Boarding

Seungkwan stared at the seat in front of him with active dislike. It remained aloof, as all good first-class airplane seats did, and didn’t deserve his wordless hate anyway. Very briefly he imagined that it smirked at him, and he turned his head away to the window instead, knowing that there was a line between artfully eccentric and totally out of it. A totally inappropriate, totally relatable part of him wondered if there was a time limit somewhere that would make him less an incipient alcoholic and more a stressed grad student.

Not that the thing about stress would be a lie, mind you, and he had looked forward to his friend’s wedding for weeks until Jihoon had sprung the news that his fiancé had fallen in love with a beach on the other side of the world and yes Seungkwan-ah that meant a plane. At least Kwon Soonyoung was a moneybags, so had sprung for first and not cattle-class. There was a little baggie full of toiletries, and apparently the Sleeper cabin could recline all the way, and…

“Would sir like a drink?”

Seungkwan turned to look at the woman with wide eyes. Impeccable smile. Airline uniform. A bottle of Krug. Hooray, thank all the gods he didn’t believe in. “Yes, please,” he got out, and took the glass of champagne she offered.

“And here is the menu, if sir would like to make any selections for dinner so long?”

He took the menu as if sleepwalking. “Thank you…”

She smiled again – was it a job requirement or a talent? – and left him alone to deal with the very crisp champagne. Five minutes later, when his right darkened again, he looked up with his own smile and said ‘I think I’ll have the beef shank if… you…”

There was a statue looking back at him, with honey-blonde curly hair and very light brown eyes.

Brown eyes laughed at him. “I recommend the beef shank as well. Had it last month, it was delicious.”

Seungkwan didn’t seem to be able to stop staring. The stranger had a very odd mouth, with a thinner upper lip that seemed a lot more Western somehow, an impression increased by the double-lidded eyes that were still looking very merry. And a little shy. And gorgeous. And slightly confused. “Uh,” he said like a moron. “Sorry. I thought you were the lady. With the, the food. And the wine.”

“Not when I checked this morning,” the guy said with a slowly-widening grin. “But who knows. Anything’s possible.”

Seungkwan castigated his mind for noticing that there was definite muscle under the guy’s hoodie. That and he had a jawline like only a classical sculpture could.

How is that sip of champagne already working? Am I allergic or something?

The guy’s smile stayed, and he stood there quite patiently. “So you like Kakao Friends?”

Seungkwan boggled at the guy, feeling distinctly unequal to the situation of a tall, hot guy that looked like an idol commenting on his not-so-hidden love of cute things. “…how on earth do you know?”

Statue Guy’s smile developed dimples. “Your Apeach hoodie neck pillow is on my seat.”

Seungkwan’s blush practically exploded into being as his mind caught up with the situation. “Sorry!” he said frantically, leaning to the side to get his bag and neck pillow from where he had dumped them earlier. “So sorry, I’m half-asleep, gosh, you should have said something earlier.”

“It’s cute. My sister has one.”

The guy settled himself down in the wide seat, helpfully put Seungkwan’s menu on the very broad armrest when it threatened to fall, and said nothing more as Seungkwan died internally, arranging everything away like he should have. Biting his lip, he finally settled back into his seat and patted the downy neck pillow on his lap. “My nephew got it for me for my birthday,” he admitted quietly. “He’s seven and he doesn’t care about manly colours or the like yet, and it’s comfortable…”

The guy paused in the midst of stuffing what looked like a passport into a simple leather bag. “No judgement, it really is cute.“ His smile grew impossibly wider, devolved into dimples again, but disappeared as the stewardess came around to offer him champagne, take their meal orders and assure them that the plane was going to take off soon, and would they like a newspaper or a magazine, or perhaps some snacks?

Seungkwan, still feeling wigged out, shook his head. Statue Dude did and was halfway through some kind of chocolate that would just have gone to Seungkwan’s thighs before he looked his way again. “So I gotta ask. Are you, like, an idol or something? You have what my sister calls idol skin.”

Seungkwan blinked at the unnervingly accurate question. “Uh...” Wiping his hand on his torn denims, he held out a hand to his neighbour. “Boo Seungkwan.”

“Chwe Hansol Vernon,” Statue Guy said. “Professional assassin.”

Seungkwan gaped, handshake going limp. "What, really?!”

Hansol’s lips twitched as if he wanted to smile again. “I’ll have to kill you if I tell you,” he mumbled.

