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When he gets back to the hotel, past the small queue of reporters and paparazzi that have huddled just inside the lobby, there are more staff waiting for him. Someone takes his coat, carefully draping it over one arm so that it can be safely carried back to wardrobe where the rest of his suit will join it once he drags himself up to his room to get undressed. Someone else starts whispering rapidly into his ear, about things like earned media value and trending hashtags. He’s pleased, thrilled even. The attention is good, the praise is good. People back home will be proud of him. But it’s midnight in New York and Seungcheol’s exhausted. His body is worn down from the sheer effort of being so aware of itself all evening; of standing and posing and turning just right. His brain and tongue are tired after spending too many hours trying to sift through words in a language he doesn’t speak. He’s pleased, but he’s tired. His flight leaves in nine hours.
One of the other staff members touches his elbow and he turns to her, trying to catch what she’s saying to him in a low voice but someone else much more famous than him has just arrived at the doors and there’s a flurry of activity that makes it hard to hear. Every second drains the energy from him a little more, leaving more space for the residual anxiety to stretch its limbs.
He makes excuses and heads for the elevator. His body sags against the cool marble inside as he takes a deep breath. He hopes he can sleep tonight. He probably won’t. Unfamiliar city, lonely hotel room. Maybe if he can’t sleep he can convince a manager hyung to go drinking with him.
When he opens the door to his room, he knows immediately that someone is inside. Just that telltale change in the atmosphere that lets you know there’s someone else in the room breathing the same air. He expects to see staff, maybe waiting to receive the garment bags that hold his suit. What he sees instead is Jeonghan.
Not in any easily identifiable way. He can’t see his face, or his crooked fingers or the scar on his elbow. It’s all hidden under the scratchy pile of hotel blankets. But the shape of him, it’s Jeonghan.
Seungcheol pauses for a moment and pokes around his own head to check for surprise or confusion but there isn’t any. He’s too tired to pretend he can’t tell who it is by the curve of his waist and the sound of his breathing alone.
He glances at the garment bag that hangs pointedly on the closet door and wrestles with himself for less than thirty seconds before he decides he can’t be fucked. The pants drop easily, loose fabric pooling around his ankles before he steps out of them and swoops down to pick them up to drape them over the back of the chair by the wall. Then the suit jacket gets untied and slid off carefully. He’s fumbling with the small button that rests against his throat when the lump on the bed starts shifting noisily.
“Cheol?”
He sees the buzzed scalp first, when Jeonghan pokes his head out from under the bedding. Then he’s turning his head and blinking, and when the blankets slide down a little further, Seungcheol takes in two pieces of information simultaneously: that Jeonghan fell asleep with his phone in his hand, fingers clutching it in such a way that suggests he’d been glued to the screen for a while. And secondly, that Jeonghan had taken time to rifle through Seungcheol’s luggage and steal one of his shirts. A newish one, that Seungcheol has only worn a few times. He knows he’ll never see it hanging in his closet again.
A little bit of tension drains out of him.
“Hi baby,” he murmurs. He abandons his mission to get undressed for a moment so he can lean back to hit the hallway light switch behind him. It gives the room just enough of a glow that has Jeonghan squinting at him in annoyance, nose scrunched cutely. The aircon has kicked on in the room and this hotel might be nice but the AC is very old and very American. The noise startles Seungcheol but Jeonghan just blinks at him.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Jeonghan comments, heaving himself up and looking annoyed by how much energy it takes.
The staff had made sure to leave a pair of fluffy white hotel slippers by the door, so Seungcheol takes a moment to slip off his trouser socks and slide his feet into them. He shrugs.
“I am I guess. It’s the least crazy thing that’s happened to me today.” He shrugs again. “Coming back to find you in my bed is more familiar than most things that have happened to me in the last 24 hours.”
“Mingyu said you saw that car guy you like.” Jeonghan’s sitting up properly now, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and plantinghis bare feet on the soft carpet. With the covers pushed down at the foot of the bed now, Seungcheol can see where Jeonghan had also been wearing his pajama pants but had probably gotten overheated and kicked them off. He’s just sitting there in Seungcheol’s huge shirt and his ratty black briefs. The downy hair on his thighs catches the low light from the hall.
Seungcheol laughs softly. “I saw so many famous people.”
“You’re a famous person.”
“Mm. So are you.” Seungcheol resumes his earlier plans to take off his dress shirt, fumbling with that damned button again. “Speaking of, how are you here? And without anyone knowing, Including me?”
He had seen some of the airport footage from the flight to Japan. The infuriating discomfort of Jeonghan’s tensed shoulders and the way he ducked his head to hide his face with his cap.
Jeonghan pushes himself to standing and shakes his body in a sort of shrug, using the momentum from the movement to roll his shoulders and stretch his neck with a soft sound.
“Flights from Japan to New York are easy to get. The staff are good.”
Not that good, Seungcheol grumbles to himself. Not if they couldn’t stop you from getting hounded at the airport. It’s not fair. They do what they can.
“Happy to see me?” Jeonghan says softly as he gets closer. He doesn’t expect an answer. His fingers come up to bat Seungcheol’s hands out of the way and they start unbuttoning the shirt for him. He slides it down off his shoulders with ease and tosses it on the chair.
