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The rain had started tapping on the hotel windows right at the time they finally arrived after stage blocking around 2AM. It was already so late and Dylan knew they were in for a very short night, but the rain pouring outside had shrunken it considerably more. Each droplet seemed to mock the exhaustion weighing down his bones, the relentless rhythm against the glass a countdown to morning that would come far too soon.
Some people found it comforting to hear the gentle tap of water hitting the windows, but Dylan hated it. There was no reason for it—at least none that he had been able to find—he simply hated the sound and the way it made him feel angsty and alone. The percussion of raindrops felt like tiny accusations, each one reminding him of every sleepless night he'd ever endured, every moment he'd felt adrift. Even when he wasn't actually alone, the rain had a way of carving out hollow spaces inside his chest that shouldn't exist when Jun was right there beside him.
But Jun wouldn't be faring much better. Sleeping away from home made him restless and anxious, his body refusing to surrender to sleep in unfamiliar beds, foreign cities pressing down on him like a weight. It was why MARS never fully went on tour where you spend weeks roaming a continent from one city to the next. It was always the shortest trips possible, two or three nights out maximum to avoid exhaustion due to sleepless nights that would pile up like unpaid debts, leaving them hollow-eyed and irritable.
Sharing a bed, sharing space together was always making things much easier for them both, but it didn't make a full course correct. It wasn't like they'd be able to close their eyes and fall into a deep slumber easily, their minds finally quiet and their bodies finally still. None of that ever happened, but it made it easier because they had someone to share the sleepless nights with, someone to talk to when the silence became too heavy, someone to confide in when thoughts spiraled too dark, someone to hold and to cherish when the world felt too sharp-edged and cruel, someone who'd do just the same for them without judgment or expectation.
So, yeah. Dylan knew that they wouldn't sleep, knew that they'd feel tired the next day or the following one, their movements sluggish and their patience thin. But he also knew that they'd be happy and peaceful in a way that transcended rest, in a way that made the exhaustion feel like a fair trade.
Maybe that was what had brought them closer to begin with. Knowing someone struggled just as much as you did, that you weren't alone in your inability to find peace in the dark. Or maybe it had been something else entirely—the way Jun's laugh could cut through Dylan's worst moods, or how Dylan's sarcasm seemed to ground Jun when anxiety made his hands shake. Dylan didn't really know, had never known what sparked this closeness, this tentative friendship after years of merciless teasing and bickering that had sometimes drawn blood, words sharpened to wound. A tentative friendship that had begun in shared hotel rooms and sleepless nights at home, too, when one would show up at the other's door at 3AM with takeout and sheepish apologies. A friendship that had bloomed slowly, into more—like a flower unfurling its petals so gradually you couldn't pinpoint the exact moment it opened completely.
They had chosen not to label it. It felt too fragile and too precious to put a name on it, as if speaking it aloud might shatter whatever magic held them together. But they knew it was special. It was in the way Jun sometimes looked at him—too fond and gentle—or the way Dylan touched Jun in public—a chin pressed on a shoulder that lingered just a heartbeat too long, a thigh squeeze or an arm thrown around shoulders that felt more like a claim than casual affection. But it was mostly in the way they held each other at night, stripped bare not only in the literal sense, skin against skin with nothing between them, but also in the fact there was no armor or shield, no walls up between them, no pretense or performance. Just achingly tender touches that mapped constellations on each other's skin, pliant bodies that fit together like puzzle pieces finally finding their match, and sighing mouths spilling into one another, breathing each other's air.
So, when the rain poured even harder outside, drops hammering against the glass with renewed fury, Dylan didn't take it as a bad omen. He took it as an excuse to stay awake by Jun's side, to give themselves some private reprieve away from the outside world and its chaos—the cameras and expectations. Here, in this anonymous hotel room with rain creating a curtain between them and reality, they could enter their special bubble where nothing existed except the two of them.