Silence stretched between the two of them as Seungkwan considered whether, spectacularly, it might be true or if it was just a particularly stupid dad joke.

I’m on a plane heading to the USA where I will attend Jihoon’s wedding to his billionaire boyfriend, and somehow there’s a hot guy as an assassin. I think I’ve read this plot in one of Eomma’s novels before.

“Cool,” he finally said, taking a nervous swig of champagne. “Just make sure that Peach-tan doesn’t get blood on her, ok?”

Hour #1

“What is your opinion of beer and ales?” Hansol asked roughly an hour into the flight.

Seungkwan, who had reclined his seat enough to be comfortable, and had crossed his socked feet to sit comfortably, looked up from the laptop he had balanced on the ample first-class table. “Huh?” he got out, mind distracted by the paper on the screen. “Oh… well, who doesn’t like to toss back a beer in the evenings to get over the day? Or chimaek? I’m not a connoisseur or anything.”

Hansol shook his head and shoved a thin phone his way. “Did you know you could make soap with it?” On the screen was a picture of black sludge and beer cans, covered with crying and angry emojis.  

Seungkwan took one look and shuddered. The mess looked like someone had scraped all the nastiness out of their shower grout or evaporated the water after washing a particularly dirty dog. “I think if I wanted to do anything with beer it wouldn’t be with a can of Hite S,” he said, nodding to the can in the background. “That’s probably what’s making it look like an exorcism gone wrong. It’s the kind of beer my grandmother would be ashamed to drink and let me tell you, that lady knows her maekju.”

Hansol’s laugh startled him, it was so bold and happy. “I’ll tell her you said so,” he promised, thumbs already moving on the screen.

“Don’t,” Seungkwan said as he crossed out another section of the paper, adding comments in red. “She has a brother that’s an assassin. He might kill me for her family honour.”

“She can’t afford my rates. Besides, she’d never kill off another KAKAO Friends friend.”

“I’m feeling like you’re about five steps away from being one yourself, you talk about Peach-tan so much.”

He didn’t get a response, but five minutes later a body leant a little towards him over the armrest. “Dude, I’m so bored I really could kill someone,” Hansol replied. “I’m chatting with my sister about soap. Are you writing a thesis or something? I can barely do sudoku.”

Seungkwan tried not to notice the cool, clean scent of his cologne. “I’m marking papers,” he explained as he looked up, reaching to save his changes. “I’ll trade you, I really will. Then you too can experience the joy of being bored to death with governmental policies of the early Joseon era. I promised my lecturer I’ll help.”

Hansol’s expression maintained the smile, but there was an aura of embarrassment about it now as well. “Ha, no, I’ll stick with the… with the soap, thanks.”

Minutes slowly followed on each other, dragging out slower and slower before Seungkwan’s conscience pricked at him. Chwe Hansol was being nice, and he was hot, and when was the last time he had found both of those in one person? Even if the guy was as straight as the proverbial ruler, it wouldn’t cost him anything to relax and be a bit of a better chatter. His fingers slowed on the keyboard as he considered. He was in first class for the first (and likely only) time of his life, he was on his way to a friend’s gay beach wedding, and he wasn’t paying for a single bit of it.

He saved the document on Canvas and cleared his throat. “You know…” he murmured, looking over, and his mouth went dry. Hansol was stretching and tying his way-too-long fringe into a tiny apple ponytail, and it was the cutest thing he had seen. Spellbound, he lifted his phone and took a photo, forgetting about manners for a moment. There had been a lot of muscle moving in those forearms. Holy hells he felt thirsty, was it time for champagne again? “For an assassin, you’re very doting on your sister.”

Hansol glanced sideways at him. “Did you just take a photo of me?”

“Blackmail material. I’m sitting with a criminal, I need to stay alive.”

Hansol’s smile threatened to make his heart skip a beat. “Clever. Until I steal your phone and threaten you until you deleted it.”

Seungkwan shot him a measured look and defiantly shut his old phone down, tucked it into the back of Peach-tan and eyebrowed him.

“Curses. Foiled again.”

Stifling a giggle, Seungkwan shrugged. “Why is your sister making soap?”

“My mom’s the artistic type,” Hansol shared. “Painting, cardmaking, scrapbooking, interior decoration, she does it all. Sof is really… not. She wants to be a model. But she’s trapped at a holiday resort with a crafty mother on a crafty tour, so.”

“Sof?”

