just this: the warm weight of Jun against his side, the slow rise and fall of his breathing, the impossible softness of his hair under Dylan's fingers, and the feeling of having stopped running.

He turned his face into Jun's hair and breathed him in, and let himself fall asleep.

Dylan woke up too warm. That was the first thing that registrred. The second was that he couldn't move his left arm, because there was a body lying on it. The third—and this took his sleep-fogged brain a few seconds to process—was that the body in question had a familiar chestnut head of hair tucked under his chin and was breathing slowly and evenly against his collarbone.

Oh.

He didn't move. He was afraid that if he moved, he'd break it. He lay very still in the morning light filtering through the hotel curtains and stared at the ceiling and inventoried, very carefully, the parts of himself that ached. His jaw. His lower lip, where Jun had bitten it. His hips, his thighs, the back of his neck where Jun had—he wasn't going to think about that yet, not while Jun was still sleeping on him.

Jun stirred. Made a small grumpy noise. Burrowed closer.

"Stop thinking so loud," he mumbled into Dylan's chest.

"I'm not thinking anything."

"Liar." Jun lifted his head just enough to squint up at him. His hair was a complete disaster. He looked, somehow, even better than he had last night, which Dylan found personally offensive. "Good morning."

"…Morning."

Jun watched his face for a long moment, like he was checking for damage. Whatever he found there must have satisfied him, because the corner of his mouth lifted, and he leaned up and kissed Dylan once, and then dropped his head back down onto Dylan's chest like the matter was settled.

Dylan's heart did something ridiculous. He wrapped his arm around Jun's shoulders and let his hand settle in his hair and decided that he wasn't going to panic about this. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

A loud, deliberate knock hit the door.

"P’Jun! P’Dylan!" Nano's voice, far too cheerful for whatever ungodly hour this was. "Breakfast in twenty! P’Pepper says if you're late he's leaving you in London!"

"Tell him to leave us!" Jun called back without lifting his head.

"Tempting offer, but we have a flight!"

Dylan listened to Nano's footsteps recede down the hall and let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Jun was tracing slow circles on his stomach with his thumb.

"We have to get up," Dylan said, mournfully.

"I know."

"I don't want to."

"Me neither."

Neither of them moved for another full minute.

The hotel breakfast room smelled like coffee and warm bread, and the other three members of MARS were already crowded around a corner table when Dylan and Jun walked in. Pepper looked up first. His eyes flicked between them and his mouth twitched, and he picked up his coffee cup and took a very long sip.

Thame waved at them brightly. "There you are! I was starting to think you'd killed each other."

"Not quite," Jun said mildly, sliding into the seat beside Dylan.

Nano put his fork down.

"So…. Did either of you sleep well?"

"Slept great," Dylan replied nonchalantly, reaching for the coffee pot.

"Yeah?" Nano's eyes were dancing. "Restful? Quiet?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Funny." Nano picked his fork back up and speared a piece of melon. "Because my room is right next to yours. And the walls in this place? Paper! Like, whisper-thin. Like, you could-hear-someone-think thin."

Pepper made a small choked sound into his coffee, clearly already knowing whre the conversation was heading.

Dylan poured himself a cup. He didn't look up. "That sounds like a you problem, Nano."

"A me problem." Nano's voice was getting higher. "A me problem, he says. I was awake for a long time. I now know things about both of you that I cannot un-know. I am going to need therapy. I am going to need to move out of the house."

Jun calmly buttered a piece of toast. "Then move out."

Both of them shrruged it off. Dylan had learned not to care from the moment Jun asked him not to hide.

"P’Jun!”

"What do you want me to say, Nano? Sorry?"

"YES!"

"I'm not sorry."

Dylan took a sip of his coffee and, without looking up from his plate, reached over and laced his fingers through Jun's on top of the table. Jun's whole body went still for half a second before relaxing. He let out a small surprised breath and his thumb immediately started stroking the back of Dylan's hand before he turned around to give Dylan a small, private smile that melted Dylan to the core.

Pepper lost it. He set his coffee down and pressed his hand over his mouth and his shoulders started shaking, silently, like a man who had been holding it in for hours and could not hold it any longer.

Nano stared at their joined hands. Stared at their faces. Then back at their hands.

