Work Text:
one
Casinos really aren’t Beomgyu’s natural habitat.
He hasn’t been to a casino since his eighteenth birthday, when his older brother had driven him down to Atlantic City with the hundred-dollar bill that their aunt in Florida had sent him as a present. He told their parents he was taking Beomgyu to the beach, although it was March, and they’d both flamed out within thirty minutes at the blackjack table at Caesars.
Beomgyu hasn’t felt a need to try gambling since. He prefers to squirrel away his salary in piggy banks and checking accounts, keeping it safe.
“Vegas is a strange place for a pediatrics conference,” the bartender says over the racket of the cocktail shaker.
“Yeah, that’s what I said to my boss,” Beomgyu says absent-mindedly, scanning his eyes over the room again. Neither of the coworkers he was supposed to be meeting have materialized. “But apparently the pediatrics board chair’s married to a neurosurgeon, and they had their last annual meeting in Malibu. He got competitive.”
“So have you been down the Strip yet? Seen the sights?”
“Nope. I’ve barely left the hotel. Woke up in the morning, hopped on the elevator down to the conference rooms. And they’re catering our meals in there.”
“Bummer,” the bartender says cheerfully. He uncaps the shaker, lining up a strainer with the rim of the coupe glass. The liquid he pours comes out purple, although Beomgyu doesn’t remember what ingredient listed on the drink menu would have made it that way. He’s not a discerning drinker. He just stabs for something that doesn’t sound too smoky.
“It’s probably a good thing, for the sake of my bank account,” Beomgyu says, reaching for his wallet. How much do you tip on a twenty-dollar cocktail? And isn’t that obscenely expensive for only two ounces of liquor? He hasn’t had much time to drop by trendy cocktail bars during his residency, nor the income to back up a trendy-cocktail habit. A Miller High Life or three with the interns after a shit day of vomiting toddlers and overbearing parents is the extent of his typical drinking.
“You can do Vegas on a budget, if you try,” the bartender says. “I can give you some recs for your next trip. Get off the Strip, see the desert. Are you a climber?”
Does he look like the kind of person who has a taste for danger? “Nope. I don’t really have the time for hobbies,” Beomgyu says, fidgeting with the corner of his wallet. It’s made of duct tape. His niece makes him a new one at summer camp every year, and it’s a good conversation starter with the sick kiddos.
“Like the wallet,” the bartender smiles. He smiles even wider when Beomgyu tips him five bucks. Was that too much, or are most gamblers just bad tippers? Twenty-five percent? That might have been too much. Beomgyu’s skin feels splotchy, and the bartender is eyeing him up strangely now, as if it meant something.
“Thanks for this,” Beomgyu stutters, and scurries away from the bar so fast he almost leaves the drink behind. An Aviation, he thinks it’s called. Crème de Violette, that’s what makes it purple.
Las Vegas is supposed to be noise, noise, noise, energy and emotion and lives going down in catastrophic flames, but it’s a lot quieter out on the floor than he would have expected. Maybe all those carpeted tables absorb the sound. It’s a Wednesday, which might help.
Now that he’s out on the floor, he remembers why he was lingering at the bar in the first place, buying overpriced cocktails: waiting to meet people. Beomgyu figures he’ll do a lap or two, drink in the sights and sounds, the glamorous women in too much makeup and the tourists wearing visors inside at night, and then head back to the bar. By then, he’ll have worked off the embarrassment of being nearly thirty and not knowing how to tip right, and maybe those coworkers will have materialized.
It’s not that he really wants to spend the night networking with two pediatric palliative care specialists. It’s just weird to be alone in a place like this, isn’t it? People who drink alone are drinkers, but with friends, it’s different. Neither of these coworkers are friends, but it still counts.
Beomgyu slurps along the rim of his drink, shuffling his feet as he walks to stay level and not spill it. Coupe glasses are less impractical than martini ones, but still. His hands are naturally shaky. It’s why he’s not a surgeon.
The carpet is spongy beneath his feet, a vibrant red that’s overstimulating his peripheral vision. It’s nice to be alone in a place like this, actually. Anonymous, lost in the dulled hubbub, invisible. A spectator, and Beomgyu casts his eyes around the room, skimming over the tables. Someone must have just won something at one of the craps tables from the noise spilling out from that corner. He doesn’t know how craps works, and the name makes him giggle.
His gaze lands on a roulette table, mostly empty. The back facing him is wearing some kind of varsity sports jacket with a last name across the top. Choi, his own. It’s a familiar green and gold.
Beomgyu blinks. It’s such a common name, but…
He circles the table, sticking to the perimeter of the room, until he gets a glimpse of the man’s face. It doesn’t ring a bell. Long but cheeky, classic good looks. Too old for a high school varsity jacket. Bland, maybe, though at this distance every face is halfway the same.
Beomgyu lifts the cocktail and the man’s eyes meet his. Maybe it’s the Aviation reflected in Beomgyu’s irises, but his face glows.
Beomgyu coughs and the drink splashes back into his face. When he opens his eyes again, wiping his jaw with his sleeve, the man is grinning, his cheeks creasing. He flickers his eyes down to an empty chair at the table and back up to Beomgyu.
Goddamnit. Beomgyu was going to, anyway, and now it looks like he’s just following orders. You need to take initiative more, Yeonjun tells him constantly, and he was going to, and now he…whatever. It’s probably a coincidence, anyway. He’ll just ask, and then be on his way.
He approaches the table and sets his drink down.
“Are you okay?” the man says. “That wasn’t graceful.”
“Perfect,” Beomgyu says defensively. “I’m a doctor. I know how to give myself the Heimlich.”
Dumb, dumb. It always sounds like a brag. The man’s eyebrows lift, the classic oh, a doctor. “Young for a doctor,” he says.
“I’m twenty-eight. I’m a resident,” Beomgyu explains, not for the first time. He knows he looks younger than his age. It’s a common comment from his patients’ parents.
“So not really a doctor, then.”
Beomgyu frowns. “Residents are licensed physicians,” he begins, and then stops himself. This isn’t where he wants this to go. Take initiative, Yeonjun says. He pulls out the leather chair next to his drink and slides into it.
“Actually, I want to ask you something.”
“Ask away,” the man says, letting his lips hang open. He has inflated lips, pouty as if they were artificial.
“You didn’t go to Bronx Science, did you?” Beomgyu drops his eyes to the lapel of the man’s jacket, and he sees it — that familiar logo, an atom.
The man was clearly not expecting that, sending his eyebrows skyward. “I did,” he says, starting to smile again. “You?”
“Me too, obviously,” Beomgyu says. “I recognized the jacket.”
“What year?”
“Twenty-twelve.”
“You’re a baby,” the man says, lifting his own drink. It’s something brown in a rocks glass. Smoky. No ice.
“No, I’m twenty-eight,” Beomgyu repeats.
“Bets?” the dealer says, and oh, right. They’re at a roulette table in Las Vegas with two faceless strangers beside them and Beomgyu doesn’t have any chips. He wasn’t planning on gambling. He’s just here to network with two pediatric palliative care specialists at the bar and hopefully make it back to his hotel room without burning a hole in his duct-tape wallet.
“Oh. Um, I don’t have any chips,” Beomgyu says, reaching for his drink again. It’s no big deal. The dealer will just tell him to leave, and he’ll go back to the bar and wait for whats-his-name to show up and—
The man flips him a chip. Red. Beomgyu doesn’t know what that means.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Anything for a Bronx Science kid,” the man says. “You do debate?”
“Yes, actually.” It’s not that weird to ask. Everyone did debate. It was a nerdy enough school that was kind of cool, even. “Did you?”
He smiles. “Wasn’t the type,” he says. “Oh-eight.”
“What?”
“Oh-eight. I graduated in two-thousand eight.”
So they didn’t overlap. No wonder Beomgyu didn’t recognize him. Bronx Science was a huge school, with hundreds of Korean kids among thousands of students, but he made a special note of all the Chois, and he doesn’t remember this one.
“Why’re you still wearing that jacket, if you’re…” his mind races to do the math on his age, but the man’s already answered.
“For luck,” he says. “I’m very, very lucky in this jacket.”
“Last call for bets,” the dealer says, and Beomgyu almost drops his chip.
Beomgyu isn’t a superstitious man. He’s a doctor, a man of logic and reason. He sleeps with the fan on and steps on sidewalk cracks. He also clicks all his pens closed three times before pocketing them and needs to tell every emergency patient he treats “hope to never see you again!” or else it’s his fault when they have another emergency.
He puts his chip on eight.
“What’s your name?” the man says. The dealer draws back and spins the wheel.
“Beomgyu Choi,” Beomgyu says.
A smile inches across the man’s face, softening him.
“Choi Beomgyu,” he corrects.
“We’re in America.”
“And?” he says. “Which one are you?”
The dealer drops the ball in. Beomgyu hears it crawling along the wheel, racing counter-clockwise, but he’s too busy staring at the man’s face to watch its progress. He has out-of-place dimples that would fit better on a child.
“Choi Beomgyu,” Beomgyu says. “You?”
The man laughs, and Beomgyu feels it in the backs of his thighs where they stick on the leather chair. He shouldn’t have worn shorts to a casino.
“Choi Soobin,” the man says.
A corner of Beomgyu’s brain processes the sound of the ball slotting into the wheel.
“Eight,” the dealer says.
Choi Soobin smiles. “Lucky pick,” he says, and Beomgyu just stares at him, thoughts wiped. He’s not a superstitious man.
Choi Soobin tosses back the rest of his drink. He doesn’t flinch, though it must have burned.
“Buy me another one?” he says. It’s an order.
Beomgyu’s coworkers aren’t at the bar yet. He shoots a quick look around the room as he carries a drink from the bar over to the high-top table that Choi Soobin picked out, tucked into a far corner of the low-lit room, and doesn’t see any familiar faces. They might not even see him here when they arrive, hidden in a dim nook, and maybe he can get out of the awkward networking.
“Thank you,” Soobin says, reaching for the rocks glass. “Very generous.”
“You told me to,” Beomgyu says, surprised.
“You didn’t have to.”
I wanted to, Beomgyu thinks.
“And you didn’t get yourself anything.”
Beomgyu’s still nursing the same Aviation, half-full.
“I’d rather save my windfall,” Beomgyu says, wincing as he says it. He’s so lame, isn’t he? But come on, it was almost a thousand dollars. That’s nothing to scoff at. It’s going straight into his high-yield savings account.
Soobin just looks at him over the rim of the glass, taking a delicate sip.
“Um. Weird about the roulette thing, right? Like, what were the odds?”
“Thirty-seven to one,” Soobin says immediately.
Beomgyu’s hand trembles on his glass, but Soobin cracks a smile. It’s not the warmest, small and mysterious, but it’s reassuring to see it anyway.
“Our luck chose each other tonight,” Soobin says, tapping the lapel of his jacket.
Beomgyu gives the logo on his chest a fleeting glance.
“So. I guess we should talk about high school then, right?”
Soobin shrugs, sliding into his stool. His torso towers over the table. “Why?”
Beomgyu slouches over on his elbows awkwardly. “I mean…it’s interesting, isn’t it? Running into an alum of your high school on the other side of the country?”
“Sure,” he says. “But high school wasn’t particularly interesting.”
“What’s your story then?”
“That’s a big question.” Soobin takes a sip of his drink and puts it down on the table. He doesn’t keep talking.
“Do you…um, maybe you want to hear about me?” It’s not that Beomgyu wants to talk about himself, but someone has to talk, and it doesn’t seem like Soobin wants it to be him.
Soobin cocks his head an inch to the side. His black hair is a bit too long, curling up around his eyebrows, and Beomgyu wonders if he has a perm. He doesn’t really seem like the kind of guy who would care enough about his appearance to get a perm, considering he’s wearing a high school varsity jacket in an elegant casino, but then Beomgyu knows less than nothing about him. Only his name.
Beomgyu plays with the chain around his neck, tugging it anxiously. Soobin’s dark eyes flick down to it and stay there, and Beomgyu drops his hand to his lap instead, weaving his fingers together. He always feels too young for his age, but he feels even younger under this man’s steady gaze.
“Um, I guess I’ll go first, then. So I graduated in twenty-twelve, and then for college I—”
“What’s on the necklace?” Soobin interrupts, and Beomgyu’s stomach twists.
“Oh. It’s a flower,” Beomgyu says, pulling the small round charm out from under his shirt collar. The pendant is imprinted with a single flower, just a centimeter across.
“What kind?”
No one’s asked before. “A marigold,” Beomgyu says, and tucks it back under his shirt.
Soobin taps a finger on his lips. They’re full enough that Beomgyu wonders if he gets filler. If he does, it’s well done.
He doesn’t ask about the flower.
“Like I was saying,” Beomgyu picks back up, relieved. “I graduated in twenty-twelve and then went to California for college. UCLA. And then back to New York for med school and my residency.”
“You did debate in high school?” Soobin lifts his glass, though he doesn’t sip from it. He just dangles it in the air, his broad hand wrapped around the glass’s art-deco engravings. “You must have been a smart kid.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about high school,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin smiles. There’s a single tea light flickering on the table, shrouded by a cup of red glass, and the rosy glow catches on his dimples. He looks like a different person when he smiles, those soft dimples dark in his squishy cheeks, and Beomgyu is already wondering how he thought this man could possibly be bland, even at a distance. He’s captivating in here, the dusky atmosphere of the bar blurring his edges. Beomgyu feels even more average than usual, his chapped lip bitten up, his cuticles glaringly ragged.
“True,” Soobin says. “But you do.” He nods his head, a kind of go ahead. Beomgyu can’t tell if it’s out of annoyance or graciousness.
“Everyone did debate at Science,” Beomgyu says. “The team was massive. It’s not special.”
“I didn’t,” Soobin says.
“What sport is the jacket from?”
“Fencing.”
Beomgyu’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s so cool,” he says. His voice gets higher when he’s excited, squeaky and childish, but whatever. He’s not really trying to impress this guy, handsome as he is. He’s talking about being a high school debater with him, for fuck’s sake. “Do you still fence?”
“No,” Soobin says, finally taking a sip. His face doesn’t react to the alcohol, even though the drink Beomgyu ordered him was straight rye.
It’s quiet again. Beomgyu isn’t sure what to say. Soobin seems preternaturally talented at dropping topics, and it’s too awkward to keep talking about something when he’s halted the flow of conversation.
“New York,” Beomgyu starts up. Does Soobin even want to talk? He’s the one who asked for the drink, and yet he can’t hold a conversation for shit. “We’re both from New York. Where’d you grow up?”
“Queens,” Soobin says.
Beomgyu rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he says. “Just Queens? It’s fucking massive. Where in Queens?”
Soobin chews twists his lips to the side, considering.
“Why so evasive? Is it a secret where you grew up?”
“Maybe,” Soobin says, and he breaks into a laugh. It’s higher than his voice, and Beomgyu watches his Adam’s apple bob above his crisp collar. He’s wearing a dress shirt under the jacket, and Beomgyu notices a gold collar bar pulling the points of his collar together under his black tie. Maybe Beomgyu needs to reevaluate his assessment of how much this man cares about his appearance, especially if he has fucking lip filler.
There’s a hint of a watch emerging from the sleeve, too, heavy and glinting in a way that looks expensive. Beomgyu wouldn’t be able to recognize the brand. His own is an Apple Watch, so he can keep up with frantic work emails everywhere.
“Why would that be a secret?”
“I said maybe, not yes. But if it’s a secret, I can’t tell you, can I?” Soobin says, still smiling. “Keep talking about yourself.”
“Yeah, okay,” Beomgyu says, annoyed. Maybe drinks with the coworkers would have been better than this. This is kind of weird. “I grew up on the East Side. Like, east east. York Avenue.”
“Fancy neighborhood,” Soobin observes.
“Not really. It was a third-floor walk-up two bedroom. I shared with my brother. Eighty-ninth street.”
“I bet you went to the Met all the time, living so close to it,” Soobin says, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, actually,” Beomgyu says. Finally, a conversation topic. “You know they started charging admission?”
“I know.” Soobin swirls the glass on a circle on the leather-top table, keeping his eyes on Beomgyu’s. Beomgyu wonders where he lives now, if he’s still in the city, but Soobin speaks again before he can ask. “Did you ever read that book, the one where the kids run away to the Met? Where they move into the museum, and sleep on all the fancy beds in the period rooms?”
It’s the most he’s said at once. “Yeah, a billion times,” Beomgyu says, surprised. “I loved that book.”
“Me too,” Soobin says. “I tried to do it once. Hide in the bathroom stall and spend the night, just like they did. I was twelve.”
“Your parents didn’t stop you?”
“No,” Soobin says simply. There has to be more to that, but he doesn’t offer it.
“And what happened?”
“Well, it didn’t work, obviously.” He smiles ruefully. “Did you really think it did?”
“I dunno,” Beomgyu says defensively. “I mean, no, but I thought I’d be polite.”
“You don’t have to be polite to me,” Soobin says, dropping the smile.
“I’m always polite. And you’re a stranger.”
“Not really.” He drums his nails on the glass, eyes on Beomgyu’s neck, on the glimpse of gold chain disappearing into his shirt. Beomgyu’s hand flies to it instinctively, and Soobin stares at that instead. “Where would you go first? When you went to the museum, I mean.”
Beomgyu didn’t have to think it over. It’s a huge museum, the Met, but he always walked through those doors with his brother and took a hard right turn. “The Egyptian shit, obviously,” he said. “That big temple they brought over and reassembled in the museum. And the mummies. I mean, I was a little boy. Of course I liked the mummies more than the Monets.”
“I never did,” Soobin says. “They’re unethical.”
Beomgyu feels his eyes go wide, and Soobin stares at them, face totally serious. “Really? You mean you were thinking about the ethics of having mummies in a museum? As a kid?”
“Yes,” Soobin says simply. “It’s wrong.”
Soobin’s face is serene, unchanging, but Beomgyu feels like he’s judging him. Maybe he’s judging himself.
“Why did you bring up the Met? Are you into art?” He doesn’t really look the type. A thirty-plus man wearing a high school varsity jacket wouldn’t be Beomgyu’s first choice for a culture junkie.
“Somewhat,” Soobin says.
“That’s cool. Is it just an interest, or do you work with it?”
“The second one. In a sense.”
“What’s your job?”
Soobin picks up his glass, swirls, sips. It’s a very smooth motion, but Beomgyu isn’t an idiot. He can tell he’s stalling.
The glass lands on the table again, a bit too hard. “Cybersecurity,” Soobin says.
“Sounds interesting. What do you do?”
“Investigate firewall breaches.”
Beomgyu has a vague idea of what that might entail, although he was never much good at the techy side of his science classes. It doesn’t sound like it would have much to do with art, though. “Where’d you go to college?” he asks, instead of revealing how little he knows about cybersecurity or firewall breaches.
“Oh, I didn’t,” Soobin says casually.
Shit. It was a safe assumption — everyone goes to college from their high school, and good ones. It was the kind of school where kids cry over getting A-minuses instead of A’s, afraid it’ll torch their chances of going to Harvard. But now he feels like a dick for assuming it and implying that he judges people on that sort of thing. “Sorry — I didn’t mean to assume,” he says quickly, looking down at the table.
“But you did assume,” Soobin says, amused. “It’s okay. I didn’t go because I didn’t want to.”