Hansol unlocked his phone again and pulled up a picture. “My sister. Her name’s Sofia. We’re both half-and-half. Here, this is her on a recent shoot…”

Seungkwan tilted his head over and arched his eyebrows. Sofia looked like she was possibly in high school still, but so so pretty, and the lighting was fantastic. “She’s so cute,” he said honestly. “She looks like she’s in love with her life.”

“Pretty close,” Hansol said proudly. “And she’s clever!”

“Happy that her brother is in the assassin business and probably threatening all her boyfriends?”

“Nah, she threatens them herself.”

Seungkwan burst out laughing, feeling much happier about things when he returned to the undergrad papers.

Hour #2

The thing with first class was that it didn’t depend on an airplane to get you there, Seungkwan mused. It just sailed you there on a blissful river of Really Expensive Alcohol. Even if he had been a lush, he would have had to drink continuously to keep up with the gentleman that sat on the other side of the airplane, who kept the stewardess busy nigh-constantly. He admired her ability to smile.

He was still on his second glass. There was no way he’d catch up unless a miracle happened. Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to his lap. The papers had been put aside for dinner, which was on its way, and his seat companion was looking out into the aisle dreaming about rainbows or something… assassin or not, he seemed to have one of those minds, the kind so wide open that it seemed to catch every thought in the sky. Earlier he had played with the button that raised and lowered the partition at his side, seemingly fascinated. Even now he looked like the kind of person to bounce on clouds from a lightness of being not many could match.

The moment he felt that thought traipse through his head, he shook his head. It was worse than that time he had drunkenly speculated on the feelings pavements might have.

“Seungkwan-ssi,” broke through his internal ramblings. “What’s the worst nickname someone’s ever called you?”

“Booboo,” he said without thought. “Every time I hear it, I think of that meme in America and I get irritated from the start again.” He glanced to Hansol, giving a grimace. “They were trying to be nice and sweet and there I am, wanting them to kindly fuck all the way off.” He wrinkled his nose cutely. “They were vegetarian in any case. The relationship would never have lasted, no matter how much I like salads.”

“What’s your pet peeve?”

Seungkwan blinked. “People that squeeze toothpaste in the middle of the tube. You?”

“When I’m out of sugar and I have to put pants on to get more because there are no sugar delivery places.” Hansol turned his gaze back to him, smile half-hidden by the heel of his hand. “Sorry, that’s a little too intense to ask a stranger, right? I always get a little loopy looking down on clouds. They seem to stretch on forever and my mind just goes ‘boing’.”

A little place in Seungkwan’s heart ached at the admission. He dredged up a smile. “Are we strangers, Hansol-ssi?” he asked, playing along. “I thought we were in a spy movie, where I’m the unwitting mule and you’re the highly trained assassin, sworn to carry out his duty and off me over the Pacific somewhere?” He paused. “Do you have a cocktail named after you or something?”

Hansol’s smile stretched a little further with a little squinch of happy eyes. “It’s the girl that gets cocktails named after them.”

“If you were a girl, what would your favourite cocktail be?”

“The Booberry Surprise, because it’s red instead of blue, and it kicks like a mule.”

Seungkwan paused, considered and deflated. “Okay, I walked into that one. It’s like you inherited your sense of humour from a grandfather somewhere, Hansol-ssi.”

Laughing, Hansol straightened. “I’m sorry. I’m not this forward normally, but I drank antihistamines earlier because my sinuses were acting up from the fine dust, and instead of making me sleepy it’s making me loopy. I feel a little hammered. I should not have had that second glass of champagne after take-off.”

“Not as hammered as the guy in 1K is about to get,” Seungkwan shot back sotto voce as the stewardess walked by again. “That’s his second glass of Hennessey, and he already polished off most of the bottle of Krug earlier.” He leant a little closer. “He’s your target, isn’t he? Rich, and old, and drinks like a fish, he’s the type that has like a billion won in pocket change and his wife is tired of him so she paid you to off him?”

Hansol had to slap his hand fully over his mouth to stifle the snorting chuckle that escaped. “No, because she found out about the affair with his secretary,” he mumbled around it. “Who is half his age and secretly in love with her kindergartener’s teacher.”

“Hansol-ssi, you have an excellent career in writing k-dramas. I… oh.”