“Our Seungcheollie did so well,” he coos then, hands on either side of Seungcheol’s neck where it curves into shoulder. His voice is teasing but the pink dusting his cheeks and the look in his eyes say he’s serious. He’s proud. Despite his exhaustion, Seungcheol lets his chest puff a little.
His hands move before his brain gives them any commands; they find themselves at Jeonghan’s waist. He bunches his fingers in the loose fabric of his own t-shirt, pulling it taut across Jeonghan’s stomach.
“People are going to lose their minds when you’re suddenly on a plane back from New York.”
Again, Jeonghan shrugs. He’s so nonchalant about all of this that Seungcheol wonders how long he’d planned it. “We’ll figure it out. Do you really care about that right now?”
Seungcheol laughs, chewing on his bottom lip while he takes in the sight before him. Jeonghan looks soft and beautiful like he always does but extra so because he’s soft and beautiful in Seungcheol’s hotel room on the other side of the world.
“No,” he whispers, shaking his head. Sure, he has more questions. How did Jeonghan get the time off? Did the members know? Were any of them here? He doesn’t ask any of them.
Jeonghan grins and continues his ministrations. His hands are slow and clumsy from sleep when he brings Seungcheol’s wrist up between them and undoes the clasp on his watch. The cool metal slides off into Jeonghan’s waiting hand and then clinks softly when he sets it down on the table. Then he picks up Seungcheol’s other wrist. The floral links of the gold bracelet seem to draw the meager hotel room lighting when Jeonghan just gently turns Seungcheol’s hand this way and that, as if to study it. Like he hasn’t seen it dozens of times by now and like he doesn’t have a matching one at home.
Jeonghan raises an eyebrow. “How’d you get away with this?”
Seungcheol’s face burns but he doesn’t snatch his wrist back. “You get to wear one personal item. Of, ah, sentimental value.” Met Gala styling rules were strange, even to someone like him, used to being read out extremely specific instructions about how he’s allowed to stand, eat, dress.
Jeonghan hums and says nothing but his eyes do something particular. A softening that Seungcheol recognizes for what it is.
He’s so tired now. His body has relaxed fully, whatever fight or flight that was still duking it out has called it a wash and drained out of him. The minute he’d seen Jeonghan he’d known he might have a chance at real sleep. Creature comforts.
Jeonghan tugs at the fabric of the white singlet that stretches across Seungcheol’s stomach until he gets the hint, laughing as he holds his arms above his head and lets Jeonghan tug the shirt off. And then he’s just standing there in his underwear. Unready.
“Ah, Coups-yah,” Jeonghan says, sighing as he takes in the shape of him.
His hand finds Seungcheol’s jaw then, fingers cradle his skull and the pad of Jeonghan’s thumb presses gently into the hollow of his cheek. He’s still got a face of makeup on that he should take off but he doesn’t want to. The sink is too far, there are too many steps.
Jeonghan’s still just looking at him, and that’s a waste of however much time Seungcheol has left before he passes out. He pulls him in ever closer by the fabric of his shirt and mouths at the spot just off to the side of his lips. It’s not really a kiss, it’s sloppy and tired but something about the way Jeonghan looks — sleep rumpled and jetlagged and proud — has Seungcheol a little at a loss for what to do other than just getting his mouth on him. But then it’s easy enough to slide over, connect their lips. Jeonghan is so warm and pliant against him and his lips part easily to suck Seungcheol’s bottom lip into his mouth. It’s so good. Seungcheol missed him.
“So this is why you didn’t answer any of my dozens of anxious text messages?” Seungcheol asks wryly when they pull apart.
“I really meant to be up when you got here,” Jeonghan admits. “But I fell asleep.”
He slides his hands down to rest just inside the waistband of Seungcheol’s briefs, then brings them around to rest on the swell of his ass, palming at it slightly.
“Jeonghan-ah,” Seungcheol whispers softly against his neck. “Hannie I’m so tired.”
Jeonghan pauses his groping and for a moment Seungcheol worries he’s upset. But then — he’s shaking slightly, laughing. Seungcheol pulls back in surprise, pouting.
Jeonghan shakes his head. “Thank god. Cheol I’ve been on a plane more than I’ve been anything else in the last three days. I was going to let you fuck me but you’d have to do most of the work.”
“How is that different from any other night?” Seungcheol teases but he’s laughing too. He stretches behind himself and just manages to hit the light switch to plunge them back into darkness. He pulls Jeonghan back in and just loops his arms around him. He squeezes lightly and then, still wrapped around each other, he waddles them towards the bed until they just sort of fall over onto it.
Immediately, Jeonghan curls up in the middle of the bed while Seungcheol curls around him. It’s a queen size bed but Jeonghan somehow takes up most of it and Seungcheol’s ass is hanging off the mattress just slightly. Just like at home. He noses into the back of Jeonghan’s skull, still startling at the lack of long, soft hair.
“Too tired to fuck after the Met Gala is a sentence I never thought I’d say to you for a whole bunch of reasons,” Seungcheol breathes out, laughing again. He’s gotten so many unbelievable things he never expected to get in the last ten years. The soft give of Jeonghan’s body when Seungcheol draws him in close to him is one of those.
The hotel sheets smell like nothing the way that all hotel sheets do. But the pillowcase they’re sharing smells like the musky citrus of Jeonghan’s cologne.