“It’s not for everyone, for sure,” Beomgyu says. “Sometimes I even think, like, maybe I shouldn’t have done the whole college-to-med school route.”
“Why? You don’t like being a doctor?”
“No, I like it.” Beomgyu considers how much to say, and decides to just say the truth. “I have crippling anxiety, though. Panic attacks about failure. And I feel like it would have been good to take a break from, like, the academic machine, you know? Being judged and graded for twenty-plus years now. It makes me…hard on myself.”
“Do you speak Korean?”
It’s an abrupt change in subject, and a strange one to Beomgyu. He just said something personal and vulnerable, and he was kind of expecting to hear a response along the lines of that makes sense or oh, that sounds stressful. But Soobin’s face is totally unchanged, staring at Beomgyu’s as if evaluating him from a distance, somehow both startlingly intense and completely disengaged at the same time.
“A little,” Beomgyu says. “I always say I speak it halfway. My parents didn’t really use it at home and I never paid attention in Korean school.” Soobin nods. “You?”
“Finish your drink,” Soobin says in Korean, as if testing to see how much Beomgyu understands.
Beomgyu lifts his glass and chugs the last few purple sips, and Soobin crinkles up his nose for a moment as he grins, satisfied. He leans forward confessionally, elbows on the table, and it feels like Beomgyu just unlocked a new level of Soobin.
He lingers behind the rim of the purple-tinged glass for a moment. He’s afraid he’s not drunk enough for whatever’s about to come next, but his legs feel weird, like the muscles in them are relaxing against his will.
“We should take a walk,” Soobin says. He has an accent in Korean, something a bit rough. Beomgyu doesn’t know the language well enough to pick out where it’s from. “There are better bars than this one.”
Beomgyu swallows. He’s never been picked up in a bar before. He doesn’t have enough time for one-night-stands. Is he even being picked up, or is he woefully misreading this situation? The man did just ask him to leave with him. That has to mean something. But he did it in Korean, and Beomgyu isn’t the best at Korean. Maybe he’s missing something in his tone.
“Why?”
“Why a walk, or why are the bars better?”
“Why… why me?” he says.
Soobin seems surprised by that, his features popping open for a moment. “You don’t want to keep talking?”
“No, I do.” Soobin and his strange, evasive answers are certainly more interesting than anyone he’ll talk to at this conference, that’s for sure.
“So let’s talk somewhere better,” Soobin says.
“But I’m supposed to meet my coworkers here,” Beomgyu says in English. Coworkers isn’t in his Korean vocabulary.
“You don’t want to, though,” Soobin says, still in Korean.
Beomgyu pauses, and then shakes his head.
“You don’t seem like the type to enjoy that kind of thing,” Soobin continues, back in English. “Small talk. Acquaintances. Networking. It’s awkward for you, right?”
True, and it makes Beomgyu feel small to admit it. “You can tell?” he asks.
This time, Soobin clearly notices the vulnerability in his voice. He ducks his head, lowering it towards Beomgyu.
“You don’t feel awkward with me, do you?”
Beomgyu considers it.
“No,” he says. Soobin is a stranger, not an acquaintance. Somehow, that’s easier. Beomgyu doesn’t have to be someone for a stranger.
“Lucky for me, then,” Soobin says. He pulls on the zipper of his jacket an inch, then pushes it back up. “It’s the jacket. Always lucky in this jacket.”
He stretches upright, preparing to stand, and tousles through his hair with one hand. It’s thick, cascading lazily back into place, landing in gentle waves. A piece sticks up in the back where he must have a cowlick.
“Coworkers,” Beomgyu starts again, weakly. “I should stay.”
He doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t mean it, but he doesn’t. He wants to go with him to wherever’s next, a grown man following a pied piper.
“And yet you’re leaving with me,” Soobin says. He stands, and he’s so tall. Somehow Beomgyu didn’t notice it on the walk to the bar, but now he’s a giant next to the high-top table. “I’ll get the next round.”
Beomgyu doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. But if leaving with this man is a mistake, at least he has a good excuse for it. He’s in fucking Vegas.
Walking down the Strip is surprisingly calming, considering that it’s the country’s center of debauchery. All the lights and noise and rushing cars hum around them, the stimulation fusing into a kind of haze. It leaves just the two of them alone in the world, walking side-by-side towards the Waldorf Astoria and its sky-high bar.
“The only casino I’ve ever been to before is a Caesars in Atlantic City,” Beomgyu said, nodding at the Caesars Palace sign next to them.
Soobin chuckles.
“What, does that really surprise you?” Beomgyu says, turning his head to look at him as they walk. “I’m a pediatrician who debated in high school. Do I seem like a casino guy?”
Soobin’s face is lit up by the glow of the Strip, all his features so much more defined than they were in the smoky haze of the bar. He’s hot, so hot. If this night is going where Beomgyu imagines it might be going, he’ll have to sneak a picture to show to Yeonjun, or he’ll never believe it when Beomgyu tells him how hot his Vegas hookup was. Honestly, he might not even believe that he had a Vegas hookup.
“Everyone gambles,” Soobin says. “It’s not just for bad people.”
“I didn’t say gamblers are bad people,” Beomgyu says. “I said it’s for cooler people than me.”
“Oh, so gambling is cool?”
Beomgyu furrows his brow. “Hey, I’m just trying to—”
Soobin smiles, shooting him a slitted look from the corner of his eye. “Teasing you,” he says. Suddenly, his eyes shoot open. “Watch—”
His broad hand wraps around Beomgyu’s elbow, yanking him out of the way of an oncoming cyclist zipping down the sidewalk. Beomgyu stumbles, barely staying upright.
“Pedestrians only!” Soobin hollers over his shoulder after it. “Fuck!” He turns, dropping his voice. “You okay?”
“Th—thanks,” Beomgyu coughs, still catching his footing. He hadn’t seen the bike at all, too focused on Soobin’s face.
“Menaces, sometimes, cyclists,” Soobin mutters, still gripping Beomgyu’s elbow. “Can we walk again?”
Beomgyu straightens back up, feeling awkward, but Soobin just plows ahead like nothing had happened. His hand is still on Beomgyu’s arm.
“Why are you in Vegas, then, if you don’t gamble?” Soobin asks.
“For a work conference,” Beomgyu says. “A convening of pediatricians.”
“It’s a bad time to be a sick baby anywhere that isn’t Vegas,” Soobin smiles. His hand drops down Beomgyu’s arm to his fingers, slotting into them.
Beomgyu’s knuckles stiffen involuntarily. So it is going to be that kind of night. Fuck, Yeonjun really won’t believe this. Thank god he showered before heading down to the bar earlier.
“Do you mind?” Soobin says quietly.
“Um, no,” Beomgyu stutters. “I’m…um, yeah, no, this is nice.”
He chances a glance at Soobin’s face. He’s still wearing a little smile, no hint of awkwardness. He squeezes his fingers around Beomgyu’s smaller ones.
“Easier to yank you out of the way of oncoming bikes this way,” he says. “I’d rather not see you mowed down.”
They walk a few more steps in silence. They’re nearly past Caesars Palace and its collection of replica historic buildings. Beomgyu wonders how far they have to go, but Soobin just walks on, comfortable in the dull noise and the silence between them.
“So why are you in Vegas?” Beomgyu asks, feeling twitchy.
“Oh, work,” Soobin says.
“Cybersecurity stuff?”
“Meeting a client.”
“You don’t live here, right?” It dawns on Beomgyu that he hasn’t asked.
“No.”
Beomgyu is quickly learning that Soobin won’t offer knowledge on his own. He has to ask for it.
“Where do you live?”
“Nowhere, really,” Soobin says. “I’m on the move a lot. Transient.”
There’s a pedestrian crossing bridge at the corner, and Soobin pulls Beomgyu firmly to a stop when they reach it, as if he were a child about to teeter into the street. It’s a good thing, because Beomgyu is too caught up in Soobin’s answer to notice the stairs, almost tripping into them.
“You don’t have…like, an apartment somewhere?”
“Oh, I do,” Soobin says, starting up the steps. Beomgyu follows two steps behind him, his hand jerking tight in Soobin’s every time either of them takes a step up. “It’s in LA. But I wouldn’t call it home. It’s not really for me.”
“So why don’t you go elsewhere, if you’re on the move anyway?”
“Maybe I will,” Soobin says.
Beomgyu sighs. “You’re not gonna tell me more, are you?”
Soobin turns to face Beomgyu halfway up the staircase, looking down at him. His lips are just about level with Beomgyu’s forehead, and Beomgyu wonders what would happen if he leaned in. They’re already holding hands, and that’s where this is going, right? A hookup?
“I’m sorry I’m like this,” Soobin says. “I’m frustrating to talk to, aren’t I?”
Beomgyu didn’t expect that. He hasn’t expected most of what Soobin has said or done tonight. This isn’t how most conversations he’s had in his life have progressed.
“If you want to stop talking and just go fuck, let me know. But I like talking to you, and I wouldn’t mind doing it more.”
Beomgyu gawks at him. Soobin raises his eyebrows.
“So? More talking?”
“Yeah, more talking,” Beomgyu says.
Soobin’s face relaxes. “Good,” he says. “Really, my lucky jacket.”
Soobin turns and keeps pulling Beomgyu up the stairs.
“Tell me about the lucky jacket,” Beomgyu says, starting up a conversation that he hopefully won’t have to contribute much to. His heart had started pounding weirdly when Soobin said the word fuck. He’s prone to arrhythmia. “Why is it lucky?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, how long do we have to go? I can walk slow.”
Soobin chuckles. “It’s not that far. I’ll give you the short version.”
He pauses at the top of the stairs, tilting one of the lapels of the jacket so Beomgyu can see the cursive fencing embroidered under their high school’s logo.
“What do you know about fencing?”
“I watch it during the Olympics,” Beomgyu says. “That’s about it.”
“You don’t need to know much, I guess,” Soobin says, letting go of the lapel. They head into the overpass, walking through a glassy tube over the rushing traffic. “I fenced epee. The heaviest weapon, and you can hit anywhere on the body. Piercing, not slashing.”
He makes a little thrusting motion with his free hand, stabbing at the air.
“Got it.”
“I guess that’s not really relevant, actually. Well, sort of relevant. I had a bout at the city championships, and the guy I was fencing stabbed at my ankle, ‘cause that’s fair game in epee. I sort of tripped over his weapon. Messed up my knee pretty badly landing on it wrong.”
“Ouch,” Beomgyu says sympathetically. “Knees are tough.”
“Thanks,” Soobin says. “That’s actually my only fencing injury. It’s a surprisingly safe sport.”
“Do you remember what the injury was?”
“Nah. Probably some kind of sprain. I guess I should have expected that question, telling this story to a doctor.”
They’re at the other side of the crossing bridge, and Soobin lets go of Beomgyu’s hand to trot down the stairs, taking them at a bit of a run. His body bounces on each step, and Beomgyu hurries to keep up. For a moment he wonders if that will be the end of the handholding, but Soobin waits for him at the bottom of the stairs, reaching out for his hand again. When he winds their fingers back together, Beomgyu feels warmth spreading up to his elbow.
“You still haven’t explained the lucky jacket thing.”
“Right, the fencing jacket.” Soobin pulls Beomgyu off down the street again. They walk past the shuttered doors of a Tiffany’s, the twinkling jewelry all tucked in behind layers of bulletproof glass. “The coach took me to get the knee checked out after the tournament wrapped up. I didn’t go to doctors a lot as a kid. Too expensive.”
Beomgyu is all too familiar with that refrain. He hears it constantly on his ER shifts.
“They found some shit when they were checking me out,” Soobin says. “Shit that would have killed me if they didn’t find it. That fencing injury saved my life.”
“What kind of shit?” Beomgyu asks, interest piqued. His eyes are glued to Soobin’s face again, cyclists be damned. On the other side of the street, the massive Eiffel Tower replica looms into view behind Soobin’s head, but Beomgyu doesn’t spare it a glance.
Soobin is quiet for a moment. “It’s a long story,” he says. “But I was lucky.”
The Eiffel Tower flickers, lighting up Soobin’s profile. His eyes are cast down to the sidewalk, tracking his own steps. His free hand is fingering the hem of the fencing jacket.
“I told you I can walk slow,” Beomgyu says. “I’m a doctor, I’ll understand it.”
“Anyone ever told you you’re nosy?” Soobin says. A grin spreads across his face, and he gives Beomgyu’s hand a gentle squeeze. Teasing again.
“Me? Never,” Beomgyu says, grinning too. “Curious, maybe.”
“That’s a polite way of saying nosy.” His eyes drift up from the ground to something over Beomgyu’s shoulder. “I bet you’ve seen that in movies, haven’t you?”
Beomgyu turns around. It’s the big fountain from the end of Ocean’s Eleven, huge jets cascading into the air for a half-block in front of the Bellagio.
He can fall for this distraction tactic. As curious as he is, he’s not going to force his way into a person’s medical history if he doesn’t want to share it. Especially not when the person is a stranger who seems dead-set on keeping himself a secret.
“Are we making a detour?”
“I promise there’s still a drink waiting for you at the end of this walk,” Soobin says. “Five minute break to see the sights?”
It’s a beautiful night out, a gentle, dry heat. A hint of a breeze is blowing a lick of mist off the enormous fountain, dusting their faces as they lean up against the stone fence surrounding it. Beomgyu likes to think of himself as a bit of a sightseeing snob, having grown up surrounded by all the sights of New York City, but it really is a beautiful sight: the enormous arcs of water, lit up in front of the hulking form of the Bellagio. He closes his eyes, letting the mist fog across his eyelashes.
Maybe he’s not such a snob. Maybe he’s got a soft spot for beautiful things.
“Is it hard to be a doctor?”
Beomgyu opens his eyes. Soobin is staring at him, head perched on an elbow, leaning on the broad stone fence.
“Yes,” Beomgyu says. “Long hours. Years of school. So much debt, too.”
“I mean the patients,” Soobin says. “Kids. Working with sick kids.”
“Not as hard as you’d think.” Beomgyu fiddles with his necklace. “I’m helping them, you know? Making their lives better. It’s nothing but positive.”
“Yeah, of course.” Soobin falls quiet, and Beomgyu stares down into the water. So many coins at the bottom, for luck.
“But yeah, it’s hard sometimes,” Beomgyu admits. “Cancer rotation. That one was really hard. You’re supposed to stay stoic, but I cried almost every night.”
Soobin drums his fingers on the ledge.
“Do you have…like, a specialty?”
“Pediatric emergency medicine.”
“Bloody,” Soobin observes.
“Yeah. It can be.” Beomgyu shrugs. “It’s mostly broken legs, though. Kids with beads stuck up their noses. Things that will become good stories to tell at parties one day.”
“What’s your party story?” Soobin asks. “I bet you’ve got a wild one hidden away.”
“Me? No way. You do, though.”
“What makes you say that?” Soobin deadpans.
“Oh, whatever could make me say that?” Beomgyu bounces back. “The evasive answers? The transient lifestyle? Come on.”
“You first,” Soobin says, tucking a hand into one of his jacket pockets and pulling out a flask.
Beomgyu gives him an exaggeratedly stern look. “Really? A flask? How old are you?”
“No open container laws on the Strip,” Soobin says, offering Beomgyu the flask. “It’s good shit. Blue Label.”
Beomgyu hesitates. He’s a twenty-eight-year old doctor with a presentation on infant care to attend at nine in the morning. He doesn’t get drunk with strangers in public.
Soobin dangles the flask, raising his eyebrows.
“Or we could just go fuck,” he says. “Really. I’m fine with either.”
Beomgyu grabs the flask and spins the lid open. He swigs it, and damn. It really is good shit, as far as he can tell. He isn’t exactly a scotch expert.
Rationally, Beomgyu knows it takes longer than a few seconds for booze to hit his bloodstream, but taking a shot always sends a ray of heat down his limbs, making everything feel weak. It’s like the first arm of a hurricane spinning past him before the real storm hits.
“You keep saying that,” Beomgyu says, empowered by the warmth radiating through him. No point not being bold. Yeonjun would be proud. “You really want to fuck me?”
“Yes,” Soobin says matter-of-factly, reaching for the flask.
“Why?” Beomgyu gives it to him.
“Why does anyone want to fuck anyone?”
“You don’t know me.”
“Beomgyu.” It’s the first time he’s said Beomgyu’s name, and it’s something special to hear it coming through those lips, the syllables formed in Soobin’s deep tambre. “I know more about you than I do about anyone I’ve fucked, ever.”
“Oh, so you’re a one-night-stand guy?”
Soobin finishes taking his own swig from the flask. “Of course. I told you I’m transient.”
“I’m not really a one-night-stand guy myself,” Beomgyu says, sinking the point of his chin onto his fist. “I’ve never had one.” He’s lost track of the fountain entirely, daring himself to stare right at Soobin’s face. It’s like confidence practice. He’ll never see him again, anyway. There’s no harm in sharing too much of himself.
Soobin doesn’t look too surprised by this. “Just boyfriends?”
“Boyfriend singular. And he was years ago.”
If Soobin thinks this is lame, he doesn’t let that on.
“Party story,” he says, nudging Beomgyu’s calf with the side of his own foot. “You’re not getting out of it.” He flips the lid of the flask on and off on its hinge and cocks his head towards the spray.
Beomgyu racks his brain. What’s a good story? He hasn’t been to a party in years.
“Um, I’ve got some good work stories,” he says. “I’ve had to pull a couple of weird things out of asses in my life.”
“Like?”
“If I tell you, it’ll kill the mood.”
“That’s a cop out,” Soobin says, tipping the flask to his lips again. He doesn’t look away as he drinks.
“Yours?”
Soobin swallows and leisurely wipes the back of his hand across his lips.
“I ran into someone I haven’t seen in twenty-four years at a casino halfway around the country,” he says. “Weird, right?”
Beomgyu’s heart kicks into higher gear.
“Me?” he asks dumbly. “We know each other?”
“You weren’t playing coy?” Soobin says, and he really does look surprised. “You really forgot me?”
“Where do we know each other from?”
“Church,” Soobin says. “We both went to the Korean church on thirty-fourth street. You would get all chatty when your mom dropped you off for the youth service. You always asked to share my snacks.”
Beomgyu furrows his brow, racking his brain. He’s never been religious, but his parents made him and his brother go to church with them until they were teenagers. It was always a church up by their apartment though, and not a Korean one.
“You sure it was me? How old was I?”
“Three, four?” Soobin fidgets with the flask, tearing his eyes away to look at it, and Beomgyu realizes that he’s sharing something, something Beomgyu didn’t even ask for. Something small and insignificant, sure, but something about himself all the same. “You stopped coming one week. I always wondered where you went, but the youth leader just said you’d moved.”
“I guess we did,” Beomgyu says slowly. Now that Soobin mentions it, they’d lived in Koreatown for a few years before Beomgyu’s brain really started casting its memories in cement. Maybe it was around thirty-forth street. “Why did you go there, though? Weren’t you living in Queens?”
“It was our church,” Soobin says, shrugging. “We took the seven train down there every weekend.”
Another detail dropped. He must be from Flushing. Maybe Bayside.
“You were cute,” Soobin says. “Annoying, but cute. Choi Beomgyu. You introduced yourself to me like that every week, in case I’d forgotten you.”