They were interrupted by their appetizers arriving. The food was exquisite and came with a heavy red wine to offset the beef shank. He refused the wine, feeling obscurely noble about leaving more of it for the guy in 1K, and merely blinked when Hansol asked if they could share tables. Watching him absolutely motor through the dish and the banchan made him feel warm and happy, like he was watching Bookkeu gnawing at his carrot chew-toy. “Here,” he said, pushing over the entire cheese plate towards him when that arrived, as well as half of his pot-au-chocolat. “Eat up. Soak those antihistamines up a little before you float out of the window unassisted.”

Hansol had no problems going through the cheese plate and very politely asking for seconds; Seungkwan had no idea where he put it because he had pushed up his hoodie’s sleeves for the meal and he was the kind of lean that ran to veiny arms and hard muscle. Afterwards, with everything put away, he saw him reclining sleepily in his chair. Between the little apple tail that still bobbed on his head and the pout on his lips he looked like a baby, sleepy and out of it. “Lie down?” he suggested. “You look like you’re five seconds from passing out, Hansol-ssi.”

“I can’t,” Hansol said, knuckling at his eyes. “What if my sister cooks up another hell-soap without me to console her?”

Seungkwan grinned at him. “She’ll understand. C’mon. Let the stewardess make your bed and you can drift off. I can promise you those pills are going to hit you in about five seconds.”

A few moments of pouting later, with Hansol curled up on his couch with his hoodie pulled low over his eyes, Seungkwan wanted to pat him like Bookkeu but manfully resisted the impulse to tuck him in a little more. He closed his eyes as well, asked himself why he was becoming fond of a grown-ass stranger, and went back to his papers feeling just a little melancholy.

Hour #3

The guy in 1K was singing. Seungkwan tried not to listen. He didn’t mind trot, but this was less trot and more unsteady wobble. He checked whether Hansol was still breathing, fed Bookkeu his snacks and let the stewardess coo over him a little before he took the puppy to get the liner of his carry-case changed. When he returned, Hansol was still sleeping, flat on his back with his arms above his head like a little boy. His heart pinged just a little.

Hour #4

Hansol-ssi had rolled over on his side by now.

Their stewardess had come by to have a quick chat before she went off-shift to sleep, just to introduce the new one, and the two had to fight off a coo as well. Seungkwan had told himself that it was creepy to take pictures of cute strangers whilst they slept, but still reached to shut the shade when the light threatened to spill on his seat partner’s face. He tried to watch a movie, but his English was so much worse than he thought, and it felt like cheating to put the Korean subtitles on.

His Twitter was constantly busy, vibrating every now and then to keep him awake too. Two weeks ago Jihoon’s boyfriend’s best friend had added him to a group chat, and for the last day it’s been pictures of the beach and the arrangements being made. Set against the Pacific Ocean there was almost a wild feel to it, with the beach sand very pale and the straggling dune grass waving in patches. The sunsets were gorgeous, and he was just…

…he was as much in danger of falling in love with it as Kwon Soonyoung. Jeju fever, he admitted very quietly. I’m missing my own beach.

He inhaled deeply and promised himself that he wouldn’t be one of those people that got melancholy and very drunk on the plane. He hauled Peach-tan off his head to let the cold hair down his neck wake him up a little, and stood to take a turn past the first-class lounge for photos if nothing else.

Hour #5

Seungkwan arrived back in his seat over an hour later, only to find his hoodie abducted and curled in Hansol’s arms, but with the culprit asleep again. He grinned, imagining the embarrassment when he woke up and sobered up a little. Bookkeu was still sleeping peacefully underneath his seat; he blessed his vet, who had helped travel-train the puppy and gave him a tiny something that was pup-safe. He was peeking through the travel container’s door and taking pictures when noise rustled beside him.

“You have a dog?” Hansol’s voice was deep and gritty from sleep, slightly nasal.

Seungkwan had to bite on his lip not to disguise the shiver, uncomfortably aware that he found his seat buddy attractive. He didn’t need gravelly morning voice on top of that thank you. “A puppy. His name is Bookkeu,” he explained, sitting back so that Hansol could take a bleary look. “He’s a Maltese and just six months old. I would have left him with my family but...”

“Aigoo,” Hansol mumbled, leaning in for a good look. “Aigoo, I want to cuddle him, he’s so cute. May I pet him?”

“Nope, I’m not allowed to take him out, really, just to change his things, and someone slept through that earlier.”

Hansol reached up to ruffle sleep-tousled hair into a mess, pausing only to pull out the ponytail. It was only when he wiped a bit of drool off one mouth-corner that he looked down enough to see the pillow on his lap and the damp streak down one side. “Uh… did I…”

“Mhm.”