With his head pressed against Jun's shoulder, fitting perfectly into the curve where neck met collarbone, and their legs tangled in a knot that would probably leave them both cramping later, he could almost forget the sound of the rain rattling against the windows. He drowned the noise in Jun's steady heartbeat, that reliable rhythm that never failed to calm the storm inside Dylan's chest, the lub-dub that felt like home in a way no place ever had.
He was playing with Jun's hand, taking his time to trace every finger as if memorizing them through touch alone, learning the topography of Jun's knuckles and the valleys between them, to lace and delace their hands in an endless pattern of connection and separation, to draw soothing patterns on his wrist—circles and figure-eights—and play with the hair on his arm, the fine dark strands soft under his fingertips. He smiled whenever goosebumps made them raise on Jun's golden skin, a visible proof that his touch affected Jun as much as Jun's affected him. In return, Jun's free arm was wrapped around his waist, his hand pawing at the skin under his t-shirt like a cat kneading, fingers pressing and releasing in a rhythm that matched his breathing.
There were no words, just the sound of their soft breaths mingling in the small space between them and their hearts beating in unison, a synchronized percussion that felt more intimate than any conversation. Dylan was at peace—a feeling so rare and precious he wanted to bottle it, to save it for the inevitable bad days. These stolen moments were some of his favorite memories that he would treasure for a long time, carrying them like talismans against the darkness. It gave him hope that life didn't always have to be relentless and battering you down, that sometimes it could be soft and gentle and full of quiet wonder.
Maybe he should start thinking about it more, about what all of this meant beyond the physical comfort and companionship. Maybe he should dissect his own feelings, tear his heart apart and look into it like a surgeon searching for disease, and pause to think about what he was feeling and whether that was a beautiful friendship or more. He guessed he knew the answer, because he had beautiful friendships already—with Thame who knew all his secrets, with Pepper who made him laugh until his stomach hurt, with Nano who challenged him by his relentless teasing, even with Po or Gam who he trusted with his vulnerability, with the one friend from high school he still caught up with weekly over terrible coffee and good conversation, with another producer he'd met through a collaboration who understood the creative process like few others did.
None of those friendships made him want to stay there in silence, to bask in the warmth of their entwined bodies like a cat in a sunbeam, to run his hand through their hair just to feel the strands slip through his fingers, to have their hands on every inch of his body mapping him like unknown land, and their warm breath on his skin before they dropped reverent kisses that felt like prayers. He had no desire to kiss them for hours and hours without ever stopping, without getting further than soft touches and quiet gasps, content to exist in that liminal space between friendship and something that felt too big to name.
So, truly, Dylan knew it meant more. Much, much more than friendship. It was closer to the kind of companionship people yearned for, sometimes for their entire life, the kind poets wrote about and musicians tried to capture in melodies that never quite managed to convey the full depth of it.
On nights like tonight, with rain as witness and darkness as confidant, he sometimes wished one of them was bold enough to say the words, to label this and give it a name that would make it real. But giving it meaning would bring new complications, because want could be a vicious thing—insatiable and demanding, never satisfied with what you had, always reaching for more. Properly naming this thing would open the door to telling their closest peers who already knew way too much, who looked at them with knowing smiles and careful silence. Labeling their relationship would eventually lead to, at least one of them, wishing to tell the world and let strangers into their safe haven where they could just be Dylan and Jun instead of the polished idols the public demanded. Dylan was afraid one of them wouldn't return the sentiment, wouldn't want the same things or have the same wishes, that one would want to shout it from rooftops while the other wanted to keep it secret and sacred. He dreaded losing these precious moments where it was just he and Jun wrapped in their bubble and sharing something that could shatter with the wrong move, as fragile as spun glass and twice as precious.