Beomgyu reaches for the flask, but Soobin doesn’t release it. His hand wraps around Soobin’s instead, and Soobin grabs it with his other hand, thumbing over Beomgyu’s knuckles. He doesn’t say anything.
“You didn’t forget me,” Beomgyu says. He can feel heat spreading across his cheeks.
“No, I didn’t,” Soobin says simply.
“When did you recognize me?”
“When you said your name.” The pad of his thumb presses against the first joint of Beomgyu’s pinkie finger. “Your eyes are just the same.”
“Did you share your snacks?” It bubbles out of Beomgyu, to hide his awkwardness.
“Always,” Soobin says, looking at him again and splitting into a smile. He squeezes Beomgyu’s hand between his own, but Beomgyu is too caught up in his dimples to feel it. “Want to go up to the bar?”
“Please,” Beomgyu says. Soobin hasn’t moved, but he feels too close.
The bar is on the twenty-third floor of the hotel, and the view is as gorgeous as Soobin had said it would be. The wall-to-wall windows are a glow of twinkling lights, the shadows of towering buildings, and the red tails of traffic crawling down the Strip. Maybe Beomgyu isn’t a snob at all, because he’s a little floored.
“Something fruity, right?” Soobin asks as Beomgyu slings himself onto one of the low velvet couches pressed up against the window, his arm draped over the back of the seat so that he can press his nose against the glass.
“What?”
“To drink,” Soobin’s voice says, amused. “You want something fruity to drink. Right?”
“Right,” Beomgyu says, eyes still fixed on the view.
“I’ll be quick,” Soobin says. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Something about the way the lights blink across the landscape makes Beomgyu feel sleepy, dreamlike. It’s like they’re all pulsing in sync, counting down the seconds. Keeping time, even though time has stopped.
Soobin is quick. The couch sinks down next to Beomgyu just a few minutes later, and he finally tears his eyes away from the glass, squinting in the dim light of the bar as his pupils adjust.
“Fruity,” Soobin says, holding out a glass of something pink. “Want to know what’s in it?”
“Not really,” Beomgyu says. “I’m dumb about booze.”
“Fair enough. I promise it’ll be good. And it’s safe. I’m not a dangerous stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger,” Beomgyu says. His eyes are fixed on the rim of the glass, making sure it doesn’t spill as he grabs it from Soobin’s hand, but he thinks he sees Soobin smile in his peripheral vision.
The room is filled with pretty people, blurry in the sultry lighting. Women with rings on their fingers that sparkle brighter than the view, men in broad-lapeled suits that give Beomgyu the creeps. Soobin has his back to all of them, his face tilted towards Beomgyu and Beomgyu alone.
“I got us something else,” he says, gesturing to the low table next to the couch. Two shot glasses sit neatly near the edge of it, filled with something clear.
“Shots? You’re trying to get me drunk?”
Soobin smiles boyishly, like it’s a dare. “You don’t want to? ‘Cause I’ll do them both, if you don’t.”
“No, I want to,” Beomgyu says, though his heart is wiggling up into his throat. “I just haven’t done a shot in years.”
“You sort of did, from my flask,” Soobin points out, reaching for the delicate shot glasses.
“What even is this?”
“Vodka. Nice and basic.” Soobin transfers one of the shot glasses over to Beomgyu’s hand, and for a second their fingers are both wrapped around the delicate glass, skin brushing on skin. They held hands all the way up here, but something about this hint of a touch makes Beomgyu freeze, eyes racing to Soobin’s face.
“Cheers, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says quietly.
Beomgyu tips the shot back before Soobin can clink the glass with his own. He barely registers the burn in his throat before he whips his face back into the window, hiding in its transparency. Why is he trembling like this?
“Hey,” Soobin says in Korean. “It’s okay. Why are you nervous?”
“I don’t know,” Beomgyu says. That much he knows how to say, even as the alcohol filters through his bloodstream and crowds his limited Korean to the back of his brain. He watches a cyclist swerve out of the way of the pedestrians on the sidewalk twenty-three stories below them.
His knees are curled up onto the couch, and he feels Soobin’s thigh press against them as he shifts to sit closer to him.
“Beomgyu,” he says. “Who was it?”
“Who…what?” The glass isn’t cold on his nose anymore.
A hand feathers just inside his collar, one finger tracing the chain of his necklace.
Beomgyu whips his face off the glass to stare at Soobin.
“Someone important?”
Soobin is a foot away, but he isn’t leaning in any closer. His cocktail is abandoned on the coffee table next to the empty shot glasses. Beomgyu lifts his own to his lips, but Soobin stays focused on Beomgyu’s neck, even as the glass intrudes on his vision, nearly brushing his hand where it rests on Beomgyu’s clavicle.
Beomgyu swallows and chews at his lip. He knows Soobin can see the bob of his Adam’s apple. No one ever asks, and so he has no answer.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Soobin says. His voice is quiet enough to slide under the bar’s hubbub, but it’s all Beomgyu can hear. His ears are starting to buzz on their own, like cicadas are fluttering in his brain and scrambling his thoughts.
“Then why do you ask?” he says.
“Because I’d love to know,” Soobin says. His finger tugs microscopically on the chain, and Beomgyu imagines it breaking free, falling heavily to the couch with a supernatural clang.
“I…I don’t…”
Soobin drops his finger down below the top button of Beomgyu’s shirt, finding the pendant at the chain’s end. His touch is so warm, a single spark against Beomgyu’s skin.
Beomgyu shifts. He tries not to think about why he shifts, but he shifts, and Soobin notices. His eyes flit down toward the couch for a millisecond, but his face doesn’t acknowledge it.
“It’s okay,” Soobin says. “I’ll know you other ways.”
The glass tilts in Beomgyu’s hand, his weakened muscles barely catching it before it drips onto his pants.
“I don’t…understand any of this,” Beomgyu mutters. It takes him a second to figure out the phrasing in Korean, even though he knows it’s a sentence that’s well within his vocabulary. His brain is struggling to stay alert, to translate Soobin’s basic words. He thinks he’s safe now, that Soobin has moved on, but somehow it feels like he spilled his soul anyway.
“Me neither,” Soobin whispers. The half his face lit up by the window is serious, his lips pinched together.
“Why do you speak like that?” Beomgyu blurts out. “Where’s your accent from?”
“My mother,” Soobin says, and that’s all. His eyes fall to Beomgyu’s top button again.
Beomgyu doesn’t really know why he does it. Something about Soobin’s eyes tracing the path that his finger just walked along.
He reaches out for the zipper of Soobin’s jacket, tugging it downwards and letting his dress shirt spill out of it.
“You’re so hot,” Beomgyu says. “Like, you know that, right?”
Soobin’s dimple flickers. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”
“Humble.”
“Being humble is pointless,” Soobin says. “I’d rather be realistic.”
“Humility’s a virtue,” Beomgyu mutters, playing with the zipper. It’s plastic. This jacket wasn’t meant to last so many years.
“So what about you? You’re telling me you don’t know you’re hot?”
Beomgyu’s drunk enough to shrug. “I don’t act like I do,” he says. “I’m dumb in my scrubs anyway.”
“Cute in your scrubs, I bet,” Soobin smiles. “You’re not dumb.”
“Dumb looking.” Beomgyu pulls the zipper all the way down, poking his finger into Soobin’s stomach. It’s firm, much firmer than his own.
He feels Soobin’s breath catch through his fingertip.
“Wanna make out,” Beomgyu says. It’s not a question.
Soobin hums. He doesn’t lean in.
“Here?” he says. “Isn’t that tacky?”
“Fancy bar. Nothing’s tacky here.”
“I could get us a room,” Soobin says matter-of-factly.
“At the Waldorf Astoria?”
Soobin nods.
“Damn, you were serious about the fucking,” Beomgyu says, a giddiness tingling in his belly. No one’s ever wanted to fuck him enough to buy a night in a luxury hotel, that’s for sure.
Soobin shrugs. “You thought I wasn’t?”
“Nah. I’m so hot. Of course you were serious.”
In an instant, Soobin is swooping in. Beomgyu closes his eyes, parting his lips, but no kiss comes. He’s just in the dark, in the world of buzzing.
“You do it first,” he hears, feeling Soobin’s breath hot on his upper lip.
Beomgyu squeezes his eyes shut even tighter and lunges blindly. He finds Soobin’s lips waiting for him where he lands.
Soobin is warm, so warm. His lips are making Beomgyu glow all over, heat dripping down from the junction of their mouths, down under Beomgyu’s necklace and down his arms and down to his toes. He feels his drink tip in his hand, just enough to splash onto his pants, and Soobin’s broad hand wraps around his own, stabilizing it. Warm around his fingertips.
Beomgyu opens his lips, mouthing wetly at Soobin’s, and Soobin leans into it, matching him like he’s been on his lips hundred times before. Beomgyu wants to cling to him, to lure Soobin in the way Soobin has lured him, but the drink stops him from clambering onto him the way he desperately, desperately needs to. He pushes his tongue at Soobin instead, slipping it through their lips the next time Soobin opens his, and he feels Soobin smile around it, giving it a nip. The pinch of pain melts into Beomgyu’s mind, yes, more.
“Wet,” Soobin whispers into Beomgyu’s open mouth.
Beomgyu presses his tongue back in so hard their teeth click together.
Soobin moans.
Beomgyu’s eyes fly open at the sound, and Soobin’s closed eyelashes are half black, half golden in the blink, blink, blink of the city lights keeping time. Soobin is inching his free hand around his waist, enveloping it in the crook of his wrist, and the layers of clothing between them are obnoxious, infuriating. Why are they still in the bar?
“More,” Beomgyu whispers. “Can we?”
Soobin grits his face for a moment, his nose scrunching up for strength. “That was fast,” he says, low. “One little kiss and you need me this bad?”
“It was more than one kiss,” Beomgyu whines.
Soobin squeezes his waist.
“You’ve been hard since I first touched you,” he murmurs. “Since I asked about the necklace.”
Beomgyu cringes. It was unfortunate timing.
Soobin slots his lips into Beomgyu’s again, lightly enough to keep speaking. He tastes smoky.
“I thought you don’t have one-night-stands,” he breathes. “Why me?”
Beomgyu just nuzzles his nose against Soobin’s. He doesn’t know. Does he have to know? Maybe he’s just drunk, but he’s not that drunk. Maybe it’s for the story, fucking this stranger with all these fated connections. Maybe he just wants it. Fuck, he wants it. He’s wanted it since they left that casino, when he wasn’t drunk, and when he hadn’t known this man was Choi Soobin, the boy from church. He wanted him then, and he needs him now.
“Finish your drink so I can fuck you,” Soobin says, harsh against Beomgyu’s tender lips.
Beomgyu knew it was coming, but the tingles that radiate out from his core are so sudden and sharp that he squeaks out a tiny, weak noise.
“Bold assumption,” he jabbers. His insides are chaos. He’s achingly hard. It’s been so long since he’s had sex, and his body is punishing him for it by acting like a teenager.
Soobin raises his eyebrows.
“What if I want to fuck you?” Beomgyu says, already smiling.
That earns Beomgyu Soobin’s dimples again.
“I’m open to negotiations,” Soobin says. “Do you?”
“Bet you have a great ass,” Beomgyu giggles, and Soobin pinches his waist through his clothes.
“Gimme that,” he says, leaning back and grabbing Beomgyu’s drink. He downs it, tossing it back in one go.
“Hey! I was—”
“You’re drunk enough already,” Soobin says, suddenly businesslike. “And you’ve got a big night ahead of you.”
He stands, tangling one hand into Beomgyu’s to yank him up and reaching for his own half-full drink on the coffee table with the other. Beomgyu swings his gaze back to the window as Soobin tosses that one back too, giving the view one last glance.
Thank you, Vegas, he thinks. Fuck, he still needs to get that picture for Yeonjun.
“You’re lying.”
“Not lying,” Beomgyu said. “We really know each other.”
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Yeonjun’s groggy voice says. “Beomgyu Choi, going home with a mysterious, sexy stranger.”
“He’s not a stranger, we know each other,” Beomgyu says, giggling. He covers his mouth with his hand as he speaks into his phone, although Soobin is too far away to hear him. He’s at the front desk, checking in while Beomgyu sprawls out on a couch in the middle of the lobby, waiting for him. “And we’re not going home. We’re getting a room at the Waldorf Astoria.”
“Sure, sure. Still mysterious and sexy. Send me a pic so I can verify the sexy part, by the way.”
“I’ll try,” Beomgyu says. “Oh my god, he’s so hot though. You’d hate me if you saw him. You’d totally try and snipe him from me.”
“It’s half past three in the morning.” The words sound stretched, like Yeonjun is stifling a yawn. “I have zero desire to fuck a handsome stranger right now.”
Oops. Beomgyu had forgotten about timezones.
“Sorry,” Beomgyu says unapologetically. “I can’t believe you picked up.”
“When your best friend calls you from Las Vegas at three-thirty A.M., you pick up. Either they’re in deep shit or they’ve got a good story.”
“Maybe both,” Beomgyu says. He feels like this could go either way, and after all the smoky bars and expensive drinks, it’s thrilling rather than scary.
“And you promise you feel safe? You’re not too drunk?”
Beomgyu groans. “Yeonjun, you’ve been telling me to lighten up and get laid for years,” he says. “And now I’m doing it, and you’re getting parental on me?”
Yeonjun says something in a scolding tone, but Beomgyu doesn’t hear it. Soobin is turning around, scanning the lobby for Beomgyu and finding him. He jerks his head towards a door near the front desk, and Beomgyu’s eyes follow the motion to a little convenience shop for hotel guests.
Soobin holds up a finger and mouths one second.
“Text me your room number, and if I don’t hear from you by ten your time, I’m calling the front desk,” Yeonjun is saying.
“Oh my god, I think he’s going to buy condoms,” Beomgyu says, watching Soobin’s back retreat into the convenience shop. “Oh my god, oh my god.”
“What else did you think would happen? You’d cuddle up and watch a movie?”
“Oh my god, Yeonjun. I feel like I swallowed a bee.”
“Not the only thing you’ll be swallowing,” Yeonjun chortles.
Beomgyu chews his lip, fumbling with his necklace. His hand is shaking.
“Text me by ten A.M.,” Yeonjun says. “Or I’m calling the hotel and telling them your stranger abducted you. What’s his name again?”
“Choi Soobin,” Beomgyu says. “Look, I’m losing my shit. I need to get off the phone before I say something idiotic.”
“It’s better to say something idiotic to me than to him,” Yeonjun says. “Get it out of your system.”
Soobin chooses that moment to emerge from the shop, patting the pocket of his jacket, and Beomgyu nearly drops his phone.
“Gotta go,” he squeaks. “Gonna get laid.”
“Text me the—”
The elevator ride feels endless, even though it’s only to the tenth floor. Beomgyu taps his foot over and over, staring at the buttons. He can feel Soobin’s eyes watching him as he leans up against the wall, and when Beomgyu chances a peek Soobin is grinning.
“What?”
“You were so bold in the bar, and now you’re so skittish,” Soobin says. “What’s the matter?”
“It was a lot darker in the bar,” Beomgyu says.
“Well, we can turn the lights out in the room,” Soobin chuckles. “What, you don’t want to see me?”
“No, I want to see you. Like, I really want to see you.” Why is it so easy to be honest with him like this, even when he’s so nervous? Is it just the liquor?
“Good. Because I want to—”
Whatever Soobin wants, Beomgyu doesn’t find out. Soobin’s back pocket starts buzzing, and just as he reaches for it, the doors pop open on the tenth floor.
“What’s the room number?” Beomgyu asks as they step out into the hallway, all plush carpeting and crystal sconces.
“Ten-seventeen,” Soobin says distractedly. Beomgyu turns right, glancing over his shoulder to see Soobin fumbling with his phone. The buzzing stops, and he tucks it back into his pocket.
“Not important?”
“No,” Soobin says shortly.
“Who calls you at twelve-thirty in the morning?” Beomgyu teases. “Lover?”
“Not important.” Soobin takes one extra-long stride, catching up with Beomgyu and scooping up his hand. Their fingers fall in line, woven together. “And I don’t have a lover.”
“What about me?” Beomgyu shimmies his shoulders at him seductively and almost trips on the carpeting.
Soobin suppresses a grin, the tension melting off his face.
“You’ll count in a few minutes.”
“Minutes? You don’t want to cuddle first?”
They reach 1017. Soobin scans the key card on the door, and Beomgyu steps through it. He only has a second to drink in the room’s streamlined interior, ultra-modern furnishings and massive television before he finds himself pushed up against the wall just inside the door.
“I’d love to cuddle,” Soobin says to Beomgyu’s ear, and licks it.
Beomgyu gasps. Soobin’s body is flat against his all up and down their frames, so much contact that Beomgyu feels like an accessory to his larger body.
“I don’t know why I want you so much,” Soobin murmurs. “I feel like I’m gonna explode if I don’t have you.”
“You’re drunk,” Beomgyu chokes out, weaving his hands around Soobin’s neck. The back of it is prickly, crisp baby hairs tickling the palms of his hands.
Soobin wedges his thigh between Beomgyu’s legs. “No,” he says. “I’m not drunk at all.”
I am, Beomgyu thinks, but he doesn’t know how much that matters, either.
“Do you want me?”
Soobin’s breath is warm on Beomgyu’s skin, cold where he licked him.
“Fuck.” Beomgyu gasps again, grinding down on Soobin’s thigh. “Yeah, yeah.”
“So should we cuddle? Bed?” Soobin grips onto Beomgyu’s waist, starting to pull away.
“Um, let me…bathroom,” Beomgyu stammers. Better to get ready before anything really starts happening, in case it’s impossible to entangle himself later. Soobin doesn’t seem like the type to want to take a breather once the clothing starts coming off.
Soobin smiles and lets go of Beomgyu’s torso, delicately peeling Beomgyu’s hands off the nape of his own neck. “I’ll wait for you,” he says, kissing the back of one of Beomgyu’s hands, and then the other.
Beomgyu feels like he’s about to collapse. It’s Prince Charming behavior, and those dimples aren’t making it easier to accept that this is really happening to him. He practically sprints for the bathroom the moment Soobin lets go of his hands, slamming the door closed and pressing himself up against the back of it.
Get a hold of yourself, he thinks, hammering the heels of his hands into his forehead. Fuck, he’s just a hot guy, and you’re just hooking up. Don’t be such a teenager about it. But he’s so hot, and Beomgyu doesn’t just hook up, and his heart is all arrhythmic again.
His pocket buzzes, and Beomgyu swears mentally. He hadn’t texted Yeonjun yet, and Yeonjun isn’t happy.
Room 1017, and he’s practically devouring me, Beomgyu texts him in a rush. Go back to sleep.
For the second time that night, Beomgyu thanks whatever entity is controlling this strangely fated evening that he had showered before he went down to that casino bar. He stays in the bathroom for a few minutes, mainly staring at himself in the mirror and trying to emulate every high school football coach he’s seen give a pep talk in movies. Go get him, tiger. It’s cringe, but he’s tipsy enough that it feels like a power-up.
He takes a deep breath and opens the bathroom door.
Soobin is standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, talking into his phone.
“…said it’d be another three days,” he says. He sounds angry, his words coming out clipped. His jacket is discarded on the foot of the bed, and his tie is draped over the desk chair. “I’m not ready.”