“Tell me I didn’t.”

“I wish I could, Hansol-ssi.” A warm kind of irritation washed through Seungkwan, provoking fondness rather than anger. Sure, he wanted to scold him, but he also wanted to hold his hand and sing drunken showtunes with him.

Wait. What?

Hansol’s face coloured, lips alternately pressing thin then relaxing, jaw sagging as if he wanted to say something, then snapping shut again. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “I’m so, so sorry.” His shoulders hunched as he buried his face against the soft, fragrant pink fabric. “I’ll have it laundered; I promise. I’m the worst seat neighbour ever.” Shyly, very shyly, he handed the hoodie pillow back.

Seungkwan, still half-dazed, tried not to smell what Chwe Hansol’s cologne smelled like sleepy-warm. “It’s okay,” he assured on auto-pilot. “You’re not at peak, um, efficiency.”

Silence descended and grew awkward. Instead of looking, he cautiously wiggled Bookkeu in underneath his chair again and tried to go to sleep himself.

Hour #6

Roughly a sleepless eternity (or forty-seven minutes) later, just as he reached for the in-flight magazine to see if that could read himself to somnolence, a hand came sneaking over the super-wide armrest and put a small slip of paper down in his field of vision. He picked it up, nearly recoiled from the horrible handwriting and tried to decipher it.

I’m really sorry that I drooled on your pillow. It’s incredibly awkward and I’m too embarrassed to speak to you, so please tell me how I can make it up to you.

Seungkwan stared down at the note. They were halfway across the Pacific, and if it had been a novel they would have been having illicit sex in one of the bathrooms by now. Instead, he wanted to reach over and pinch the guy’s cheeks, or scold him for being overly familiar, or a host of things his heart didn’t want to agree with his mind on. A part of him wondered whether he always sounded like that in the morning, whether he’d want to move if he found out Seungkwan was gay, and since when Adorably Awkward had become the new sexy.

Biting the inside of his lip – it was getting quite the workout – he dug up a pen and turned over the twist of paper, deciding to go for funny rather than confused. It came out half-sarcastic and dark anyway, which he hoped his impeccable handwriting excused.

I’ll forgive you if you sing Bi’s ‘Bad Guy’ whilst offing 1K. If you can manage to make him stop singing…

Seconds later, as he passed the paper back, he thought Hansol might have a spasm reading it. There was a sniffle that was a suppressed snort, and seconds later it became light next to him as Chwe Hansol stood. Walking slowly, he crossed the first-class cabin and went to talk to 1K. Miraculously, a blissful silence began to reign after a moment of muffled talking, and when Hansol idled back to slink into his seat with a shit-eating grin Seungkwan felt fully, fully in fondness with him. From the look of the passengers around them, not to mention Stewardess #2, he was the hero of the hour.

“How?” he asked point-blank.

“I told him that we were on our way to an event and that we had partied too hard yesterday and you had a massive hangover and I was still drunk and asked if he could please shush.” Hansol shrugged. “He told me not to mix drinks next time and that the younger generation are too weak to take their drinks anymore but hey. He shut up.”

“Fair disclosure, I think our stewardess might want to knight you, or give you her number.”

“I’d rather have yours.”

Oh. Oh.

Oh.

Seungkwan didn’t pretend to self-control; his ears pinkened so fast he felt breathless by the speed of the reaction. “Um…” He couldn’t quite look at his companion, could barely withstand looking at the scrawl on the paper he still clutched. “Um, what?”

“…what?” Hansol asked, confusion reigning.

Seungkwan let it sink in as he counted to ten.

Around second three the silence grew heavy. It lasted all the way to second seven before it seemed to click. “Oh shit,” Hansol said with both great emphasis and great facility with English. “Oh shit oh shit, did I say that out loud? Oh baby Jesus on a pogo stick…”

Seungkwan couldn’t help it. He had reached some kind of internal limit, and so instead of wanting to die he laughed and kept on laughing until tears gathered in his eyes, until he could barely breathe.

Hour #7

Funnily enough, when Hansol got over wanting to die and Seungkwan got over laughing, things just clicked. He met Hansol’s sister through a selfie she sent of her in some awful stretched-out rainbow shirt Hansol grumbled over, because apparently it had been stolen from his closet. He sent one back with Peach-tan on his head and his widest smile, and they had gushed together about the new range. Hansol still had the worst sense of humour ever, odd and explosive enough to make him fall around, and the entire inconvenient mess of him was too, too endearing for words.