"You're not even blushing," he said, in the betrayed tone of someone whose entire teasing arsenal had just been rendered useless. "I was going to be insufferable for at least an hour. And you're just—"

"Eating breakfast?" Jun supplied.

"Holding hands. In public. Like it's normal." Nano flopped back in his chair and gestured wildly at them with his fork. "This is so much worse than if you were embarrassed. I don't know what to do with this. I am unprepared for this version of you."

"Get used to it," Dylan shrugged again, and took another sip of his coffee.

Thame, who had been watching the entire exchange silently, finally raised his hand like a student in class.

"I'm sorry, can someone—can someone please catch me up. Because I feel like I missed something important, and everyone else seems to know what's going on, and I am—I am very confused. Are we—are they—what is—"

"They had sex, P’Thame," Nano said flatly.

Thame's face went through approximately 6 different expressions in three seconds. "Oh. Oh—wait, with each other?"

Pepper made another small choked sound and reached for a napkin.

"Yes, P’Thame," Nano replied with exasperation. “Last night. In the room directly next to mine. They were quite loud."

"It was not loud," Dylan protested.

"It was loud enough to disturb my sleep."

"Oh," Thame said again, faintly. He picked up his orange juice and drank half of it in one go. "Okay. Okay. I just—okay. I thought you two—I mean—for years I thought you actually—wait, since when?"

"Since last night," Jun replied.

"Since forever," Nano corrected.

"Since last night," Dylan and Jun said in unison, and then looked at each other, and then looked away, and Dylan felt his ears going pink for the first time all morning.

Pepper finally surfaced from behind his napkin, eyes streaming. "I am so glad," he wheezed, "I am so glad I came on this tour. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I want this on tape. I am going to remember this breakfast for the rest of my life."

"You're the leader, P’Per, you're supposed to be dignified."

"I am dignified-ly delighted."

Nano slumped down in his chair, defeated. "I hate all of you."

Jun, without looking, lifted Dylan's hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. He did it casually. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he'd been doing it for years.

Nano let out a small strangled sound and put his head in his hands.

"Worse," he moaned. "It just keeps getting worse."

Dylan, for the first time in the entire conversation, felt his face go properly hot. He took a long sip of his coffee to hide it. Across the table, Pepper was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. Thame was still staring at them like he was watching a magic trick. Nano was muttering to himself about needing earplugs and possibly a new band.

It was, Dylan thought, the most ridiculous breakfast of his life.

The flight home was thirteen hours long.

Dylan didn't remember boarding, exactly. He remembered the taxi ride to Heathrow, and the chaos of check-in, and Pepper counting heads at the gate like a kindergarten teacher. He remembered Jun's hand brushing his at the jet bridge.

What he remembered most clearly was sliding into his window seat in business class, leaning his head against the cool plastic of the window, and then the warm solid weight of Jun settling into the seat beside him. Jun, who had traded with Thame at the gate without saying anything. Jun, whose shoulder was right there.

Dylan made it through takeoff and approximately fifteen minutes before sleep dragged him under. The last thing he remembered was tipping sideways until his temple came to rest against Jun's shoulder.

He didn't remember Jun's hand coming up to cradle the back of his head and ease him gently into a more comfortable angle. He didn't remember Jun pulling a blanket over him. He didn't remember Jun pressing a small, private kiss to the crown of his head before settling in to watch a movie.

But all of that happened.

When he woke up, his neck was stiff and his mouth dry. The cabin was dim, the window shades pulled most of the way down. His head was still on Jun's shoulder. His hand, at some point, had migrated into Jun's lap.

He didn't move. He kept his eyes mostly closed and let himself the steady warmth of Jun against his side for a moment. Jun was watching a film with one hand resting lightly on top of Dylan's, his thumb absently tracing the line of Dylan's wrist.

And Dylan, in that drowsy hovering moment between sleep and waking, felt the fear catch up with him.

Because the thing about morning-after had been that there hadn't been a morning-after, not really. Not the kind he'd been bracing for. They'd been swept up into breakfast and Nano's interrogation and packing and check-out and the cab and the airport and the boarding chaos, and there had been no quiet moment in which Jun could have looked at him and said about last night in That Voice. The voice Dylan had been hearing in his head since they'd first kissed. The voice that was going to say I don't want to mess up the band and let's just be friends.