Beomgyu is too far away to make out anything on the other side of the call.
“He can wait,” Soobin says. “He’s waited three weeks, he can wait another night. I can’t fucking do it tonight, and I don’t care who’s pissed. I’m out after this.”
Beomgyu rests his hand up on the wall, freezing on the edge of the bedroom. His heart starts to sink. Is Soobin leaving? Of course this night was too good to be true.
“I said no. No. Not tonight. I’m busy.” Soobin pauses. “No, I’m not fucking sleeping. I have plans with an old friend.”
That’s one way to put their relationship. Beomgyu huffs out a single laugh, and Soobin whips his head around, finally noticing him. He holds up a finger again, like he did in the lobby.
“Tell him to fuck off,” he spits into the phone. “Don’t call me again tonight. I’ll text you tomorrow.”
He ends the call without saying goodbye.
“That sounded intense,” Beomgyu says, trying to keep his voice light. Soobin’s tone in that call was bringing him back to an earlier moment in their evening, when everything about him was still evasive and mysterious. Before the little details started dropping out of him, letting Beomgyu finally start to fill in the picture of his life.
“My job is a lot sometimes,” Soobin says, pocketing his phone and holding his arms out. “But you don’t want to hear about it. Cuddle?”
A work call, at half past midnight? Beomgyu doesn’t overthink it. He’s just glad he isn’t leaving. He walks towards Soobin, meeting him at the foot of the bed and letting him cup his jaw in his broad hands.
Soobin doesn’t speak. He lowers his lips to his own hand, kissing a line above it along Beomgyu’s cheek. Beomgyu holds his breath as he circles his jaw, kissing along the other hand now. Then he pulls back and lingers in front of Beomgyu’s face, studying it. The room is dim, only one side lamp on, and his somber face is mostly shadowed.
“Sure everything’s okay?” Beomgyu stutters, dropping his eyes from Soobin’s dark ones. They’re only inches apart.
“Your eyelashes,” Soobin says. “Can I kiss them?”
Beomgyu closes his eyes and nods. In a moment, Soobin’s lips are feathering across one eyelid, then the other, then the first again. And then his lips are on Beomgyu’s, gently parting them with his tongue as he walks him backwards towards the bed.
Beomgyu tips flat onto his back and Soobin goes with him, piling their bodies and trapping Beomgyu’s head between his forearms.
“Fuck,” Beomgyu gasps, winded. He’s so small under him.
“Too much?” Soobin says to his lips.
“No, no.” Beomgyu lunges an inch upwards, tongue first, and Soobin opens his mouth just enough to let his tongue slip through, tangling with his own.
It’s just right. Beomgyu can’t quite place what Soobin tastes like, but whatever it is is wonderful. He can feel the firmness of his erection pressing against his own, and he tucks his fingers under Soobin’s belt, gripping on as Soobin presses harder and harder into his lips. He feels fingers combing through his hair, teasing his scalp, and when he opens his eyes his whole field of vision is Soobin’s face, Soobin’s hair, Soobin’s arms blocking his peripheral vision.
He smiles. This is surreal.
Soobin opens his eyes. “What?” he asks, drawing back.
“Nothing.” Beomgyu’s lips are so wet, and he giggles.
Soobin raises his eyebrows. “Nothing?”
“I haven’t had sex in years,” he says, still giggling. “I’m so hard already.”
“I can tell,” Soobin laughs, kissing the tip of his nose. “Are you always this cute in bed?”
“It’s the booze,” Beomgyu says. “Lemme take my clothes off.”
“So soon? We barely got started.” But Soobin draws up on his knees to let Beomgyu sit up and fumble with his shirt buttons.
It takes longer than it should, and Soobin yanks the tail of Beomgyu’s shirt out of his waistband, starting up on the bottom few buttons.
“No, no, take yours off,” Beomgyu says. “I bet you’re jacked, right?”
“Not at all.” Soobin lets go of Beomgyu’s shirt and moves to his own. It’s tight across his chest, maybe a half-size too small, and now that Beomgyu’s getting a good look at it he’s almost sad to see it go. He’s not sad for long, though. The undershirt comes off after the shirt, and Soobin absolutely is jacked. At least in comparison to Beomgyu, who doesn’t exactly get a lot of time to go to the gym on his rotations.
“See? Jacked,” Beomgyu says, walking a curious fingertip across Soobin’s abs. His skin contracts under Beomgyu’s touch.
“Stop flattering me and take off yours,” Soobin says, and Beomgyu sighs, finishing off his own shirt. He doesn’t bother to feel self conscious about his narrower, less muscular chest. Soobin’s eyes are drinking him in greedily, and in a moment he has him flat on the bed underneath him again, long fingers working through Beomgyu’s belt buckle.
“So it’s been years, you said?”
“Y-yeah,” Beomgyu stammers, hips twitching.
“Are you nervous?” Soobin looks at him, wide-eyed, and Beomgyu nods, entranced. “Want me to calm you down?”
“Yes, please.” His belt comes undone in Soobin’s hands, and his fingers move on to Beomgyu’s fly, opening the button.
“We can start slow,” Soobin says, swinging his legs over Beomgyu’s to straddle his knees. Beomgyu is anchored to the bed, imprisoned under Soobin’s weight, and he hauls himself up on his elbows to get a good view of the action.
“What’s slow?” he whispers.
“I’ll start with this.” Soobin drags one finger along the length of Beomgyu’s erection, bulging awkwardly under his shorts. “I’ll make it feel good. Maybe just a few kisses.”
“Only?”
“Just to warm you up,” Soobin says. “Is that all you’ll need to cum for me?”
Beomgyu’s heart threatens to stop for a moment, and he stares up at Soobin’s face. His eyes are crinkled at the corners as he smiles, his dimples permanently sunken into his full cheeks, and for the first time, Beomgyu wishes this were different. He wishes they weren’t in Vegas. That they’d met at a high school reunion, that they’d kept going to the same church as kids, that this could become something.
“No,” he whispers. “Need more.”
“Then I’ll give you more,” Soobin murmurs, pulling down Beomgyu’s zipper and yanking his shorts open. “If I make you cum once, can I make you cum again?”
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu says weakly. Soobin palms over his cock through his briefs, and now he’s pulling down the waistband, tugging it down far enough to free Beomgyu’s erection.
“Look at you,” Soobin breathes, wrapping both hands around its girth. “Big.”
It’s not that big, especially not when Soobin’s felt absolutely massive, pressed into Beomgyu’s belly a few minutes before. But Beomgyu isn’t exactly going to correct him. He just sighs at the feeling, someone else’s hands on his cock for the first time in years.
Such nice hands, too. Tender and huge and so warm, stroking down Beomgyu’s shaft one after the other as if he were getting its dimensions.
“Can I do more for you?” Soobin asks, eyes still fixed on the head of Beomgyu’s cock.
“Like…like what?”
Beomgyu has a feeling about what more is, and he’s proven right when Soobin clambers off of his legs to start yanking his shorts and briefs fully off.
“You have lube, right?” Beomgyu says, watching his own pale thighs come into view and trying to kick his shorts off faster. It’s freezing in the hotel room, and he’s about to be fully naked, but he can’t get them off quickly enough.
“Of course,” Soobin says. “Be patient, stop kicking.”
Beomgyu stops wiggling his feet, and Soobin is back between his legs in a flash, pressing his thighs as wide apart as they’ll go. The cool air frosts over his bare skin, and Beomgyu clutches his hands to his chest, warming as much skin as he can touch.
“Tell me what you’re gonna do,” he says eagerly. He’s so ready. He’s butt naked under Choi Soobin the near-stranger, and it’s going to be so, so good. He can feel it.
Soobin exhales, lowering his head towards Beomgyu’s crotch and grazing both thumbs over his exposed hole. Beomgyu squirms, an oh god escaping his lips.
“This is gonna take some work,” Soobin says in a low voice. “How can this tiny hole fit my cock?”
“You’re…you’re big, right?” Beomgyu’s eyes flutter open and closed. Soobin’s touch is so light.
“Very big,” Soobin says seriously. “But I’ll take such good care of you. I’ll get you so ready. Do you trust me?”
Beomgyu nods.
“Don’t move,” Soobin says, and he lunges for his jacket at the foot of the bed. Beomgyu stays frozen, thighs spread wide, and when Soobin returns with a packet of lube, he lifts one of Beomgyu’s legs, kissing the inside of his knee.
“Good boy,” he says softly.
Beomgyu drops his head back on his neck. He needs a moment to regroup after that.
“You like that?” It’s not dirty talk, it’s a genuine question.
“I think so,” Beomgyu whispers, breathing through the rushing sensation spreading across his core.
“You only think so?” Beomgyu feels the mattress shift, and Soobin’s hand wraps around the crown of his head, pushing it upright again. He’s leaning over Beomgyu on one arm, suddenly serious, with the lube packet half open on the bed next to them. “I thought you had a boyfriend.”
“I did,” Beomgyu says. “The sex wasn’t…wasn’t that great.”
Soobin purses his lips. “Poor boy,” he says, leaning in closer. “If you were with me, we’d find out every single thing you like, and do all of them.”
“I…” He’s so close, and Beomgyu can barely find the words. “I…can’t be with you. You’re…”
“Transient,” Soobin fills in. “I know.”
He chews Beomgyu’s lip when he kisses him, to dent it, imprint it after he’s gone.
“Soobin,” Beomgyu whispers as he pulls his head away. “Soobin.”
“Yeah?”
“Take me apart.”
Soobin closes his eyes, grimacing.
“What?”
“Beomgyu,” he says, and exhales slowly. It ripples through the hunched muscles of his shoulders, relaxing them. “You’re gonna kill me.”
“Good enough for you?” Beomgyu reaches for Soobin’s chest, pressing his palms flat to his ribcage and fanning them. He can feel Soobin’s heart pounding under his fingertips.
Soobin traces the shell of Beomgyu’s ear, tucking a tendril of hair behind it. His other thumb presses into Beomgyu’s pelvis, an inch from the root of his cock.
“Too good,” he says. “Can I blow you?”
“Are you kidding me? Go, go,” Beomgyu moans.
Soobin slides his long body down the bed, settling in between Beomgyu’s legs. His hands are so big, cupping his balls and squeezing just enough for Beomgyu’s mind to blank out.
He flings his hands over his eyes. He can’t watch this.
“Cute,” Soobin coos, and a pair of plush lips cinch tightly around the head of Beomgyu’s cock.
Beomgyu whines, the pitch growing higher as Soobin’s warm mouth slides down his shaft, the flat of his tongue cradling it. His cock hits the back of Soobin’s throat and Beomgyu chokes, biting his lip.
Soobin hums a happy sound, and a finger strokes gently across Beomgyu’s rim as his mouth draws slowly, tantalizingly upwards. Fuck.
He pulls off Beomgyu with a pop. “You want both?”
“Both, fuck, please,” Beomgyu says to his hands, splaying his legs even further apart.
“Beg for it a little?” Soobin says, voice upticking.
“I already said please,” Beomgyu complains. His legs twitch. “But please please please,” he adds. “Please put it in me.”
Soobin lets go of him, and he hears a crinkling sound; the lube packet ripping open.
“You’re going to feel—”
Soobin falls quiet, and the crinkling sound stops.
“Feel what?” Beomgyu says. Soobin doesn’t answer. He starts again. “I’m going to feel—”
“Shhh,” Soobin says urgently, and Beomgyu drops his hands.
Soobin is frozen, staring toward the door, the packet open in his hands. Beomgyu opens his mouth and Soobin immediately presses his hand to his lips, stifling him.
“Quiet,” he breathes. “Don’t move.”
Beomgyu does as he’s told, remaining totally still, legs still splayed naked at his sides. His heart is pounding, though whether it’s from the aborted blowjob or whatever’s going on right now, he isn’t sure.
There’s a sound coming through the door from the hall. The hint of a deep voice, and maybe footsteps. It’s nothing unusual for a hotel, but Soobin drops the lube packet, flinging both hands to his face and groaning.
“What is it?” Beomgyu asks, finally pulling his legs together.
When Soobin drops his hands, his brows are glued together in a line and his lips are pressed thin. His shoulders are hunched again, and he balls his hands into tight fists.
“You have to hide,” he whispers.
“What?”
Soobin grabs Beomgyu’s clothing and leaps off the bed.
“Here, here,” he whisper-shouts, rushing for the closet in the room’s little hallway. “Fuck, Beomgyu, get the fuck over here.”
Beomgyu jumps off the bed too. “I don’t under—”
“Be completely silent,” Soobin interrupts. His eyes are racing around the room, logging any imprint they’ve left on it. “Fuck, don’t you dare make a sound. Don’t come out, no matter what. You’re not here, okay?”
“Why do I have to—”
A heavy, terrible pounding on the door cuts him off. Beomgyu almost yelps in surprise, but Soobin’s hand is over his mouth again, swallowing the sound in his flesh.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, pulling his hand away and kissing him. “Just don’t come out. Don’t be heard, okay?”
“Soobin—”
There’s another violent knock.
“Choi, get the fuck out here,” someone yells.
Soobin slides the closet door open. “Go, go,” he urges, and Beomgyu slips through it, clutching his clothes. Soobin immediately slides it closed behind him, and Beomgyu races to pull his shorts on in the dark, not bothering with his briefs. His boner is deflating at the speed of light. What the fuck is happening? How did those—
The next noise at the door is even worse than the first two, rattling the whole frame. Someone’s trying to kick it down.
A work call at twelve-thirty in the morning. What guy with a tech job is getting assigned jobs at twelve-thirty in the morning? This must be about that, and Beomgyu flattens himself to the wall inside the closet, staring at the tiny crack of light seeping in from under the door. He’s suddenly completely sober, his vision buzzing with static in the sudden darkness of the closet. This is what happens when you go home with strangers, and his mother would lose her mind if she saw him here…Yeonjun would…
Yeonjun. Beomgyu fumbles for his pocket with shaking hands, pulling out his phone.
He hears the sound of the door unlatching.
“What?” Soobin’s voice says. It’s cold, the way it sounded on the phone. Nothing like he had sounded in bed, between Beomgyu’s legs not even a minute earlier.
“You fucking know what, cocksucker.” Whoever it is is in the room now, right outside the closet, and Beomgyu’s hands shake even more. Yeonjun, Yeonjun. His text thread is already open on the phone screen from their last exchange, and Beomgyu frantically types out call the cops now room 1017 intruders send help. Will he still be awake? Is his phone on silent? Beomgyu presses his phone to his bare chest, blocking out the light, and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Illuminate me,” Soobin says, just feet away.
There’s a dull thud of a fist colliding with a body, and a heavy, forced-out cough. Beomgyu presses his hand to his mouth to hold in his scream.
“Don’t be a smartass. You’re replaceable, you know that?”
“So replace me,” Soobin says, still coughing. “You know I want out.”
“You don’t just get out,” someone else says. Oh god, there’s more than one? “You knew what you were getting into.”
“It’s my last package, and the boss knows that. I’m fucking out after this job, and if you hit me again—”
There’s a sudden burst of sound, two voices yelping simultaneously over a slap of skin-on-skin.
“Now you’re in trouble,” one of the voices yells. “You’re gonna fight two of us? Skinny bitch like you? Come on, Choi.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Soobin spits. “I’m finishing the job this week, and then I’m gone for good. Who sent you to beat me up, Manny?”
There’s a moment of silence. Beomgyu holds his breath, though he swears he can still hear himself breathing. They must be able to hear him out there, too.
“You’re fucking me up because of Manny? Fuck, you’re really as stupid as you look. He’s powerless. You think taking me out will get you clout?”
Taking me out. Oh god oh god. Beomgyu looks at his phone again; no text from Yeonjun. Please be on the phone with the police, he thinks over and over and over. Please, please. You called 911 and asked to be put through to Vegas. You called the front desk of the hotel. Please, Yeonjun…
“Keep talking,” the first voice growls. “You’re only making it worse — what the fuck!”
Whatever’s happening in the room just escalated. There’s the sudden, violent sounds of a real scuffle; a high-pitched scream, something breaking, a body slamming into an object. Yeonjun Yeonjun Yeonjun please please—
“You’re not the only one with a fucking knife, fuckhead, get out of that—”
“Go,” Soobin’s choked voice calls out. “Run. Go, go. Don’t think about me.”
“What the fuck is he talking about?”
“Dunno. Choi, if you wanna live, drop the goddamn—”
“Get out, now,” Soobin yells, and Beomgyu realizes with a terrible, body-shaking jolt that he’s talking to him. He wants him to leave, to run out through that room full of danger and get to safety. Beomgyu is frozen, trembling in the dark, his fingers fidgeting madly around the screen of his phone. How can he open the door when it’s safe in here?
Another crash. Something being thrown.
“Now, go now,” Soobin shouts, and Beomgyu slides the closet door open as fast as he can.
He barely looks into the room, but it’s impossible not to register what’s happening. The room is in disarray, a lamp shattered on the ground, chairs tipped over and the bed destroyed. Soobin is pressed against the window in the far corner of the room, a knife out in his hand and blooming red marks all across his bare chest. And two strangers loom towards him, both men in rough work clothes, turning in surprise at the sound of the closet door opening. A glint of metal flashes in one of the men’s hands as he turns, and the other has a red gash across his cheek.
“What in the—”
Beomgyu is already running for the door before Soobin can call out again. He sprints the three steps down the room’s little hallway, flinging the heavy hotel door open and escaping into the bright hallway. His bare feet slam into the carpet so sharply it hurts, his heart pounding so heavily he feels like he might vomit. He doesn’t notice that he’s crying.
“Get the fuck back here!”
Beomgyu doesn’t turn around to see how much of a lead he has. There’s a staircase next to the elevator, and the exit sign above the doorway is a beacon. So close…almost there…twenty feet, ten feet, five feet, and Beomgyu slams his body into the panic bar, falling through the door just as he catches a glimpse of one of the men halfway down the hallway.
Ten stories. Can he run fast enough down ten stories? He takes the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping as he rounds the corner on the eighth floor. He can’t tell if the man is still following him, and he doesn’t stop to check. He can’t stop. His adrenaline is in full gear, charging through his limbs, powering him down and down and down.
Ground level. Beomgyu collapses through the door and into the main elevator bank, tripping over his feet and falling to the floor in front of an idling bellhop. His bare arms slam into the marble tiles, a shock of cold on his sweat-drenched skin.
“Sir?” says an alarmed voice. “Can I assist you?”
Beomgyu tries to scramble to his feet. Needs to run, run, but Soobin is in danger up there, he’s being attacked, and that man had a knife.
“Sir, have you been hurt?” the bellhop asks.
“Room ten-seventeen,” Beomgyu chokes. “Send help.”
He presses his hands to his eyes, and his cheeks are soaked in tears.
“Sir?” the bellhop asks. His voice sounds different. Deeper.
“Send help,” Beomgyu repeats.
“Help?” the voice asks, and Beomgyu opens his eyes.
two
The bartender is holding out a purple drink.
“Does this count as help?” he says, chuckling.
Beomgyu blinks.
“That’ll be twenty dollars,” the bartender says. “Should I put it on your room?”
Beomgyu numbly reaches a hand out for his drink. His arm is clad in a casual plaid button down. Of course he’s wearing a shirt. He’s meeting his colleagues for a drink. He put this shirt on a half-hour ago, fresh out of the shower.