It was when Hansol started bothering him for crossword puzzle answers that he suspected that he was falling just a little.

He considered his fingers, the way his legs tucked in beneath him, the quiet snuffles as Bookkeu settled down to sleep again. “Hansol-ssi…” he began.

Hansol was counting on his fingers, trying to figure out whether a word would fit, but gave him a sideways look. “Seungkwan-ssi?”

“Have you always wanted to become an assassin?”

Hansol blinked and put his pen down. “Really?”

Seungkwan couldn’t decipher whether he meant ‘Really, you’re finally interested’ or ‘Really, you actually bought that’, so merely nodded.

“Being one requires a lot of discipline, I guess,” Hansol said as he settled back in the broad chair. “And I get to travel around to glamorous places and beyond a few unpleasant bits, I can run my life as I want to. Being a spy would mean that I’d have to do it for a country, which could control my comings and goings. This way I can still lounge around and play Fortnite in my underpants whenever I want to, and I can afford not to live with my parents.”

Blinking, Seungkwan wondered for a second whether he was actually serious. “That’s remarkably well thought-out,” he finally got out. His fingers played with the tears on his jeans and for the briefest moment he wanted to demand the truth. Recollecting he had no right to demand anything, he snapped his mouth shut and eyed the in-flight magazine again, suddenly back to sullenly hating airplane seats. Reaching, obscurely irritated, he demanded, “So are you really here for the guy in 1K?”

Hansol’s smile crimped in a little. “No,” he said easily. “A friend’s having a get-together.” His fingers fumbled at the pen. “And I’m not actually an assassin. The closest I ever came was being a sniper.”

Seungkwan’s reality passed through ‘excuse me’ to ‘wtf’ at the thought of the dorky baby next to him being in the military at all, let alone an actual sniper. “What?” he got out lamely. “I mean… what? But you’re so young still!”

It explains why he’s so ripped but what the hell?

Hansol’s gaze wandered off to the aisle. “I don’t like violence or fighting,” he said softly. “But you know all Korean men have to enlist. I really didn’t want to, so I thought I’d enlist right after high school, maybe get a job somewhere in an office? You know, like some of the actual idols get those jobs in the police or district offices or whatever? And I thought I should give it a chance, really experience it so that I could hate it with reason. Because, I mean, that’s polite, right? Don’t hate something without reason. And that I could get it over with, have it ruin my life as little as possible.”

Seungkwan struggled to keep up, mind reeling at the strange, strange innocence of Hansol’s mind. “What happened?” he asked softly. “Were you no good at it?”

“It turned out that I was good at it,” Hansol murmured. “I could follow orders and I listened decently well, and I turned out to be really, really good at marksmanship. And I found out you might request a specialty that’s the equivalent of working at the local electronics shop, but that did not mean you would get it. And suddenly you find yourself in the DMZ, staring down the scope of a TAC-50 about to gun down someone over three kilometres away, and suddenly you wonder if they were as afraid as you were.”

Feeling horrified, Seungkwan turned to stare at Hansol’s excellent jawline. “How old were you?”

“Twenty. I was twenty-one when I got out.”

Uncaring, Seungkwan reached over the armrest to take Hansol’s fidgeting hands in his. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “And thank you.”

Hansol’s smile grew a little. “What are you thanking me for?”

“For doing that. I would not have been able to do that, not that they’d put me in there. I haven’t even gone yet, I was going to complete my degree first…”

Hansol freed his hands with a little pat. “Seungkwan-ssi, I have no doubt you would get into officer school and be running the place within a couple of years.”

Unsure of what to do, Seungkwan reached behind him for squashed Peach-tan and draped it over Hansol’s head. “You deserve it,” he said awkwardly as he arranged the hoodie ceremoniously. “I apologise. I have a bad habit of not knowing when to stop.”

Hansol let him fiddle with the hoodie, shot him a sideways smile and went down for another nap.

Seungkwan tried very hard not to cry.

Hour #8

Seungkwan finally won the battle against sleeplessness, feeling emotionally drained by the long flight, not to mention the recent conversation. Curled up around his phone, he was dead to the world. It only lasted for an hour, so he felt more cranky than ever when he woke up.