So, he stayed quiet, swallowing the words that sometimes climbed up his throat unbidden, and moved just a little to press himself closer to Jun's warmth, to let go of his hand to touch his chest instead, palm flat over his heart, to feel it rise and fall steadily like waves on a shore, to feel the drumming of his heartbeat against his fingertip despite the thin fabric standing between his skin and Jun's, that barrier feeling both necessary and frustrating.
Then, an idea popped up in Dylan's brain, sudden and bright like a camera flash. Something his mum used to do when he was a kid, when words felt too hard or emotions too big, something that would give them an outlet to speak without words, to communicate in a language older than speech. So, he reluctantly pulled away for a second, immediately missing Jun's warmth.
"Take off your t-shirt and lay on your stomach," Dylan said without preamble, without giving Jun a chance to see that something had switched just slightly.
"I'm too exhausted, Dyl'." Jun replied, closing a proposition that Dylan hadn't even made, but gentling the rejection with a kiss on Dylan's head, the mop of hair tingling at the sensation of soft lips pressing down gently on it, breath warm against his scalp.
"Not where I was heading," Dylan said with a soft smile and a fond shake of his head that Jun had immediately thought about sex when that couldn't have been farther away from Dylan's mind. Tonight wasn't about desire in that way—it was about something softer, something that felt more vulnerable than nakedness. "Trust me," he added with what was his softest, most pleading tone. It wasn't much, because he was too used to speaking in sharp words and biting someone's head off than being gentle, sarcasm his first language and tenderness something he had to consciously translate.
When Jun finally obliged, curiosity winning over exhaustion, turning on his stomach and settling his hands under the pillow carrying his head, Dylan mounted his back. He took a few seconds to marvel at the expanse of his skin at disposal, a canvas waiting for him, Jun's caramel skin dotted with small moles all over like stars in a constellation only Dylan knew how to read. Dylan had already traced and kissed each and every single one of them on multiple occasions, sometimes making up stories about the patterns they formed, and he would gladly do so again, but it wasn't his purpose today.
With Jun's arms bending under his pillow, his shoulders looked even broader than usual, all of his back muscles coming into view—the trapezius, the deltoids, the latissimus dorsi that Dylan had learned the names of just so he could appreciate Jun's body properly. And damn, what a sight for sore eyes, especially with the dim light from the bedside table that made his skin even more golden, painting him in amber and honey tones, shadows pooling in the valleys of his spine and the dimples at the small of his back.
"Have you ever played the guessing game?" Dylan asked softly, fingers already moving, starting to draw a cat on Jun's skin with delicate strokes, imagining the whiskers and curved tail.
"Hmmmm," Jun assented, voice already heavy with impending sleep, before adding, "when I was a kid." It was quiet again while Dylan drew whiskers and ended with pointy ears, making sure each line was distinct enough to read. "Are you drawing a cat?" Jun asked lazily, his voice a soft drawl that made each word last twice as long as it should.
That was one of the things Dylan loved most about those nights, Jun's tired voice getting just on the side of raspy, even deeper than usual until it resonated in Dylan's chest like a bass note. It was always doing things to him, making his heart go slightly out of rhythm, skipping beats like a scratched record.
Dylan nodded when Jun opened one eye to look at him, catching Dylan staring with unguarded affection he'd never allow in daylight. For reward, Dylan bent down, pressing his lips against the rough skin of Jun's chin where his stubble was getting more visible with each hour that went by, the scratch of it familiar and grounding against Dylan's mouth.
Before Jun could react, his body tensing slightly in surprise, Dylan was back to drawing. He started with the wheels, keeping the shape simple—two circles connected by lines—hoping Jun would guess again. When he did, voice tinged with amusement, Dylan kissed the side of his nose that wasn't pressed against the pillow, chuckling at Jun's moving face as he pulled back as if the kiss had tickled him, features scrunching adorably.