He lifts his hand to wipe away his tears, and his cheek is dry. Why wouldn’t it be dry? His throat feels heavy, as if he’d been crying, but he can’t place why it feels that way.
“So…room number?” the bartender asks again.
“Um…no, I’ll put it on my card,” Beomgyu mutters, fumbling for his wallet. He tips five dollars, twenty-five percent, and wonders if it was too much.
Something about the dark, smoky atmosphere of the bar is making Beomgyu feel flustered, though he isn’t sure why. Maybe he’s just nervous about meeting up with his coworkers. He’s not the world’s best networker. But as neither of them is anywhere in sight, Beomgyu figures a quick walk around the casino floor won’t hurt. It might shake him out of whatever strange daze just hit him while he waited for his drink.
Las Vegas is supposed to be noise, noise, noise, energy and emotion and lives going down in catastrophic flames, but it’s a lot quieter out on the floor than he would have expected. Maybe all those carpeted tables absorb the sound. It’s a Wednesday, which might help.
Beomgyu slurps along the rim of his drink, shuffling his feet as he walks to stay level and not spill it. Coupe glasses are less impractical than martini ones, but still. His hands are naturally shaky. It’s why he’s not a surgeon.
The carpet is spongy beneath his feet, a vibrant red that’s overstimulating his peripheral vision. He imagines how it would feel if he were barefoot, plush and squishing between his toes.
Beomgyu casts his eyes around the room, skimming over the tables. His gaze lands on a roulette table, mostly empty. The back facing him is wearing some kind of varsity sports jacket with a last name across the top. Choi, his own. It’s a familiar green and gold.
Beomgyu blinks. It’s such a common name, but…
He circles the table, sticking to the perimeter of the room, until he gets a glimpse of the man’s face. Long but cheeky, classic good looks. Too old for a high school varsity jacket. He looks familiar. Not a surprise, Beomgyu figures, if that’s really a Bronx Science jacket. Did they have a class together?
Beomgyu lifts the cocktail and the man’s eyes meet his. Maybe it’s the Aviation reflected in Beomgyu’s irises, but his face glows.
The man tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes at him in recognition.
Beomgyu coughs and the drink splashes back into his face. When he opens his eyes again, wiping his jaw with his sleeve, the man is grinning, his cheeks creasing. He flickers his eyes down to an empty chair at the table and back up to Beomgyu.
Goddamnit. Beomgyu was going to, anyway, and now it looks like he’s just following orders. You need to take initiative more, Yeonjun tells him constantly, and he was going to, and now he…whatever. It’s just a coincidence, anyway. He’ll just ask, and then be on his way.
He approaches the table and sets his drink down.
“Are you okay?” the man says. “That wasn’t graceful.”
“Perfect,” Beomgyu says defensively. “I’m a doctor. I know how to give myself the Heimlich.”
Dumb, dumb. It always sounds like a brag. The man’s eyebrows lift, the classic oh, a doctor. “Young for a doctor,” he says.
“I’m twenty-eight. I’m a resident,” Beomgyu explains, not for the first time. He knows he looks younger than his age. It’s a common comment from his patients’ parents.
“So not really a doctor, then.”
Beomgyu frowns. “Residents are licensed physicians,” he begins, and then stops himself. This isn’t where he wants this to go. Take initiative, Yeonjun says. He pulls out the leather chair next to his drink and slides into it.
“Actually, I want to ask you something.”
“Ask away,” the man says, letting his lips hang open. He has inflated lips, pouty as if they were artificial.
“Do we know each other?” Beomgyu asks.
“We do,” the man says, nodding. His dark eyes are lingering on the lower half of Beomgyu’s face, on his lips. “I’m not sure how, though.”
“You didn’t go to Bronx Science, did you?” Beomgyu drops his eyes to the lapel of the man’s jacket, and he sees it — that familiar logo, an atom.
The man tilts his head back in recognition. “That must be it,” he says, starting to smile again. “I did.”
“Me too, obviously,” Beomgyu says. “I recognized the jacket.”
“What year?”
“Twenty-twelve.”
“You’re a baby,” the man says, lifting his own drink. It’s something brown in a rocks glass. Smoky. No ice.
“No, I’m twenty-eight,” Beomgyu repeats.
“Bets?” the dealer says, and oh, right. They’re at a roulette table in Las Vegas with two faceless strangers beside them and Beomgyu doesn’t have any chips. He wasn’t planning on gambling. He’s just here to network with two pediatric palliative care specialists at the bar and hopefully make it back to his hotel room without burning a hole in his duct-tape wallet.
“Oh. Um, I don’t have any chips,” Beomgyu says, reaching for his drink again. It’s no big deal. The dealer will just tell him to leave, and he’ll go back to the bar and wait for whats-his-name to show up and—
The man flips him a chip. Red. Beomgyu doesn’t know what that means.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Anything for a Bronx Science kid,” the man says. “You do debate?”
“Yes, actually.” It’s not that weird to ask. Everyone did debate. It was a nerdy enough school that was kind of cool, even. “Did you?”
He smiles. “Wasn’t the type,” he says. “Oh-eight.”
“What?”
“Oh-eight. I graduated in two-thousand eight.”
So they didn’t overlap. Maybe they met at an alumni reunion? Beomgyu went to one of them, his first one, and this man could have been there for his fifth. That must have been it.
“Why’re you still wearing that jacket, if you’re…” his mind races to do the math on his age, but the man’s already answered.
“For luck,” he says. “I’m very, very lucky in this jacket.”
“Last call for bets,” the dealer says, and Beomgyu almost drops his chip.
Beomgyu isn’t a superstitious man. He’s a doctor, a man of logic and reason. He sleeps with the fan on and steps on sidewalk cracks. He also clicks all his pens closed three times before pocketing them and needs to tell every emergency patient he treats “hope to never see you again!” or else it’s his fault when they have another emergency.
He puts his chip on twelve.
“Is your name Choi Beomgyu?” the man says.
Beomgyu’s mouth falls open. The dealer draws back and spins the wheel.
“How did you know?” Beomgyu asks, dumbly.
A smile inches across the man’s face, softening him.
“I told you we know each other,” he says, looking down at the board. He reaches out to put his own chip down and looks back at Beomgyu, winking.
The dealer drops the ball in. Beomgyu hears it crawling along the wheel, racing counter-clockwise, but he’s too busy staring at the man’s face to watch its progress. He has out-of-place dimples that would fit better on a child.
“If we know each other, then who are you?”
The man laughs, and Beomgyu feels it in the backs of his thighs where they stick on the leather chair. He shouldn’t have worn shorts to a casino.
“Choi Soobin,” the man says.
A corner of Beomgyu’s brain processes the sound of the ball slotting into the wheel.
“Eight,” the dealer says.
Choi Soobin smiles. “Lucky pick,” he says, and Beomgyu glances over at the table. Soobin’s chip blocks the number eight from view.
He’s not a superstitious man.
Choi Soobin tosses back the rest of his drink. He doesn’t flinch, though it must have burned.
“Finish yours so I can buy you another one,” he says. It’s an order.
“There are so many better bars than the one here,” Choi Soobin says as they walk side-by-side out of the casino. “First time in Vegas?”
“Yep,” Beomgyu says.
“So let me show you around a bit,” Soobin says. “See the sights.”
“You want me to leave my nice, safe hotel with a total stranger?”
“We’re not strangers. We know each other.”
Beomgyu narrows his eyes at Soobin’s face. It’s so handsome, dark eyes and defined dimples and the perfect amount of give to his cheeks, and he thinks he can place it, if he tries hard enough.
“You gotta tell me how we know each other.”
“Try to guess first,” Soobin laughs. “You’re leaving with me, though, right?”
Beomgyu shrugs. This certainly counts as taking initiative, and if he’s going to make a mistake, he might as well make it in Vegas. It doesn’t seem like the worst idea to walk down a heavily populated, brightly lit tourist street with a stranger, and he’s too intrigued to end this night now.
“I’m supposed to meet my coworkers at the bar here, but…”
“But you’re leaving with me instead,” Soobin finishes. They’re in the lobby of the hotel now, and Soobin places a gentle hand on the small of Beomgyu’s back, guiding him towards one of the revolving doors. His hand spans the width of Beomgyu’s back, and Beomgyu stifles a shudder at the feeling of its weight on his frame. Fuck, this night is going differently than planned.
“I guess I am,” Beomgyu says. “I’m…not great with schmoozing.”
“And this isn’t schmoozing?”
“Not if we know each other,” Beomgyu says.
Soobin holds a hand out graciously, letting Beomgyu push through the revolving door first. A blast of dry heat and wall of traffic noise hits Beomgyu in the face on the other side of it, and Beomgyu takes a deep breath, getting his bearings. This is so unlike him, but it’s been years since anyone’s shown him any attention. And this man is showing him attention, right? That has to be what that touch meant, that soft hand on his back.
“And we do know each other,” Soobin’s voice says, popping out of the revolving door behind Beomgyu. “This way.”
Beomgyu falls in step beside him.
“So tell me how, again?”
“You said you’d guess,” Soobin smiles at him.
Beomgyu purses his lips, staring at the Bronx Science jacket. “It’s gotta be about high school,” he says.
“Wrong,” Soobin replies. “Try again.”
“But it’s about New York, right? You’re from New York?”
“Yes,” Soobin says, but he doesn’t continue.
Beomgyu lets out a dramatic sigh. They take another few steps down the Strip before he chances another guess. “Korean school? Did you go to the Korean school on thirty-sixth street?”
“No,” Soobin says. “I didn’t go to Korean school. We spoke Korean at home.”
“That must have been nice,” Beomgyu says enviously.
“It was, I guess,” Soobin says in Korean. He has a bit of an accent, something rough that Beomgyu can’t quite place. “But you’re getting warmer about the location.”
“So something in Koreatown,” Beomgyu ponders. He doesn’t bother to say it in Korean. He’s much better at understanding than speaking. “I think my family lived there, actually. When I was a little kid.”
“You did,” Soobin says, still in Korean. “Good job, Beomgyu-ya.”
It’s too intimate for their level of familiarity, but Soobin slides his hand into Beomgyu’s, and for some reason, it feels right. It feels like they’ve known each other for far longer than just this evening.
“Just tell me,” Beomgyu says. “I give up.”
Soobin pulls him to a halt. “Do you remember going to church on thirty-fourth street?” he asks, back in English and already smiling.
Beomgyu furrows his brows. “Not really,” he says.
“You were young. Three, four, maybe. You would get all chatty when your mom dropped you off for the youth service. You always asked to share my snacks.”
Beomgyu racks his brain, realization starting to dawn on him. He’s never been religious, but his parents made him and his brother go to church with them until they were teenagers. It makes sense that they had gone to one by their first apartment, when they lived downtown.
“I might remember it a bit,” he says. “Were the walls purple?”
“They were,” Soobin says, and squeezes Beomgyu’s hand. “In the youth room.”
“I can’t believe you remembered me. Fuck, that was…twenty-four years ago, right?”
“Of course I remembered you,” Soobin says, his gaze dropping down Beomgyu’s face and lingering on his neckline. “Your eyes are just the same.”
Beomgyu shifts on his feet. It’s so busy and bright out here, but he feels like they’re alone. “I think I remembered you too,” he says cautiously. “You seemed…I don’t know. You seemed…right, when I first saw you.”
If Soobin thinks it’s a weird turn of phrase, he doesn’t say it.
“You stopped coming one week. I always wondered where you went, but the youth leader just said you’d moved.”
“Did you keep going there?” Beomgyu asks.
Soobin nodded. “It was our church,” he says. “We took the seven train down there every weekend.”
He must be from Queens. Flushing, maybe Bayside.
“You were cute,” Soobin says. “Annoying, but cute. Choi Beomgyu. You introduced yourself to me like that every week, in case I’d forgotten you.”
Beomgyu smiles. “Did you share your snacks?”
“Always,” Soobin says, looking at his face again and splitting into a smile. He squeezes Beomgyu’s hand between his own, but Beomgyu is too caught up in his dimples to feel it. “Want to keep walking?”
“Not really,” Beomgyu says. “I wanna hear more about how you know me.”
“Well, that’s the only way I know you,” Soobin says. “Can I tell you something else?”
“Sure,” Beomgyu says. “Who the hell are you?”
The blocks on the Strip are long, and they take them at a slow pace, in no hurry to get anywhere in particular. Soobin doesn’t let go of Beomgyu’s hand, and Beomgyu doesn’t want him to. It’s so soft, his knuckles locked together with Beomgyu’s, and it feels safe in the warmth of his palm. Maybe he’s a stranger, but he isn’t, really.
The conversation flows relatively easy, if a bit superficially. Beomgyu describes his job and the conference that brought him to Las Vegas, and Soobin hums interestedly. When Beomgyu bats the question back at him, he says he works in cybersecurity and lives in Los Angeles, though he travels a lot for work, including to Vegas. Beomgyu nods along like he understands what cybersecurity is, and lights up at the LA reference. Another connection.
“I was in LA for college,” he says. “UCLA. Where’s your place?”
“Oh, I’m moving soon,” Soobin says dismissively. “Not sure where.”
“Hm.” Beomgyu shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye to make sure he didn’t somehow overstep, but Soobin doesn’t look particularly alarmed, despite his non-answer. “Well, where do you want to live?”
“I’d love to go back to New York, actually,” he says. “Soon.”
“If you do, call me,” Beomgyu says. “My best friend would get a kick out of meeting you. He went to Science too. It’s such a funny story, us running into each other twenty-four years later and across the country.”
“Is your friend a doctor too?”
Beomgyu snorts. “Not even close,” he says. “He’s in marketing. No, I’m the only one masochistic enough to have gone to med school in our friend group.”
“You don’t like being a doctor?” Soobin sounds surprised.
“No, I like it. But med school was hell.”
Soobin doesn’t say anything, leaving room in case Beomgyu wants to explain. A biker zips by them and he yanks Beomgyu an inch to the side, even though it wasn’t necessary. His hand tightens around Beomgyu’s, and he doesn’t loosen it.
“Choking my hand, dude,” Beomgyu teases.
“It’s nice,” Soobin says. “Having a hand to hold.”
Beomgyu’s heart thumps arrhythmically. It is nice.
He wheels to a stop, bringing Soobin with him.
“I don’t do this,” he blurts out. “I never do…stranger hookups. One-night-stands.”
“Who says this has to be a one-night-stand?” Soobin says quietly.
“What…what do you mean?”
“We don’t have to fuck. I just…I just want to talk to you,” he says, reaching for Beomgyu’s other hand. “I don’t know why. This just feels easy. Doesn’t it?”
It does. It’s comfortable, talking to him. Comfortable in a way Beomgyu rarely feels even with acquaintances. Maybe it’s just easier with strangers, although Soobin isn’t really a stranger.
“I like talking to you too,” Beomgyu says, peering up at Soobin’s face and stroking over his thumbs with the pads of his own. He barely noticed how tall Soobin is when they were walking, but face-to-face like this, the other man towers over him. He gulps, something twisting in his stomach for the first time.
Soobin ducks his head an inch. “Forgive me if this is forward,” he says. “But…it’s not that I don’t want to hook up with you.”
The twist in his stomach cinches tighter.
“So you do want to hook up with me,” Beomgyu breathes, tilting his head back.
“Who wouldn’t?” Soobin says, so low it’s almost inaudible over the traffic noise.
“Dunno. Lesbians,” Beomgyu jokes, but Soobin grabs him around the waist, pulling their bodies flush together.
“You’re not with anyone, right?” he asks. His face is an inch away, and Beomgyu stares at those full lips to avoid making eye contact.
“No,” he whispers. “Not for years.”
“Me neither,” Soobin says back. “Never, really.”
Should Beomgyu kiss him? He should kiss him. He’s unbearably close, the light blocked out by his handsome face, his lips parting as if tempting Beomgyu to just lean in and do it. But before he can, Soobin releases his grip on Beomgyu’s waist, letting his hand drag lightly over the seat of his shorts as he unfurls it from Beomgyu’s body.
“Keep walking?” he asks, and grins impishly.
Beomgyu groans.
“That was mean,” he says. “You owe me.”
“I’m already buying your drinks tonight,” Soobin says. “What more can I do for you?”
Beomgyu pulls a thinking face, tapping a finger to his chin. His eyes wander past Soobin’s head, over his shoulder, past the towering buildings of the Strip, and he lights up.
“That,” he says, pointing. “Treat me to that?”
Soobin laughs. “The Ferris wheel? I knew you were a baby.”
“Not a baby. I just know how to have fun.”
Soobin checks his watch. It’s shiny and expensive-looking, though Beomgyu doesn’t know much about watches. “It’s only open for another half hour,” he says. “Let’s move.”
He grabs Beomgyu’s hand and takes off, race-walking down the block.
“Hey! You’re calling me a baby but you have the Ferris wheel’s operating hours memorized?”
“Touché,” Soobin calls back to him. “Are you this bratty to all your hookups?”
“I told you I don’t have hookups,” Beomgyu laughs. “Just you. And you’re not one yet.”
“Yet,” Soobin repeats. “Come on, walk faster.”
The walk to the enormous Ferris wheel takes them off the Strip and through a noisy pedestrian-only canyon of neon signs and claustrophobic buildings. It reminds Beomgyu a bit of Times Square, if Times Square was nothing but nightclubs and late-night food spots. It’s less crowded on the street than he’d expect, although clusters of glammed-up women linger outside the nightclubs and the In-N-Out Burger is doing good business despite the late hour.
“Maybe we get burgers after this,” Beomgyu yells after him. “Fuck, I miss In-N-Out.”
“I get it all the time,” Soobin yells back. “I miss New York pizza.”
The blinking sign grows closer: High Roller.
“Biggest Ferris wheel in the world, according to the ads,” Soobin says, pointing to it. “Or maybe the second biggest. I can’t remember.”
“How many times have you been on it?”
Soobin shrugs, slowing to let Beomgyu catch up to him. “A handful.”
“On your own?”
“Sometimes. I like heights.”
Beomgyu wonders who he brought during those other times, when he wasn’t on his own. But it’s none of his business.
“I’m not really an adrenaline person,” he admits, looking up at the enormous wheel. It truly is massive, blinking through a dazzling light show of cool-toned colors.
“I am,” Soobin says. “I’m good about fear. I’ll help you if you get scared.”
“Yeah? How exactly?”
“I’m an excellent hugger,” he says, and Beomgyu looks over at him in time to see him split into a smile.
“Prove it,” Beomgyu smiles back, but Soobin just picks up his hand again.
“Almost closing time,” he says, taking off towards the ticket booth again. “Gotta move.”
Soobin pays for the tickets. They're thirty dollars each, and Beomgyu feels guilty about that. Since when is a fucking Ferris wheel thirty dollars? But it's nothing like the Ferris wheels of his childhood, the rickety Wonder Wheel by the beach in Coney Island where the seats slide back and forth on metal tracks and shake in the wind. This one is sleek and futuristic, huge white pods that can fit forty, air conditioning and floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
“I’d buy you a drink, too, but I’ve got that covered already,” Soobin says, gesturing at the bar labeled Purchase Drinks For Your Ride Here! as they walk towards the loading zone. He pats the pocket of his jacket knowingly, and Beomgyu wonders if he’s got a flask hidden in there. He hasn’t drunk from a flask since high school, when Yeonjun had stolen gin from his parents’ bar cart and drank it with Beomgyu out on a rock in Central Park.