Hour #9

Breakfast happened, and another little interlude with Bookkeu. This time Seungkwan changed things right there at the seat, because Chwe Hansol had some kind of magical attraction for animals and Bookkeu actually sat on his lap without complaint. The puppy was in bliss, eyes squinted nearly all the way shut as long fingers scratched and petted him, and a furled, pouting mouth offered kisses to his little head.

Stop being jealous of your dog, Seungkwan’s mind ordered him, or at least the reasonable portion of it. He suppressed the thought, made the carrier up fresh and put all the soiled stuff in a plastic bag, tucking it deep in his carry-on. His finger drifted over his wallet, then slipped inside to haul out one of the few business cards he had brought with.

“Come on, baby,” he muttered, wiggling his puppy back. Curling him close, taking a moment to bury his face in the clean, sweet-smelling puppy fur, he dropped the business card on the arm between them, too shy to face Hansol suddenly. Long moments later, more so for his composure than out of necessity, with the puppy back and settled where he should be, he sat back straight again, facing forward.

“Is this for my sister?” Hansol asked idly, twisting the card between his fingertips where Seungkwan could see.

Seungkwan looked out the window as the lights brightened and he opened the electronic slide. “No.”

“No?”

“It’s for you.”

“Seungkwan-ssi, if you feel…”

Seungkwan risked a look sideways. “You wanted my number, right?” he said with false bravado. “Unless that was the pills as well. If you need a familiar stranger to talk to whilst you’re in the USA.”

Hansol said nothing, but tucked the card into his pocket as breakfast came past. They ate it together – Hansol ate most of it and made unhappy noises about his salad and green tea – and for a while silence descended. The cabin crew slowly started making ready for landing, in that they came around with what was surely the nth glass of booze.

Seungkwan paid it little attention.

Hour #10

Seungkwan’s phone dinged with a new notification and he rolled his eyes as he flicked to the message app. The group had woken in the last few hours and was including him on their planning to get to the airport to pick people up. He didn’t think twice about opening the chat and spamming it with devil emojis and threats about how tired he was. They were laughing at him, he blinked tiredly and started complaining of his hot seat neighbour and how he was tired of how nicely he smelled, and that he was apparently magic with animals, and a string of other complaints about how unfair it was that someone could be hot and kind and…

Hansol cleared his throat at his side. “You know, Seungkwan-ssi, I don’t think I’m that hot.”

Seungkwan’s mind struggled to keep up. “What?” he asked, before he caught the nod towards his phone. Horrified, the penny dropped and he looked down. Somewhere in there, likely because he was tired and stabbing at the phone with his fingers, the chat had moved to a new one from a guy that had sent him a very sweet good morning, along with his contact card.

Chwe Hansol Vernon, it said under the profile, along with the dorkiest picture he had ever seen of anyone, and that included Lee Seokmin being a meme. There was a rocket ship there for some reason, and an alien, and a little rainbow flag.

Huh, the part of his mind not having a screaming fit noted. Almost the same age as me. The overwhelming majority of him, however, was figuring out how not to have a breakdown out loud. “Oh my god I am so sorry, I must have switched over to the wrong chat somehow…”

“It’s not as bad as drooling on your birthday gift, is it?” Hansol asked, looking faintly amused. “I can… here, hold on.” He deleted the conversation on his phone, then held it up as proof. “See? All new! I don’t even remember what you said!”

As kindnesses go, it was kind of small, but it touched Seungkwan so, so much. His wobbling pout un-wobbled itself as the embarrassed frown on his forehead disappeared. “You’re too kind, Hansol-ssi. I’m a bit of a disaster when I’ve not had enough sleep, sorry. I thought I could reset my sleep pattern here, but it hasn’t worked so well. Do you know, this was the most enjoyable flight I’ve had in years? I generally don’t like airplanes at all.”

Hansol grinned at him. “Even though you had to deal with the disaster in the next seat?”

“Excuse you, I happen to like my seat buddy this time around. Besides, Bookkeu approves of you or he would not have let you hold him like that.”

“Oh, good. Because I’m close to kidnapping him, he’s such a good little doggo.”

Seungkwan wrinkled his nose. “As if.” He took a deep breath. “I… Hansol-ssi…”

Above his head, the cabin announcement system chimed, announcing their descent in twenty minutes. Even 1K straightened, and Seungkwan tried not to feel frantic, as if he was losing an opportunity. He didn’t know how the hell his heart managed to fall for someone without even knowing whether he left the toilet seat up, or squeezed the toothpaste in the middle, or… or talked in movies… or even what kind of music he liked.