He took a couple seconds thinking about the next one, finger hovering over Jun's skin without touching. He wanted to make it simple enough for Jun to guess, but not too obvious either, finding that perfect balance between challenge and accessibility. He settled for a puppy, sketching the round body and floppy limbs, the dog ears easily giving away what he was doing, those long shapes unmistakable. Jun was good at the game, and he smiled softly, lips curving against the pillow, before answering, "you're drawing me. Woof."
The tender feelings were overwhelming, crashing over Dylan like a wave he hadn't braced for, stealing his breath and making his eyes burn with unexpected emotion. He pressed a kiss right on the side of that goofy smile, close enough for their lips to brush, the contact feather-light and devastating in its sweetness.
"Last one," Dylan said with obvious glee, voice bright with anticipation. He looked outside for a second and the crescent moon that was staring at them through the open window blinds despite the rain still pouring made it easy. The silver light cut through the darkness, ethereal and pure. He didn't keep it at the moon, but drew stars all around it—five-pointed stars scattered across the expanse of Jun's back like a galaxy taking shape under his fingertips.
"Are you giving me the stars and the moon?" Jun teased with a goofy smile, all traces of tiredness evaporating, replaced by something playful.
Despite Dylan's eagerness for a tender moment, he couldn't help but groan at the way Jun had said the words, the teasing lilt that made it simultaneously romantic and ridiculous. But instead of replying with words himself, instead of the sharp retort that sat ready on his tongue, he settled for shutting Jun up with a proper kiss this time, claiming his mouth with an intensity that left no room for jokes.
He let Jun turn around to face him, Jun's hand tangling in his hair and pressing on his nape to bring him closer, fingers threading through the strands. The idiot was still smiling into the kiss and there was nothing that Dylan could do besides melt into the embrace and kiss him harder until Jun pulled away, both of them breathing heavily.
"My turn," he said happily, eyes bright with mischief and something softer, slipping Dylan's top off with efficient movements and easily overriding him, using his superior strength to maneuver Dylan however he wanted.
Despite manhandling him, flipping him over like he weighed nothing, Jun was gentle with his movements, pressing Dylan on his stomach on the soft bed sheets before settling on his bum.
Dylan barely had time to get into a comfortable position, adjusting his arms under the pillow and turning his head to the side, and focus before Jun's eagerness made him start writing words instead of drawing. Which made sense because he couldn't draw for shit, his attempts at art always ending up looking like abstract chaos no matter his intentions.
M. O. O. N. L. I. G. H. T.
Each letter traced deliberately, Jun's finger pressing firmly enough to be clear but gently enough to send shivers down Dylan's spine.
"You have no imagination," Dylan teased in return, because the word was too heavily linked with his own drawing, an obvious callback.
"I'm only getting started," Jun promised.
Dylan chuckled, the sound muffled as he buried his face deeper into the pillow that already smelled like Jun—a scent he had long since become addicted to. He reveled in the soft press of Jun's lips on his cheek, a reward for his patience.
D.R.E.A.M. T.O. M.A.R.S.
The letters came slower this time and Dylan felt his breath catch as the words formed a phrase loaded with history.
"Really? You couldn't think of happier memories than what was supposed to be MARS's very last concert?" Dylan said with a sigh, not wanting to reminisce this period of their lives when everything had felt like it was ending, when they'd thought they were saying goodbye to everything they'd built together.
"Hey, it ended well and it was all due to your brilliant genius and my devilishly handsome charm," Jun replied, before kissing his temple and then his cheek again, pressing affection into Dylan's skin like a seal.
"I'm still trying to find your so-called charm," Dylan teased because Jun was too full of himself, ego inflated beyond reasonable proportions.
"You wound me, babe," Jun replied easily with a way too giddy laugh considering the late hour, or very early hour maybe, the sound bubbling up irrepressibly.
P.E.A.C.E.F.U.L. was the next word, traced with reverence, and Dylan couldn't agree more despite the wind and rain blowing against the windows of their hotel room, nature's violence contrasting with the serenity they'd created in this hotel room.