“I cannot fucking believe there is a bar for the Ferris wheel,” Beomgyu says, making Soobin snort.
“It’s Las Vegas, Beomgyu-ya,” he says. “Everything has a bar. Did you know there are no open container laws on the Strip?”
“I’m not a big drinker,” Beomgyu mutters.
“Then don’t drink,” Soobin says. “But I’ve got something good.”
There aren’t many other people waiting in line. The wheel is closing in ten minutes, and the attendant who loads them into their pod looks thoroughly done for the night.
“One rotation takes a half hour. Panic button on the center column in case of emergency. No jumping.”
The doors slowly close, and Soobin beelines for one end of the oval pod. All the seating is clustered in the middle, to allow for unencumbered views of the skyline through the glass walls of the pod.
“Sit with me,” he says, dropping cross-legged to the floor where it meets the glass.
Beomgyu follows, dropping down too. “Is this allowed?”
Soobin looks over his shoulder. There are five other people in the pod, three young men talking in too-loud voices about the strip club they want to go to and a couple deeply, deeply immersed in each other’s bodies.
“Who’s watching?” he says, and pulls the flask out of his pocket.
Beomgyu gives him an exaggeratedly stern look. “Really? A flask? How old are you?”
“No open container laws on the Strip, remember,” Soobin says, offering Beomgyu the flask. “And I’m thirty-two, so it’s good shit. Blue Label.”
“Yeah, well, I feel like they have a no outside beverages rule in this thing,” Beomgyu scoffs.
Soobin just lifts the flask at him, poking him in the arm with it. He raises his eyebrows.
Beomgyu hesitates. He’s a twenty-eight-year old doctor with a presentation on infant care to attend at nine in the morning. He doesn’t get drunk with strangers in public. But Soobin isn’t a stranger.
“You’re probably wasting your good shit on me,” he says, taking the flask and uncapping it. “Blue Label?”
“The best Johnnie Walker,” Soobin says, and Beomgyu takes a sip. It really is good shit, as far as he can tell. He isn’t exactly a scotch expert, but feels smoother than most of the booze he’s tasted in his life, scorching less on the way down.
“My boss buys it by the carton.”
“Sounds expensive.” Beomgyu coughs.
Soobin shrugs, taking the flask back. The wheel is starting to turn, slowly lifting their pod into the air, and Beomgyu’s eyes drift over to the view, the twinkling stretch of rooftops looming ahead of him. He can tell that Soobin isn’t looking at the view at all. His gaze sears into the side of Beomgyu’s face, just as the warmth of the alcohol burns through his limbs.
“The height’s gonna be okay?”
They’ve barely lifted off the ground, but it’s sweet that he’s asking. Beomgyu slides his hand over to rest on Soobin’s cross-legged knee and squeezes it.
“I’ll ask for my hug if it’s not,” he says, and from the corner of his vision he sees Soobin toss back a sip from the flask, his own hand falling on top of Beomgyu’s.
They sit for a moment, just looking, Beomgyu at the view, Soobin at Beomgyu.
“Why're you staring at me?” Beomgyu finally asks, ducking his head and looking at their hands.
“Because you’re beautiful,” Soobin says simply.
“Um. Thanks.” He would blush, but there’s just enough alcohol in his system for him to take it at face value.
“You don’t know that?”
“I…I guess I do.”
“This may sound strange,” Soobin says softly, “but I feel like…I know you. More than I do.”
Beomgyu looks up at his somber face. He’s been feeling the same way too.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, like we met before. More than just as kids.”
“I guess it was lucky that you saw me,” Soobin says. “Or we’d never have met again.”
The bright colors of the varsity jacket fill his peripheral vision, and Beomgyu drops his eyes to the logo on its lapel. Fencing is embroidered below it.
“You said this was lucky.” Beomgyu pinches the jacket’s sleeve, pulling the crinkly fabric between his fingers. “Why?”
“Long story.” Soobin turns to look out the window, finally.
“We have a half hour,” Beomgyu presses on. “Come on, tell me.”
He pulls at the sleeve, tugging the elastic around its hem up to reveal the cuff of Soobin’s dress shirt underneath it. He’s wearing cufflinks, little gold circles that remind Beomgyu of his own necklace.
Soobin looks at his wrist, at Beomgyu’s hand playing with it.
“I don’t tell anyone this story,” he says, finally.
“Who would I tell?” Beomgyu says cutely. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“It’s not really a secret. I just…haven’t had anyone to tell.”
Beomgyu traces a finger over the word fencing. “So you were a fencer in high school,” he prompts. “Start with that.”
Soobin grabs Beomgyu’s hand, pulling it off his chest and toying with the joints of his pinkie finger.
“I was a fencer in high school,” he begins. “Epee. Do you know anything about fencing?”
“I watch it during the Olympics,” Beomgyu says. “That’s the heavy one, right?”
“Right,” Soobin says, impressed. “The one where you can hit anywhere on the body.”
“Pretty badass,” Beomgyu says.
“Maybe it is. It’s actually a really safe sport. You wear so much protective equipment.” Soobin rolls the tip of Beomgyu’s pinkie between his thumb and forefinger. “You get a lot of bruises. Nothing more than that, usually.”
“Got it,” Beomgyu says.
“I got into fencing when I was a kid. This outreach program came to my middle school, looking to sign up at-risk kids for free lessons.”
At-risk? Beomgyu wants to ask, but he lets the detail go by unacknowledged. There has to be a reason this story was private, and he isn’t going to make it harder to tell it.
Soobin squeezes his finger, almost like a thank you.
“It was kind of my everything growing up after that. I thought I might do it in college, even. So many hours at the fencing club after school, wearing through all their poor-kid grant money, because we couldn’t pay for it. And then in sophomore year, I was fencing in the city championship, and fucked up my knee. My opponent stabbed at my ankle, ‘cause that’s fair game in epee, and I sort of tripped over his weapon. Messed up my knee pretty badly landing on it wrong.”
“Ouch,” Beomgyu says sympathetically. “Knees are tough.”
“It wasn’t too terrible. I think it was just a bad sprain.” Soobin huffs out one quiet laugh. “I bet you’d have a lot to say about the injury if I could remember what it was, being a doctor.”
“So why is the jacket lucky, if you were injured while fencing?”
Soobin fumbles with the jacket’s zipper with his other hand.
“The coach took me to get the knee checked out after the tournament wrapped up. I didn’t go to doctors a lot as a kid. Too expensive.”
Beomgyu is all too familiar with that refrain. He hears it constantly on his ER shifts.
“They did a few scans to check out the knee, and that’s how they found the cancer. Osteosarcoma.”
Soobin drops Beomgyu’s hand and pulls up his knee, rolling up his pant leg. Along the upper half of his calf is a long, faded scar, pink against his pale skin, and Beomgyu’s fingertips find it without thinking. Soobin holds still, letting Beomgyu trace over his scar, over the little dimples on either side of it marking the staple sites.
“That fencing injury saved my life,” he says softly, watching Beomgyu’s fingers walk down his leg. “I was lucky.”
“How are you now?” Beomgyu asks. His mouth has gone dry. He’s no stranger to talking about childhood cancers, but a doctor has a different relationship with cancer than a survivor does. Maybe Soobin doesn’t really want to talk about his experience, and he feels a lick of guilt lapping at the back of his neck for pushing the subject.
“Good,” Soobin says. “They caught it early. I’ve been in remission for…fourteen, fifteen years now, I guess.”
He starts rolling his pant leg down, but Beomgyu notices something dark around the back of his calf muscle. He wraps his fingertips around to find the dark spot on his skin, and Soobin suddenly withdraws, pulling his leg in towards himself.
“What’s that?” Beomgyu asks, curiously. “Another scar?”
“Tattoo.” Soobin pulls Beomgyu’s hand off him.
“Oh, come on. Show me!”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?” Soobin says. He sounds teasing, not angry, so Beomgyu doesn’t stop badgering him. Anything to lighten the mood after that somber moment.
“Me? Never,” Beomgyu says, grinning. “Curious, maybe. What’s the point of getting a tattoo if you won’t show it to your hot date?”
“And you’re my hot date?”
Beomgyu nods.
“Well, what will you show me in return, then?” Soobin’s smile is dazzling in the filtered glow of the Strip.
“Depends on how good the tattoo is,” Beomgyu says. “Come onnn.”
Soobin sighs and tilts his leg to the side, pulling his pant leg up past his knee. Beomgyu squints to make it out. It’s a flower.
“See? Not that special,” Soobin says, but Beomgyu reaches out to touch his leg again, pressing his thumb to one of the petals.
“What…what is it?” he asks, although somehow, he already knows.
“A marigold,” Soobin says nonchalantly, and Beomgyu blinks, his breath catching in his throat. “Can I get dressed again?”
“Who’s it for?”
Soobin freezes. Their eyes lock together, and his eyebrows are sky-high.
How do you know? Beomgyu imagines him saying, and he feels a desperate swell in his chest, a need to show him. He tugs at the chain around his neck, pulling his pendant out from under his shirt.
“Marigold,” Beomgyu says, as Soobin’s eyes fall onto the tiny engraving. He reaches for it, dropping his pant leg in the process, and Beomgyu feels Soobin’s fingertips glancing past his own as he strokes over the charm.
“Who’s yours for?” Soobin asks quietly. “You first.”
Beomgyu turns to look out the window, pressing his free hand up against the cool glass. The wheel had slowed to a halt without them noticing, and they’re maybe halfway up, high enough for Beomgyu’s heart to pound if he thinks about it too much.
“Could you…could you hug me?” he whispers, and Soobin wraps an arm around him a second later, pulling Beomgyu’s head onto his shoulder.
“It really is high up,” Soobin says, even though it’s not about the height.
Beomgyu chews his lip, closing his eyes.
“It was a patient,” he says. “One of the first who I truly felt responsible for, as a doctor. A boy who came into the ER with his grandma and a bunch of weird injuries.”
“It must be hard, all the sick kids,” Soobin says to Beomgyu’s scalp, and Beomgyu nods.
“He had my name,” he says.
“Beomgyu?”
“Yeah. It was Romanized differently, but same name. Bom Gyu Paik. This is a massive HIPAA violation, that I just told you that.”
“Who would I tell?” Soobin echoes.
“I’d never met anyone with my name before. I don’t even think it’s common back in Korea,” Beomgyu says. “He loved me. He called me Big Beomgyu.”
Soobin’s hand grips his shoulder, pulling him even closer. He thinks he can feel the wheel moving again, though he doesn’t want to open his eyes to check.
“Every time he came back in, he’d ask for me,” Beomgyu says, pulling at his necklace again. “It’s good for kids to form bonds with physicians, so everyone let me take him whenever he came into the ER with another problem. And it was clear something was wrong at home, from…well, lots of little clues. Kids shouldn’t break quite so many bones. We called the authorities every time, but I doubt our calls went anywhere. CPS in New York is a joke.”
“What happened to him?” Soobin asks quietly.
“He died,” Beomgyu says, shortly.
Soobin hugs him closer. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, I chose to tell the story. Of course you can ask the obvious questions.” Beomgyu opens his eyes, staring straight out at the skyline. “There’s just…there’s not much more to say, and I hate that. I wasn’t even there. An ambulance rushed him in with massive internal bleeding from a fall, and I got a call from my co-resident that my favorite patient was in trouble. But I was out of town, and he died a few hours later.”
“Shit,” Soobin says.
“Yeah. I blamed myself. Could I have done more for him, you know. Made sure that he was taken from his home. Made sure he was safe.” He pulls at the necklace. “So that’s why I wear it. To not forget the loss, and to do better.”
“It’s not your fault.” Soobin kisses the top of Beomgyu’s head.
“I know.” Beomgyu swallows, pulling his head off Soobin’s shoulder. It’s warm where he kissed him, where his breath had lingered on his scalp. “Everyone says that.”
“And it doesn’t help to hear it, does it?”
Beomgyu shakes his head.
“You’re a good person, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says in Korean. He strokes the side of Beomgyu’s face, thumbing over the ridge of his cheekbone. “You’re exactly who that kid needed. It’s okay to not be enough.”
Beomgyu allows himself one single shoulder heave. He doesn’t tell the story very often for a reason. It makes him feel selfish, claiming the loss for himself, when he barely knew him. But claiming it is the only way he’s found to turn it into something for the future, something that will help others, that will make him a better doctor. If he doesn’t, it will just rot in his past, a festering sore of emotion and failure.
Soobin has a marigold, too.
“You lost someone too,” Beomgyu says, and inhales a bracing breath. “I have to say, you don’t strike me as a guy who’d be into flower languages. The mourning flower.”
“I’m not,” Soobin says. “My mother was, though.”
That’s really all he needs to say.
“I’m so sorry,” Beomgyu whispers, looking at Soobin’s face. Their eyes lock together again. Soobin’s serious expression tilts, a dimple flickering in the cheek lit up by the skyline, and for the first time, Beomgyu wishes this were different. He wishes they weren’t in Vegas. That they’d met at a high school reunion, that they’d kept going to the same church as kids, that this could become something.
“Some one-night-stand this is turning into, isn’t it?” Soobin says. “Fuck, look at us. Spilling our tragic backstories like we’re in a movie, hundreds of feet above Las Vegas.”
Beomgyu laughs. “Got anything worse to share?”
Soobin narrows his eyes, smiling devilishly. “My life of crime, maybe. To pay off my medical debts. They tyranny of not having medical insurance.”
Beomgyu laughs even harder. “Oh, so you’re a hardened criminal now? What kind of crimes are we talking about here?”
“Would you believe me if I said…art theft? Smuggling? Money laundering?”
“Nope,” Beomgyu says. “You? With those dimples?”
Soobin sticks a finger in one of them.
“Adorable. Gimme the flask.”
Soobin shakes his head, handing it over, still grinning.
“I bet you want to talk about high school, don’t you? Remember that teacher, yadda yadda.”
Beomgyu shrugs, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Not really. Honestly, high school was such a blur. Just constant grade anxiety. The only good thing that came out of it was my best friend.”
“Oh?” Soobin tips the flask back.
“Yeah, my friend Yeonjun. You overlapped with him a year, actually. Yeonjun Choi, ever met him?”
Soobin shakes his head, and Beomgyu realizes he hasn’t texted Yeonjun all night. He should probably let someone know he’s gallivanting around Las Vegas with a stranger.
“He’ll get a kick out of this story,” Beomgyu says. “I should send him a picture of you.”
“Why? I don’t know him.”
“Because you’re so hot,” Beomgyu giggles, already reaching for his phone. “He’s gonna be so jealous.”
“I need more friends,” Soobin says seriously, watching Beomgyu pull up his camera app. “I’ve got no one to brag about you to.”
“Maybe you should be less transient, then,” Beomgyu says. “Here, you take it, your arms are longer.”
Soobin dutifully repositions himself, and Beomgyu leans back into his chest, letting Soobin rest his chin on his scalp.
“You’re so little,” Soobin coos, looking at their faces lined up on the phone screen.
Beomgyu sticks out his tongue, and Soobin takes three pictures. Fuck, he’s so photogenic, his dark hair framed with a pink halo of light from the outside of the wheel.
“Tell him I’m taking good care of you,” Soobin says, giving the phone back.
“Are you? You haven’t done anything.” Beomgyu scrolls back through the pictures, picking the second one to send to Yeonjun. He’s still leaning back against Soobin’s chest, and Soobin wraps his arms around him, holding him there and watching him type out met a bx sci alum in vegas, small world right?
“What do you want me to do to you, then?” Soobin murmurs.
They must be at the top of the wheel by now, or maybe even past it. Beomgyu lets his phone fall to his lap, peering up at Soobin’s upside-down face. His wavy hair is falling into his eyes, so soft-looking that Beomgyu wants to burrow his nose into it.
“Kiss me,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin dives for his lips.
Beomgyu doesn’t know how much time they have left on their trip around the wheel. Time might as well have stopped for them. The pod is empty, just Soobin’s full lips on his, his big hands cupping Beomgyu’s jaw and pulling him to straddle his lap. It’s glaringly sexual, far too much affection for such a public place, but there are only five other people in this pod, and none of them matter.
Soobin spins Beomgyu on his lap, pressing his back to the glass. The view must be stunning, and Soobin paid sixty dollars for it, but neither of them spare it a second look now that they have each other to look at. Beomgyu’s hands weave into the back of Soobin’s thick hair, his breath stuttering through Soobin’s lips, and Soobin moans against him, flicking his tongue into the roof of Beomgyu’s mouth over and over until Beomgyu bites it.
Beomgyu can’t place what he tastes like, but he needs more of it.
Soobin’s hands wander everywhere, down Beomgyu’s sides, up to his cheeks, across the nape of his neck. He pulls away to catch his breath, raining kisses over Beomgyu’s jaw instead, and Beomgyu pants, completely overwhelmed.
“You’re an absurd kisser,” he says, voice embarrassingly squeaky. “Holy fuck.”
“It’s ‘cause I’m kissing you,” Soobin murmurs. “Shit, you’re hot. You taste so good.”
“Just your Blue Label.”
His lips are back, parting Beomgyu’s, tongue wet between them. Fuck talking. Beomgyu wants to kiss him forever. He can feel Soobin’s erection under his ass, solid and bulging through his pants, but Soobin makes no effort to grind into him. Maybe he’s sated here too, in this timeless moment, lips melting together. It feels like they’ve kissed before, like it’s natural.
The doors open in the loading dock, and Beomgyu almost jumps at the sudden burst of heat rushing in from outside.
“Thank you for riding the High Roller,” the bored attendant says.
Soobin’s face is flushed, his lips glossy with spit.
“Wanna get a room somewhere?” he pants.
“Yeah, fuck yeah,” Beomgyu whimpers back, and Soobin grabs his ass through his shorts.
They unwind from each other, hurrying out of the pod. One of the three bros gives them a strange look, but Beomgyu couldn’t care less. Fuck, he’s about to get laid, and somehow he can tell that Soobin is going to be incredible in bed. Incredible.
“Let’s take a stroll,” Soobin says. “So many hotels to choose from. You deserve the best.”
When they reach the Strip, hands woven together again and eyes shooting furtive, lidded looks at each other, Soobin pulls him in the other direction from the one they came in.
“Lemme know if one of these strikes your fancy,” he says, gesturing at a hotel in the distance. “Whatever you want.”
“Spoiling me,” Beomgyu giggles, free hand going to his pocket and colliding with his phone.
He pulls it out to find that Yeonjun had replied ten minutes previously. Wow, where were all the guys that looked like that when we were in HS? Name?
A squad of young women rush past them, chattering loudly in matching t-shirts. From Ms. To Mrs., they read. Sarah’s Bachelorette 2022.
“They’re everywhere here,” Soobin says, not unkindly. “Bachelors and bachelorettes.”
“And weddings, too, right?” Beomgyu says, tucking his phone away. He’ll give Yeonjun more details later. All he wants is to stay in Soobin’s bubble, in this surreal, charmed night.
“And weddings,” Soobin says. “The twenty-four-hour wedding chapels are real. Not just a pop culture thing.”
“We should check one out,” Beomgyu says. “You want me to see the sights, right?”