They landed whilst he was still trying to counsel his heart, and he messed about nervously trying to get all his things. When he looked up, Hansol was there holding Peach-tan out to him.

“Keep it,” he managed to say. “Now you don’t have to steal your sister’s.”

Hansol smiled slowly, until it stretched his cheeks. “It was nice meeting you, Seungkwan-ssi. I look forward to hearing from you again.”

This is it, this is it…

“And you,” he said dumbly. “Have a great trip.”

They shuffled out of the plane, not together but not apart either. Hansol’s longer legs carried him away first, and he disappeared down the airport gate tunnel with a single backwards smile over his shoulder. ‘Bye bye, chat soon’ he mouthed.

Seungkwan waved back as much as he could, still caught in the grip of uncertainty, and tried to squash the feeling that he’d never hear from Hansol again even though they had exchanged numbers. Just passengers, he told his unhappy heart. We were just fellow passengers.

Terminal

It took him almost two hours to get through Customs, not only because he couldn’t find the little slip of information with everything he wanted to declare, but because he had to get Bookkeu cleared as well; there were recent immunization papers to provide, a quick check by the airport vet, and then he had to trace back the maze of steps back to the area where suitcases were dispensed. His was there, standing lonely but guarded by a sympathetic United employee, and all he could think of was escaping and sleeping.

Fumbling between the carrier, his carry-on bag and the huge suitcase he had brought with, he had no time to switch over data plans or even stop for a fortifying cup of coffee somewhere. Bookkeu, sensing his mood, was starting to fuss after having been so good on the plane, so he hastened his step towards the distant arrival gate.

When he spilled through it, Kwon Soonyoung’s furiously waving arms caught his attention first, as did the huge, be-glittered poster with his name that Seokmin was waving around. Jihoon looked absolutely done with them, but his gaze enlivened a little when he lifted a hand to wave. Feeling obscurely like crying, Seungkwan homed in on them like an arrow, and disappeared into hugs from two strangers. He didn’t care, he hugged them back as well, too happy to meet the two loud menaces.

“Seungkwan-ah,” his friend’s boyfriend said with the most adorable hamster grin. “You look like they took the plane and beat you with it. Back to the inn so you can sleep?”

“Please. You’ll be my prince too.”

Soonyoung and Seokmin almost broke themselves laughing; Jihoon pressed past them to hug him once, hard. “We’re just waiting for Soonyoung’s friend, he went to the bathroom quickly. He came through Customs much earlier for all that you were on the same plane.”

“Oh, that’s right, Seungkwan-ah, I forgot to tell you…” Soonyoung began.

“Hyung!” a deep, familiar voice called out. “Sorry, I’m back, did your friend arrive yet?”

Eyes rounding, Seungkwan stepped to the side a little to stare past Seokmin. There, with honey-blonde hair ruffled and a pair of blood-red sunglasses, Chwe Hansol Vernon came jogging up to them all long limbs and smiles. His heart thumped painfully once, then twice.

Oh.

Oh.

“I…” he fought to get out. “Hansol-ssi?”

Hansol stuttered to a stop. “Seungkwan-ssi! You’re the friend?”

“Wait, what?” Jihoon said. “You two know each other?”

The airport terminal felt slightly too small for Seungkwan’s happiness, and he bit down on his lip to stop a pout forming. “You really are here to kill me, aren’t you?” he demanded hoarsely. “You assassin. You just want my dog and my Kakao Friends merch.”

“Wait, what?” Seokmin got in from the side.

Hansol’s smile dazzled him, and the possibility of spending days, weeks learning the fascinating, too-kind man’s habits struck him. It felt like a reprieve, breaking through the fugue of fatigue and the longing he had denied himself because they were just passengers sitting together.

“Never,” Hansol said happily. “I’m too greedy to settle for just Bookkeu. Run away with me before the police find out about 1K?”

“I get the feeling we’re missing something,” Soonyoung got in from the side. “But there’ll be plenty of time to explain. Back to the inn!”

Seokmin reached for the carrier. “Gimme the doggo, I want to carry the doggo…”

Seungkwan allowed hands to take his things from him, shivering as Hansol took his hand for a quick, warm squeeze. The touch spread through his chest and settled into his heart. Suddenly, he felt absurdly happy, absurdly awake, ready to step into the future and give things a chance.