That voice was coming. It had to be. They were on a plane for twelve hours and there was nowhere for either of them to hide and Dylan was going to have to sit there and listen to Jun let him down gently and then go home and pretend everything was fine and—

Jun's thumb stopped moving on his wrist. Dylan held his breath.

"You're awake," Jun whispered, very softly, without turning his head.

"…How did you know?"

"You stopped breathing." Jun finally looked down at him. The cabin was too dim to read his expression clearly, but his eyes were soft. "Hi."

"Hi."

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Dylan's heart was beating very fast. He could feel it in his throat. He started to sit up—to put space between them, to brace for the conversation—and Jun's hand tightened around his, just slightly, and stopped him.

"Where are you going?" Jun asked.

"I just—I thought—"

Jun lifted Dylan's hand. Brought it to his mouth. Turned it over, and pressed a slow kiss to the very center of Dylan's palm.

Dylan stopped breathing again, for an entirely different reason.

"Stop it," Jun murmured against his skin. "I can hear you panicking from here. Stop it."

"I'm not—"

"You absolutely are." Jun kissed his palm again. Then his wrist. Then the soft inside of it where the veins ran blue under the skin. "I'm not going anywhere, Dylan. Last night was not a mistake. I am not going to give you a speech. I'm not going to politely untangle this. I have spent three years of my life pretending I didn't want you and I am not going back."

Dylan stared at him.

"Okay?" Jun pressed.

"…Okay."

Jun lowered their hands but didn't let go. He laced their fingers together properly, in his lap, and turned back to his movie like the matter was settled.

Dylan watched the side of his face for a long moment in the dim cabin light. The straight line of his nose. The soft curve of his mouth. The way his eyelashes caught the blue glow from the screen. The slow blink of his eyes.

Dylan gad been such an idiot for so long.

He squeezed Jun's hand. Jun squeezed back without looking.

It was hour five that Jun leaned over and put his mouth right next to Dylan's ear and said, in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear:

"So. Hypothetically."

"No."

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"Jun. We have been on this plane for five hour. We have eight hours left. Whatever you are about to suggest, the answer is no."

Jun's mouth grazed the shell of his ear. Dylan's whole body went hot.

"Hypothetically," Jun murmured, "what are your feelings on the mile high club."

"Negative."

"Why?"

"Because we are thirty thousand feet in the air on a commercial flight with three bandmates and staff and cabin crew and an entire airplane of strangers and the bathrooms are the size of coffins and—"

"So you've thought about it."

"I have not—"

"You have a very specific list of objections for someone who hasn't thought about it."

"Jun."

"Mm?"

"No."

"Okay." Jun settled back into his seat. Picked Dylan's hand up again. Resumed his absent thumb-stroking. Watched his new movie.

Approximately ninety seconds passed.

"It's just," Jun said, in a thoughtful, philosophical tone, "I've been thinking about your mouth ever since we left the hotel."

Dylan made a small wounded noise into his blanket.

"And about last night. And about how I didn't get nearly enough of you. Now we have eight hours left on a plane and a perfectly serviceable bathroom and—"

"It is not a perfectly serviceable bathroom, it is a closet."

"We’re both flexible."

"Jun."

"I just think," Jun continued, in the same mild philosophical tone, "that it would be a shame to waste the opportunity. That's all. I'm just saying."

Dylan stared very hard at the seatback in front of him.

He was not going to give in. He had standards. He had dignity. He had a clear-eyed, sensible understanding of risk-to-reward ratios. He was a grown man. He was not going to let himself be talked into—

Jun's thumb traced a slow circle on the inside of his wrist before his mouth pressed, again, very close to his ear: "I'll make it worth your while."

Dylan closed his eyes.

"I hate you so much," he whispered.

"Yes," Jun exclaimed, victorious.

The bathroom was, in fact, a closet. Dylan went first, on Jun's whispered instructions, and stood in the tiny cubicle staring at his own slightly wild reflection in the mirror and trying to figure out how his life had ended up here. His hair was a mess and his pupils were too wide. He looked like a man who had made several questionable decisions in the past twenty-four hours and was about to make at least one more.

He looked, he realized, happy.

The soft knock came two minutes later.