Soobin slows, giving Beomgyu a look. “I’m not drunk enough to marry you,” he says.
“Oh my god, not like that,” Beomgyu says quickly. “I just mean, like, go to one and see what’s up. See if anyone’s getting married. Gawk at them from a distance.”
“Quick recovery,” Soobin smirks. “You want to marry me, don’t you?”
“Fuck no,” Beomgyu says. “I barely know you. And you’re a criminal, remember?”
Soobin scoffs at that.
“Let’s go to one,” Beomgyu persists. “And you can fuck me after that. We’ll go to the closest hotel, and you can absolutely wreck me.”
He never talks like that, never. But he’s emboldened, and he wants it, and Soobin closes his eyes, drawing in a breath.
“Fuck, Beomgyu,” he says under his breath.
“So?”
Soobin yanks him in the other direction.
“Twenty-four-hour one this way,” he says.
His thumb strokes over Beomgyu’s fingers as they scurry along, and Beomgyu can’t help but feel the warmth sink into his ring finger.
“I bet you would marry me,” Beomgyu teases. “I’m a doctor. A good catch for the parents, right?”
He regrets it immediately.
“Oh. Fuck, I didn’t mean—”
“She would have loved me marrying a doctor,” Soobin says, smoothing it over.
“And your dad?”
Soobin shrugs.
“Well, my parents would love you,” Beomgyu carries on, trying to keep things from getting weirder. “Tall and handsome. A good tech job. Church-going. And my mom’s been on my case to date.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” Soobin says. “Yeobo.”
Beomgyu’s glad he’s looking the other way. He blushes crimson.
The chapel Soobin takes him to is much classier than Beomgyu expected, hidden away in the MGM Grand Hotel. It’s sadly empty, though. Beomgyu had wanted to sit in on a wedding, to cheer for a drunken couple. Just for fun, really. He’s never really thought about marriage himself, not with his stifling work schedule and his utter lack of a love life, and he refuses to let himself think about it now. Not when his heart is pounding for a man he essentially met that night. He’s not that drunk.
“Honestly? I could get married here,” Beomgyu says. “Let’s do it. Really.”
Soobin flings an arm around his neck, tipping him off balance, and Beomgyu cackles. His big brother does shit like that to him still, the way he did when they were kids, and the familiarity of the gesture makes him warm inside.
“You should at least fuck me first, don’t you think?” Soobin says. Okay, his brother doesn’t do shit like that to him.
“Maybe we get a room here, then. A quickie upstairs, and then wedded bliss.”
Soobin grabs his hand. “Beomgyu,” he says. “Look at me.”
Beomgyu does.
Soobin drops to one knee.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Beomgyu says, a massive rush of adrenaline slamming into his heart and weakening his knees.
“Don’t I dare what?” Soobin’s smile is downright evil.
“You know what.”
“Choi Beomgyu. Would you do me the honor—”
Soobin pauses at the sharp sound of buzzing. Beomgyu pats his own pocket instinctively, but it’s Soobin’s phone ringing, not his, and Soobin immediately pulls it out of his pocket.
“Damnit,” he says, reading the caller ID. His expression grows tense. “Sorry, babe. I need to take this.”
Babe.
“No worries,” Beomgyu says, trying not to freak out. Babe, babe. No one’s called him babe in years.
Soobin rises to his feet, hurrying away as he answers the phone, and Beomgyu occupies himself by peeking into the chapel. It’s totally empty, no attendants, no officiants. He wonders if they’d send one if someone asked at the front desk. Not like they need one, but…
It’s a pretty room, decked out to resemble an actual church, with fake stained glass windows and a few rows of pews. Serene. Has any marriage that started here lasted? Beomgyu’s never been in a relationship that lasted. He’s always been an over-thinker, shooting down any relationship that hinted at taking off, hiding from his feelings under a barrage of excuses. His one boyfriend lasted less than a year, and broke up with him because he wasn’t available enough. No, not your schedule. I mean…like, you.
He leans up against the chapel door and texts Yeonjun back.
Soobin Choi, he starts to type, then deletes it. Choi Soobin. That’s how he introduced himself. It feels right ordered that way, even though Beomgyu’s never been one to dwell on that particular aspect of being Korean-American. He was born here, and raised surrounded by other Korean-American kids, forging their fusion identities in the safety of each other. Everyone was in the same boat, together.
It wasn’t smooth sailing for everyone. Yeonjun used to go by Eugene, but he shifted back to his Korean name in college, and never really wants to talk about why. But Beomgyu’s always just been Beomgyu. Big Beomgyu.
He wonders if Soobin’s always been Soobin, or if he was something else in high school.
He’s so hot, Junie, Beomgyu adds. I think we’re gonna fuck.
A minute later, Soobin rushes back around the corner, still on the phone.
“I said twenty minutes,” he says. His brows are furrowed angrily. “Damn, I said I’ll be there. Be fucking patient.”
He hangs up right as he reaches Beomgyu.
“Sounds tense,” Beomgyu says, tilting his head up in case Soobin wants to kiss him.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, grabbing Beomgyu’s hands. “I have to go.”
He drops a peck to Beomgyu’s lips, but Beomgyu feels colder.
“Oh,” he says. “That sucks.”
“Stay here,” Soobin says. “I’ll get a room for you. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“It’s okay. I should probably get back to my hotel. Early morning at the conference.”
Beomgyu drops his gaze to Soobin’s chest. His eyelids feel a little heavy, and he feels so stupid about it. He just met this man tonight. He shouldn’t even want to sleep with him, for his own safety. But he wants him terribly, unbearably badly, and now his pounding heart just feels too small for his rib cage.
“I want to spend the night with you,” Soobin insists. “I want to so, so badly. Please let me.”
“So stay. Why do you have to go?” Beomgyu asks Soobin’s jacket.
Soobin tucks a finger under Beomgyu’s chin and lifts it.
“Work,” he says. “My job is a lot sometimes. And I think…”
He frowns.
“I don’t know why, but I feel like they’re…no, never mind.”
“Say it,” Beomgyu says. “They’re what?”
“Tracking me,” Soobin says. “And if I don’t go…um. They might be…disappointed.”
Beomgyu squints. Soobin’s face is neutral aside from the frown, despite the peculiarity of this statement. What tech job summons their employees somewhere after midnight and punishes them if they can’t make it? What kind of cybersecurity emergency is this?
“Please,” Soobin says again. “Let me get you a room. Give me your phone number, and I’ll text you when I’m coming back.”
Beomgyu swings their hands.
“What will you do to me when you get back, yeobo?” he says.
Soobin smiles like he’s won a race, his eyes flickering towards the chapel.
“Hold you all night,” he says in his rough Korean accent. “Touch you however you want.”
Beomgyu leans closer, and Soobin rests their foreheads together. It’s too intimate. It’s just right.
“Why do you speak like that?” Beomgyu asks, in his own halting Korean. His accent is standard, though, the one they teach in classrooms. “Where’s the accent from?”
“My mother,” Soobin says, tilting his head to slot their faces together. It’s light, airy, a feather of a kiss, and Beomgyu clings to it, memorizing its details so he can tell every one of them to Yeonjun.
Soobin pulls away. “Phone?” he asks. “You can text me if you get lonely. Maybe send me a picture?”
Beomgyu feels incredibly silly, lounging alone on the bed in the hotel room. This has to be pathetic behavior, waiting like this for a fucking hookup to come back to him. He probably seems totally desperate. But Soobin had seemed so relieved when he’d grudgingly agreed, and Beomgyu feels like that counts as fairly pathetic behavior, too — begging your hookup to wait for you. They’re even.
It’s a nice hotel room, at least. Much nicer than the one the hospital got for him back at the conference hotel. He turns his phone on ring, just in case he dozes off, and fluffs the pillows. The wide-screen TV has a Netflix app, and Soobin had told him to help himself to the minibar. Honestly, Beomgyu can think of worse things than killing an hour watching Netflix and eating pretzels in a luxury hotel room.
Most of the lights are out, and the air conditioning is blasting. Beomgyu crawls into bed when he finishes the pretzels, letting his eyes close. It’s been a strange, drawn-out night. A nap sounds nice, and the low sounds coming from the TV fuse into a calming lull of white noise.
His phone blares at him a second later. Or maybe more than a second. Beomgyu sits bolt upright, completely bewildered. Where the fuck is he? His eyes find the clock; four in the morning. What the…
He fumbles for his phone, nearly dropping it. His eyes are too bleary to make out the name on the screen.
“Hello?” he slurs.
“Beom,” a voice says. “Beomgyu. Beom—”
There’s a terrible choking noise.
“Who's this?”
“Help,” the person on the other side says. He sounds familiar. “Please. Beom…gyu, help, help.”
“What’s happening?”
“Hurt,” he says, and it snaps into place. Soobin.
Beomgyu swings his legs out of bed, grabbing his wallet from the table.
“What’s going on? Where are you?”
“Cab,” Soobin chokes out. His voice sounds weak, like he’s completely winded. “Ask for a cab. I’ll send address. Please. I’m…”
A heavy breath on the other side of the line.
“Bleeding,” he says, and Beomgyu runs for the door without thinking.
“Coming now. I’m coming, Soobin. How bad is it?”
“Dunno.”
“Where’s the injury?” Beomgyu can’t help himself from snapping into doctor mode. It’s second nature, even as he’s sprinting down a hotel hallway at four in the morning.
“Chest.”
Fuck. It’ll be hard to stem that.
“Put pressure on it, and call an ambulance,” Beomgyu says. Why is he even calling Beomgyu in the first place?
“I can’t,” Soobin says. It’s the strongest his voice has sounded the whole phone call.
“Please do,” Beomgyu says, getting out of breath. “Soobin.”
“Sending address,” Soobin pants, and the call cuts off.
A photo comes through just as the elevator doors open on the lobby: the signs on a street corner. Beomgyu sprints to the front desk, waving the photo like a madman.
“Could you call me a cab?” he begs. “It’s urgent, so urgent.”
The woman behind it seems alarmed, although not by his request. Beomgyu figures it’s probably pretty standard for guests to ask for cabs.
“Is everything okay, sir?” she asks.
“Just need a cab. Or an Uber. Anything.”
It’s only a few minutes' wait for the car, but Beomgyu spends it pacing frantically, his thumb tapping on the photo over and over as if it holds a clue. His brain still feels partially asleep, too asleep to process how risky it is to hop in a cab and rush off to an unknown location where a man he barely knows is bleeding on the street.
Soobin doesn’t text again. Beomgyu fumbles with his necklace while he waits, tracing the engraving with his nail again and again until the bellhop flags him a shabby town car.
The cab driver isn’t happy about the destination.
“That’s an industrial park,” he says, looking at the photo. “It’s four in the morning.”
“I’ll tip double the fare,” Beomgyu begs. “Can you speed?”
The driver doesn’t complain after that. He guns it, crossing the Strip and zipping off through darkened streets that Beomgyu doesn’t bother to look at, still staring at his phone screen, as if Soobin’s about to send him a text saying everything’s fine, it was a bad joke. Wait for me.
“What’s the hurry?” the driver asks gruffly. “What’s at that corner?”
“Someone’s hurt,” Beomgyu says. “My…my friend.”
“Bummer,” the driver says casually. “Accident?”
“I don’t know.” Beomgyu chews his lip.
“You might not want to get mixed up in it.” The driver speeds around a turn, sending Beomgyu’s body slamming into the car door. He hadn’t buckled his seatbelt. “This isn’t a good area you’re going to. High crime.”
Crime. Soobin had to have been joking, right? A nice man like him, obviously sharp, from Beomgyu’s dorky high school? No way.
It’s not a long drive. When the car comes to a stop, Beomgyu understands why the driver had been wary to take him here. They’re in front of a deserted industrial area, the yellow streetlights ominously highlighting the empty, cracked sidewalk and the boarded-up windows that adorn a few of the aging brick buildings. Beomgyu jams his credit card into the machine so fast it spits out an error message, doing it again and tipping far too much. His card gets caught on a tear in the duct tape when he tries to wedge it back into his wallet, and he just pockets it loose. No time to spare.
“Be careful,” the driver says, and speeds away the instant the door closes behind Beomgyu.
Where is he? There’s no one in sight, no sounds to be heard.
Beomgyu finds the street sign in the photo, holding his phone up to try to match the angle. He zeroes in on the corner that it must have been taken from, and his focus snaps to a shadowed entryway, receding from the street. He runs for it, every heavy step ricocheting up his legs to his core, every breath coming faster and faster.
“Soobin?” he calls, feet away.
He hears a noise through the doorway.
“Here,” Soobin’s weak voice says. “Please. Here.”
Holy fuck. Soobin is tucked out of sight in the dark, collapsed against a door set back a few feet from the sidewalk, and his dress shirt is more red than white. His jacket is balled up in his hands, pressed to his right breast.
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu cries, racing to him. “Soobin, what?”
“‘M okay,” Soobin breathes. His head drops back against the door, his blood-streaked face relaxing as his eyes take in Beomgyu’s appearance. “Now that you’re here.”
“God, you’re not.” Beomgyu drops to his knees, pulling the jacket an inch away from his chest to get a look. His shirt is drenched in blood, and there’s a noticeable hole in it. “Holy fuck. Were you shot?”
“Small…caliber.”
“Soobin, you need to get to the hospital, now,” Beomgyu says, snapping into doctor mode again, already reaching for his phone. No time to process this. Soobin needs medical attention, and fast. His mind whirrs through the wound’s placement, arteries and lungs and blood loss. Soobin should be fine, if they can move fast. Is there an exit wound?
“No!” Soobin tries to knock the phone out of his hand. “No. I…take me to…”
“Take you to where?”
Soobin’s face seizes up for a moment.
“Soobin. Where?”
“Boss,” he says. “Boss will help.”
“Your boss? How the fuck would he be able to help?”
“Used to this,” Soobin pants. “Call…”
He tries to find his own phone, patting feebly at his hip, but Beomgyu grabs his hand, pressing it back into the jacket over his wound.
“Used to this? Used to people being shot? What the fuck do you do?”
“Told you.”
Beomgyu unlocks his own phone, typing in 9-1-1, and his finger is a millimeter from the call button when Soobin speaks again.
“Art theft.”
Beomgyu pauses. “No, you don’t.”
“…stolen…smuggling.” Soobin’s eyes are closed. He’s barely able to speak.
“That was a joke. It was a joke, right?”
Soobin gives his head a single shake, and grimaces again.
Beomgyu’s head is empty. Art theft? Smuggling?
“Don’t call 9-1-1,” Soobin breathes. “Boss. In my phone. Tell him…job went wrong.”
Beomgyu hesitates. No matter what, he’s a doctor.
“No,” he says. “No, you’re going to a hospital, Soobin. I don’t give a fuck if you’re…no. You need an ER.”
This time, Soobin doesn’t complain. Beomgyu hits call.
He’s barely lifted the phone to his ear when they hear the hint of a faint siren, and then it’s louder, and louder.
Soobin lets out a tortured wail.
“Go,” he whispers. “You can’t be here.”
There’s a crackle from Beomgyu’s phone, limp in his hand. 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?
“Beomgyu, you need to…run,” Soobin chokes out. “Beomgyu. Go. Don’t be here.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, and Beomgyu grabs him by the shoulder.
“Why?” he asks desperately. “I want to be with you. I want to know you’re safe.”
“Don’t ask me what I did tonight,” Soobin breathes. “Go. Go.”
Hello? Can I assist you?
“Soobin,” Beomgyu says. His voice is terrible and needy and on the verge of breaking. This isn’t how this is supposed to go. This isn’t right. This isn’t…
“Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin whispers, lifting his arm laboriously. He glides his index finger over Beomgyu’s lower lip and closes his eyes, smiling.
“I can’t—”
“Think about me, okay?”
The Korean hits Beomgyu in the ribcage. The sirens are closer, so close.
“Go,” Soobin says, one more time, and Beomgyu turns and runs.
He sprints without a purpose, away from the sirens, away from Soobin alone and bleeding in that entryway. His phone is still crackling, but he can't find the words to say to the operator. The cops will get him help, right? Beomgyu thinks desperately. They’ll get him help in time. Even if he’s in trouble. They will. Don’t they have to? But he’s seen too many gunshot victims wheeled haphazardly into the ER to believe it, too many headlines on police misconduct and fatal negligence.
He hits a turn hard, spinning around the corner with the help of a lamppost, and taking off even faster. Go, go. Soobin wants him to go. Where can he even go? His vision is blurry. He’s sobbing, and the worst thing is he doesn’t know why. Soobin is a bad man. He’s a criminal. He shouldn’t cry over him. He shouldn’t want him. He wants him so badly, and he can’t be with him. Soobin is bleeding in that entryway, and Beomgyu failed him.
Beomgyu’s ankle twists over a deep crack in the sidewalk, and he barely has time to fling his hands in front of his face as he slams to the ground.
“No,” he wails, pressing his forehead into the rough cement. He can’t hold it in. “No, no. No. No.”
“I mean, you don’t have to go climbing,” a voice says. “I can give you other Vegas recs, if you’d prefer. Maybe a show?”
Beomgyu opens his eyes and stares into the purple drink.
“No,” he repeats numbly. The palms of his hands are stinging on the cold sides of the glass. “No, thank you.”
The bartender shrugs. “That’ll be twenty dollars,” he says. “Should I put it on your room?”
three
Beomgyu is supposed to be meeting his coworkers in the bar, but for some reason, he just can’t be there any longer. He feels itchy inside, like his body is urging him to get up and move, like something is wrong in that dark, smoky room. It feels…unsafe. He looks over his shoulder compulsively, like someone is watching him, but who would be watching him?
Weird. He grabs his drink and heads for the casino floor instead.
Las Vegas is supposed to be noise, noise, noise, energy and emotion and lives going down in catastrophic flames, but it’s a lot quieter out on the floor than he would have expected. Maybe all those carpeted tables absorb the sound. It’s a Wednesday, which might help.
Beomgyu slurps along the rim of his drink, shuffling his feet as he walks to stay level and not spill it. Coupe glasses are less impractical than martini ones, but still. His hands are naturally shaky. It’s why he’s not a surgeon.
The carpet is spongy beneath his feet, a vibrant red that’s overstimulating his peripheral vision. He imagines how it would feel if he were barefoot, plush and squishing between his toes.
Beomgyu casts his eyes around the room, skimming over the tables. His gaze lands on a roulette table, mostly empty. The back facing him is wearing some kind of varsity sports jacket with a last name across the top. Choi, his own. It’s a familiar green and gold.
Beomgyu blinks.
I know him, he thinks. I think I know him.
He circles the table, sticking to the perimeter of the room, until he gets a glimpse of the man’s face. Long but cheeky, classic good looks. Too old for a high school varsity jacket.
Beomgyu has seen him before. Where has he seen him? The obvious answer is in high school, if that’s really a Bronx Science jacket, but that doesn’t feel right. It was somewhere else, somewhere…private. He can’t place where it was, but looking at him, Beomgyu feels warmth spreading across his face. This man must know him too, somehow, and despite his layers of clothing, he feels naked.
Beomgyu lifts the cocktail and the man’s eyes meet his. Maybe it’s the Aviation reflected in Beomgyu’s irises, but his face glows.
The man tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes at him in recognition.