This time, Jun went temple, cheek and ear, right on the mole that was above the earlobe, a spot he'd discovered drove Dylan crazy. It wasn't the first time Jun kissed this particular spot, but every single time, it made Dylan melt like an ice-cream under a scorching sun.
Dylan didn't say anything and neither did Jun, the silence stretching between them but it took long seconds for him to start writing again. Dylan closed his eyes while waiting, trying to guess what was coming next, mind racing through possibilities.
P.H.O.M. R.A.K. K.H.U.N.
Phom rak khun. I love you. Jun was still tracing what felt like a heart, the roar in Dylan's ears getting louder as his mind blanked. His breath got knocked out of his lungs in surprise, chest constricting like someone had wrapped iron bands around his ribs. It felt like his heart had stopped for an entire minute, white noise filling his ears as he froze, his body going rigid, before everything came rushing back. All the blood went straight to his heart, making it pump like a maniac trying to escape his chest, and heat spread from the tip of his hair down to his toes, every nerve ending suddenly alive and screaming.
Dylan squirmed, trying to turn around and properly face Jun, needing to see his face and be able to read his expression, but Jun was stronger and kept him in place with steady hands on his shoulders, refusing to let him escape this moment.
"Jun," Dylan started, voice cracking on the single syllable, but he didn't know what to say after. His voice had sounded like a whine, or a plea, emotions stripped bare.
"Shhhh," Jun said, placing a finger against his mouth to stop him from talking. "I don't need you to say anything. I just wanted you to know." The words were simple but loaded with meaning, giving Dylan permission to receive without the pressure of reciprocation.
And then he kissed Dylan's ear again, lips barely brushing the sensitive skin, nose running along the expanse of Dylan's throat as if he hadn't completely thrown Dylan off his axis with words he hadn't even said out loud, words that existed only in the temporary trace of fingertips on skin.
Dylan let himself be loved, failing to find a better word than cherished for what Jun was doing while peppering his back with kisses. Each press of mouth on his heated skin felt like a claim, searing Jun's love into every inch of Dylan's skin like a brand he'd wear forever. Dylan didn't mind one bit, he'd let Jun mark him all over if that meant keeping him around, even if he would complain loudly about having to hide them from the public eye, grumbling about turtlenecks and concealer.
Dylan didn't know what to say. Or, well, he knew too well but wasn't ready to say the words aloud. In a way, he understood why Jun had chosen to draw them on his back—the words disappeared, ephemeral as breath on glass. The trace was gone, no proof of it ever happening if Dylan chose not to acknowledge it, giving him plausible deniability if he needed it.
Maybe he wouldn't say them back now, throat too tight and heart too full to form the words properly, but he hoped to be able to one day. He hoped to make Jun feel exactly what he was feeling right now: a mix of elation and fright, joy and terror intertwined so tightly he couldn't separate them. A hope for the future that felt was exhilarating despite the fear.
When Jun finally let him turn around, releasing him from the gentle prison of his weight, Dylan poured all the words he couldn't say yet into his hands and mouth, communicating in the only way he could manage. His touches spoke of devotion, his kisses of promise, every caress a confession he wasn't brave enough to voice.
Maybe they fell asleep tangled in the bed sheets, pressed together so tightly it should have felt uncomfortable and too hot, but somehow felt perfect instead. Maybe Jun kissed him good morning, and kissed him again right before they went out for breakfast, stealing a moment in the elevator, and again before departing for the venue, pressed against the van door with no one else around, and again in the dressing room before and after the concert, makeup-stained and sweaty. Maybe Dylan let him do it, obliging without ever complaining, accepting each kiss like the gift it was.
Maybe a few weeks later, Dylan traced the words back on Jun's forearm while they were riding in a cab on their way home, the city lights streaking past the windows. And maybe Jun had smiled and simply leaned his head down on Dylan's that was resting on his shoulder, understanding the gesture for what it was—not quite the words themselves, but a step forward, a promise of eventually.