He unlatched the door and Jun slipped inside in one fluid motion, pulling it shut behind him, and then they were pressed together in a space designed for exactly one average-sized human, with their chests bumping and their faces approximately two inches apart, and Jun was grinning at him.

"Hi," Jun whispered.

"This is insane."

"Hi."

"I cannot believe I let you—"

Jun kissed him, effectively preventing Dylan from talking.

The kiss was hot and tasted faintly of the airplane coffee Jun had been drinking, and Jun's hands were braced on either side of Dylan's head against the cold plastic wall, and Dylan grabbed two fistfuls of Jun's t-shirt and pulled him closer and tried very hard to be quiet about it. The space was so small that there was nowhere for either of them to go that wasn't into the other, and Dylan felt Jun smile against his mouth at the realization.

"See?" Jun murmured with a smirk. "Cozy."

"You are so annoying."

"I'm very glad you came along."

"I haven't come anywhere yet…"

"Working on it," Jun remarked cheerfully, and slid down to his knees.

The bathroom was really not designed for two. Jun had to wedge himself awkwardly into the narrow space between Dylan's legs and the door, one hand braced on Dylan's hip for balance, and Dylan looked down at him and felt his entire brain go static.

Jun looked up at him through his lashes. He looked, somehow, even more devastating from this angle than he did on a regular basis. The fluorescent light caught the curve of his cheekbone and the soft pink of his mouth and the wicked little tilt of his smile, and Dylan made a small involuntary noise and slapped a hand over his own face.

"Oh my god."

"Shhh! Quiet."

"Don't shush me right now, you absolute—"

Dylan didn't get to finish the sentence.

What followed was, objectively, the worst conditions under which anyone had ever attempted anything of this nature. The plane hit a small patch of turbulence approximately ninety seconds in and Dylan had to bite down on his own knuckle to keep from making a sound that would have carried through the thin door and ended his career. His knees were shaking. His back was pressed against a sink that was digging into his lower spine. There was a NO SMOKING sign approximately five inches from his face.

It was, possibly, the best however many minutes and seconds of his entire life.

Because Jun’s lips were unfair and he was looking up at him the whole time. Cataloguing every twitch and gasp and bitten-off sound. And his mouth was every bit as devastating as it had been the night before, and somehow more, because Jun was enjoying every single second of undoing him in a six-square-foot airplane bathroom at thirty thousand feet, and Dylan was ruined. He'd thought he was ruined last night. He'd been wrong. Now he was ruined.

When it was over and his knees were genuinely threatening to give out, Jun stood up smoothly in the cramped space and pressed a kiss to the corner of Dylan's slack mouth and reached past him to grab a paper towel and tidy them both up.

Dylan watched him in dazed silence.

"I cannot believe," he finally croaked, "that I let you talk me into that."

"Mm." Jun was straightening Dylan's shirt for him. Smoothing it down. Checking him over with a smirk. "And yet." Jun cupped his face in both hands. Kissed him once, soft and sweet. "I'm very pleased you did."

Dylan stared at him. He thought about the perfect curve of Jun's mouth. About the way it had felt last night and the way it had felt just now. About the way it was going to feel for—God willing—the rest of his lucky life.

"I meant what I said this morning," he heard himself say.

"Hmm?"

"About your lips. About no one else getting near them."

Jun's smile was small and crooked and very, very pleased.

"I told you," he answered softly. "I wasn't planning on letting them."

He kissed Dylan one more time. Then he slipped out of the bathroom first, like a man who had simply been freshening up, and Dylan stood there in the fluorescent light for another full minute trying to remember how to operate his own legs.

When he finally made it back to his seat, Jun was watching his movie again with his blanket pulled up to his chest, perfectly composed, the picture of innocence. He didn't look up as Dylan slid in beside him. He just reached over without breaking eye contact with the screen, found Dylan's hand under the blanket, and laced their fingers together.

Across the aisle, Nano—who had apparently woken up at some point during all of this—was staring at them with an expression of pure, undiluted scandal.

"I hate you both," Nano whispered loudly enough for them to hear.

Jun, eyes still on his movie, smiled. Dylan tipped his head against Jun's shoulder and closed his eyes.

A little less than eight hours to go. He thought he might be able to manage it, and maybe make another trip to the bathroom with Jun.