I was right. He knows me. Beomgyu coughs and his drink splashes back into his face. When he opens his eyes again, wiping his jaw with his sleeve, the man is grinning, his cheeks creasing. He flickers his eyes down to an empty chair at the table and back up to Beomgyu.
Beomgyu feels a pull in his chest, an urge to listen to the command. He approaches the table and sets his drink down.
“Are you okay?” the man says. “That wasn’t graceful.”
“Perfect,” Beomgyu says defensively. “I’m a doctor. I know how to give myself the Heimlich.”
Dumb, dumb. It always sounds like a brag. The man’s eyebrows lift, the classic oh, a doctor.
“You must be a good one,” he says. “Kids, right?”
Beomgyu’s eyes widen. Maybe he saw the pediatrics conference signage in the hallway.
“Yeah, actually,” he says. “Do you…”
“I think you know me,” the man says, cocking his head to the side and draping his fingers over the rim of his glass. His dark eyes bore into Beomgyu’s reddened face, but Beomgyu can’t look away.
“I think I do,” Beomgyu says. “And you know me.”
The man nods.
Beomgyu gestures to his jacket. “Bronx Science,” he says. “I went there, too.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” the man says slowly.
His eyes flicker to Beomgyu’s neck, as if seeing through his shirt to the necklace hidden there.
“What’s your name?” he asks. “It’s…Choi, right?”
“Yeah,” Beomgyu says. “Beomgyu.”
“Beomgyu,” he repeats, rolling the syllables over his tongue. His lips are so full. Beomgyu thinks he kissed a pair of lips like that once. They felt like clouds on his own. “Choi Beomgyu.”
No one says it that way in America. It’s always Beomgyu Choi. But it sounds right falling through his lips in that order.
“Yours?”
“Choi Soobin,” the man says, and suddenly, Beomgyu feels like he’s going to cry.
He pulls out a chair and collapses down into it. A wave of sadness is washing through him, and he doesn’t know why.
“Is something wrong?” Soobin asks, leaning towards him. His hand flies to Beomgyu’s forearm, and Beomgyu stares at it.
“I’m not sure,” Beomgyu says. “I feel…faint.”
“Can I get you something? Water?”
Soobin’s fingers are broad, warm even through Beomgyu’s clothes.
“Hey, look at me,” Soobin says, and Beomgyu does. His face is even more handsome up close, poreless and pouty. “Everything okay?”
Beomgyu nods.
Soobin smiles, and his cheeks cave into deep dimples.
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu says, fixating on one of them. Something is flooding back into his brain, that dimple laughing at him across a child-size table. He slaps his palm to the table. “Choi Soobin. Thirty-fourth street.”
Soobin squeezes Beomgyu’s arm, his lips falling open in realization.
“That purple youth room,” he says. “Choi Beomgyu. You ate all my snacks.”
“What the fuck,” Beomgyu says. “What the….”
He starts to smile, and the strange sadness is lifting. Choi Soobin, from that church they used to go to, halfway across the country. The big kid in the youth group, that tall boy who Beomgyu always badgered for attention. Beomgyu didn’t even know he went to Bronx Science. He hasn’t thought about him for decades, and here he is, next to him at a roulette table in Las Vegas.
“They said you moved,” Soobin said. “I always wondered what happened to you.”
“Well, I’m here,” Beomgyu laughs.
“Bets?” the dealer asks.
"Your eyes are just the same,” Soobin says, staring into them. “I’m sorry. This is too much, but…”
He lifts his hand and cups Beomgyu’s cheek, brushing a thumb over his cheekbone. It’s intimate and delicate and wrong for this moment and Beomgyu leans into it like he’s been waiting for it ever since the day they left that church.
“You’re gotten so pretty,” Soobin says, shaking his head. “And you’re a doctor. Choi Beomgyu.”
Beomgyu bites his lip to keep from smiling even more.
“So you’re gay too, then,” he says, glancing his own hand over Soobin’s. “Fate, huh? Do we go hook up now?”
Soobin snorts. His face looks younger when he laughs, closer to the version of him that Beomgyu remembers.
“I’m game if you are,” he says. “I thought you don’t do hookups?”
“What, is it that obvious that I never get laid?” Beomgyu says, and Soobin furrows his brows, confused.
“No, I… I don’t know where that came from,” he says slowly.
“Well, I’d do hookups for you,” Beomgyu says shamelessly, plowing on. “You’re so hot. How tall are you now?”
Soobin drops his hand and smirks. “So tall,” he says, pushing back his chair and standing. “Look at me.”
Beomgyu sizes him up. “Not a kid anymore,” he says. “I mean, that would be a serious problem if you were. And I definitely wouldn’t hook up with you.”
“But you would with thirty-two-year-old me?” Soobin asks, sitting back down.
“Eight,” the dealer says. Neither of them look away from each other.
“I would,” Beomgyu says. “I absolutely would.”
“It’s because of the jacket,” Soobin says, tugging at the sleeve. “I’m very, very lucky in this jacket.”
“Wanna…” Beomgyu sizes up the pile of unused betting chips in front of Soobin. “Wanna go somewhere? Talk for a bit?”
“I’d love to,” Soobin says. “Here. Let’s give these to someone.”
He starts gathering up the pile of chips.
“Really? That’s gotta be a lot of money.”
“It’s nothing,” Soobin says. “You’re worth the hit to my wallet. Although drinks will have to be on you tonight.”
"No way. Not when they’re twenty bucks a pop.”
Soobin smiles.
“I guess it’ll be a sober night, then,” he says. “Want to go for a drive?”
Beomgyu knows better than to get in a stranger’s car.
“I know better than to get in a stranger’s car,” he says, eyeing Soobin’s sports car. It’s a Porsche. A Porsche.
“But it’s such a nice car,” Soobin says, leaning up against the car door and crossing his arms. His legs are endless in his dress pants. “And I’m not a stranger.”
“My mother would kill me.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Your mother? How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” Beomgyu says. “Sue me for having a mother who loves me.”
A dimple flares in Soobin’s right cheek. “My mother wouldn’t give a fuck,” he says. “She’s dead.”
Fuck. “I’m sor—”
“The real issue is that my father wouldn’t either,” Soobin says, and laughs. “And he’s very alive.”
Beomgyu twists his lips to the side.
“My father’s fine with whatever I do, as long as he can still tell his friends his son is a doctor,” he says.
Soobin nods knowingly. “So it’s just your mother I need to convince? What can I do to get you in the car? Tell her I’m an upstanding citizen who went to Yale?”
“You did?”
“No,” Soobin laughs. “Didn’t even go to college.”
Beomgyu wants to press their bodies together, wrap his arms around Soobin’s neck and swallow down his laughter. They’re from the same place, the same church, the same school, but somehow Soobin is like no one he’s met before. Familiar smile, familiar dimples, yet totally foreign in the way his thoughts are shaped, his quiet, steady confidence.
Beomgyu whips out his phone. “There’s only one person you have to convince,” he says, and finds Yeonjun’s contact. “Get him to say yes, and I’m all yours.”
It’s late in New York. Maybe he won’t pick up. Beomgyu puts the phone on speaker, and the ringing sound echoes all through the hotel’s parking garage.
“So this is…?” Soobin peers at the phone.
“My best friend. He went to Science too. Class of twenty-eleven.”
“Was that your year?”
“Twenty-twelve,” Beomgyu says.
Soobin reaches an arm out for him. “Twelve is my favorite number,” he says.
Beomgyu leans into his side, the cold metal of the car door radiating through his clothing. Soobin drapes his arm down his back, heavy and secure, and they stare at the phone together, frozen in time. Their heads are inches apart, Soobin’s lingering above Beomgyu’s, and his breath is close enough that Beomgyu can feel the warmth of every puff across the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t think he’s been this close to anyone in years, and it’s exhilarating.
There’s a click on the other side of the line.
“Gyu?” Yeonjun’s voice is staticky. The signal probably sucks in this garage.
“Junie,” Beomgyu says eagerly. “I need your advice.”
“What’s up? Is something wrong?”
“No. Not yet, at least.”
Soobin pokes him in the side with the arm draped around him, and Beomgyu squeals.
“What was that noise?”
“I met someone,” Beomgyu says, looking up at Soobin’s face. “I need you to tell me if he’s a creep or not.”
Soobin crinkles up his nose, but he’s smiling.
“Hi,” he says. His voice is rich, so much deeper than Beomgyu’s. Did it sound that velvety before this phone call? “It’s nice to meet you.”
“The fuck was that?”
“This is Soobin,” Beomgyu says. “Soobin—um, Choi Soobin. He went to Bronx Science too. Weird, right?”
“Class of oh-eight,” Soobin says.
My favorite number, Beomgyu thinks. He’s never thought that before. He’s never bothered to have a favorite.
There’s a moment of silence.
“How the fuck did you figure that out?” Yeonjun says. “Do you talk about high school to dudes at bars, Gyu? Is that why you’re perpetually bitchless?”
“Yeonjun,” Beomgyu complains, but Soobin laughs.
“I want to take your friend on a scenic drive,” Soobin says to the phone. “I promise I’ll bring him back safe and sound.”
Silence, again.
“And this has to do with me because…”
“Advice,” Beomgyu says. “Do you think I’m about to get abducted? Stranger danger?”
Soobin leans in closer. I told you I’m not a stranger, he breathes. God, why does Beomgyu feel like he swallowed helium? He giggles idiotically, and Soobin closes his eyes, smiling.
“Not now that I have his identity,” Yeonjun says, and Beomgyu hears the laugh in his voice. “Hard to get away with abduction when you’re the suspect before you’ve even committed the crime. How hot are you, Choi Soobin?”
“Extremely,” Soobin says.
“Send me a picture,” Yeonjun says. “And your social security number. And then I’ll give my stamp of approval.”
“Love you, Junie,” Beomgyu laughs.
“I’m serious about the picture,” Yeonjun says. “And really, how the fuck did you figure out that you both—”
Soobin presses end call and wraps his hands around Beomgyu’s jaw. Beomgyu drops the phone.
“Seems like a good friend,” Soobin says, and kisses him.
Beomgyu surges up to meet him so eagerly that in another world, he might have been embarrassed by his neediness. He doesn’t hesitate, flinging his own arms around Soobin’s neck the moment their lips make contact. Their tongues are instantly a wet mess against each other, and there’s absolutely no finesse in the way he’s lapping into Soobin’s mouth. But Soobin moans, gripping him harder, matching his enthusiasm. He rolls Beomgyu against the car, pressing his back into the window, and Beomgyu lets him slide a thick thigh between his own legs, grinding down into it. Beomgyu’s out of breath already, but Soobin won’t let him pull away, one hand spread on the back of Beomgyu’s skull to clutch their heads together.
Soobin’s lips are as plush as he remembers, from the last time he kissed him. Well, he hasn’t kissed him. Of course he hasn’t kissed him. But it feels like he’s kissed him. Beomgyu can perfectly imagine the noise he’ll make when he nips his lower lip, a sort of throaty gasp, and then revels in the sound that stutters out of Soobin’s throat when he actually does it.
Two broad hands wrap around Beomgyu’s wrists, slamming them to the car on either side of his torso. Soobin kisses the left corner of his mouth, leaning in to murmur into it.
“You don’t have anyone, do you?”
“No,” Beomgyu gasps. Soobin presses their palms together, Beomgyu’s hands trapped under his against the car windows. “Not for years.”
“Wish it could be me,” Soobin says, pecking him.
“You don’t know me.” It’s instinctive to say it, but it doesn’t feel accurate.
“So let’s get to know each other,” Soobin murmurs. “Be mine for the night.”
Beomgyu can’t think of the words to say, but he has a feeling his answer is already clear. He tilts his head to the side so Soobin can slot back in. His hands are going limp under Soobin’s, and Soobin holds them firm against the car, taking over as Beomgyu’s strength gives out. He’s not supposed to feel safe with a stranger like this.
There’s a sudden loud clanging noise and the distant, echoing clatter of a car alarm going off. Soobin jumps, startled, and Beomgyu squeals in surprise.
“Got carried away,” Soobin says, surveying him approvingly. His plush lips are glossy and swollen, the collar of his shirt dented from Beomgyu’s hands squeezing it. Beomgyu figures he probably looks no better.
“Are we…are we taking that scenic drive?” Beomgyu pants. “Or just going up to my hotel room?”
Soobin chuckles, squeezing Beomgyu’s hands. Their fingers are still stacked together like building blocks.
“That’s bold,” he says. “Who says I fuck on the first date?”
Beomgyu just drops his eyes to the enormous bulge in the crotch of Soobin’s pants.
“Scenic drive,” Soobin says. “If you’re gonna be mine tonight, let me treat you right first.”
“And then the hotel room,” Beomgyu says, tilting his chin up, stretching his neck out to one side.
“Then the hotel room,” Soobin repeats, and presses his lips to the soft spot under Beomgyu’s jaw.
Soobin says that it’s a half-hour drive to Black Mountain.
“I guess I lied when I said scenic drive,” he says, rolling down his window to put his parking ticket in the reader at the garage exit. “It’s too dark out for the drive to be scenic. It’s a scenic destination.”
“This car is batshit,” Beomgyu says, running his hands over the black leather finish on the inside of the door. “What the fuck do you do that you can afford a Porsche?”
Soobin sighs. “Nothing good,” he says. “Trust me. I’d rather have your life and no Porsche.”
“What do you even know about my life?”
“Nothing,” Soobin says. The automated arm lifts, and he pulls out of the garage, out from the dim grey light of the concrete cave and into the brightness of the Strip. “What do you want to tell me about it?”
“Honestly, can we skip all the boring stuff?” Beomgyu says, opening the glove compartment. “Like, job, school, hobbies. I’d rather talk about interesting shit.”
“Hobbies are interesting,” Soobin says.
“Not if you don’t have any,” Beomgyu retorts. The glove compartment is neatly organized, the manual stacked on top of the registration documents, a few travel sized bottles of hand cream and leather gloves topping it all off. “Why the gloves?”
“My hands get cold,” Soobin says. “I’ve got a few hobbies.”
“Such as?”
“Fencing.” Soobin points at his jacket, and Beomgyu leans forward to get a glimpse of the word embroidered under the logo. “Haven’t done it much lately, though. I need to find a club to join, and I haven’t found a good one where I am right now.”
“Where do you live?”
“Doesn’t that count as boring stuff?” Soobin cracks a smile as he checks his blind spot, turning off of the Strip.
“Okay, lightning round of the boring stuff to get it out of the way.” Beomgyu pulls out one of the bottles of hand cream, opening it to give it a sniff. Smells like lavender. “I’m twenty-eight, I’m a pediatrician, I live in New York, I went to UCLA and then NYU for med school. I don’t do anything interesting, ever, and I never hook up with strangers.”
Soobin snorts. “That’s your life story?”
“The boring stuff, at least. You?”
Soobin flips his hand over on the center console, and Beomgyu matches their fingers up the best he can. His hand is so much smaller than Soobin’s.
“Maybe you hook up with one stranger,” Soobin says slyly.
Beomgyu flicks his palm. “You go now,” he says.
Soobin purses his lips. He’s quiet for a moment.
“I never talk about myself,” he says. “I’m not very good at it.”
“Why not?”
“No one asks,” he says simply.
It doesn’t sound like he’s looking for pity. It’s just a fact.
“Well, I’m asking,” Beomgyu says. “Go.”
Soobin glances at him from his peripheral vision, and Beomgyu sees one of his dimples flare.
“You’re an energizer bunny,” Soobin says.
Beomgyu feels a burst of shyness and looks back at the open glove compartment. “Thanks,” he says. “If that’s a good thing.”
“Very,” Soobin says, and exhales. “Thirty-two. I live in LA but I’m never there. No college, and I do lots of interesting things, but none that matter.” They’re pulling onto the interstate, and Soobin steps on the gas, the sudden acceleration sending Beomgyu’s skull back into his headrest. “I hook up with strangers all the time, and it’s overrated. Oh, and I should tell you I work in cybersecurity, but I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Well that’s interesting,” Beomgyu smirks. “This got less boring. What do you really do?”
Soobin shakes his head. “Maybe later,” he says. “I’ll tell you if I think it’s right.”
Beomgyu puts the lotion back into the glove compartment. “Lame,” he says, but something in the back of the glove compartment distracts him from complaining further. “You keep condoms in your car?”
“Yep,” Soobin says nonchalantly.
Beomgyu gawks at him.
“How do you fuck in here? It’s a damn coupe.”
“Put the seat back,” Soobin shrugs. “But I’ve never done it, so I can’t vouch for it working well.”
“But the box is open,” Beomgyu blurts out, peeking into it before he can stop himself. Only one of the condoms is missing.
“I took that one with me somewhere,” Soobin says. “Look, do you really want to talk about this?”
Beomgyu puts the condoms back and closes the glove compartment. He can’t tell if he’s jealous or intrigued. It’s not his right to be jealous of the sex Soobin has had with other people, when they literally just met and they’re obviously not together. But still. Something about it annoys him.
“How many people have you been with?” Soobin asks suddenly. He strokes the back of Beomgyu’s hand. Right, they’re still holding hands.
“Um.” Beomgyu looks out the window. They’re driving south, and something dark looms in the far distance, but for now, the windows are still the bright lights of the city. “Three. Only.”
Soobin doesn’t say anything, although his hand seems to relax around Beomgyu’s.
“I haven’t had a lot of good sex in my life,” Beomgyu admits. “Just mediocre sex.”
“Good sex is rare,” Soobin says calmly, changing lanes.
“And you’re about to tell me you’ll give me it, right?”
“If you want it,” Soobin says. His voice doesn’t change. Another plainly-stated fact.
Beomgyu drums his fingers on the door, watching the side of Soobin’s face. He’s a casual driver, one hand draped over the wheel, the other cradling Beomgyu’s hand gently like it’s breakable.
“Why are you watching me?” Soobin raises his eyebrows, shooting a look at him.
“Just thinking.”
“About what? About the good sex we’re gonna have?”
“What would you need to know about me, if you wanted to date me?” Beomgyu asks. Soobin raises his eyebrows even further, lips opening to speak, and Beomgyu rushes to explain himself. “I don’t mean, like, that we’re going to date. I just mean…what do you actually care to know about me? What’s the thing that you’d want to know the most?”
Soobin closes his mouth again, thinking.
“Just thought it would be more interesting to talk about than the boring stuff,” Beomgyu blabbers on. “Or the sex stuff.” He thinks his hand is starting to sweat, though Soobin doesn’t let go of it.
“I think I’d want to know…” Soobin taps his thumb on the steering wheel. “What makes you happiest? When are you the most…you?”
Beomgyu watches a billboard go by, and then another. When is he happiest? Most of his weeks go by in a blur of working and sleeping and getting take-out and the occasional drink with Yeonjun and some of his work friends. The stress of his residency creeps into most of his free time, and when he’s at work, he rarely lets himself feel like he’s good enough.
“I guess I’m not happy that often,” he says. “Not like I’m unhappy. I just don’t have a lot of space in my brain for happiness.”
“So what makes you happy enough that it’s worth making space for?”
It’s a silly little thing. “This is dumb,” Beomgyu says. “But every now and then I have one of those mornings when it feels like there’s nothing to worry about. All my patients from the day before were doing well, and I don’t have anything stressful ahead of me, and I can just…feel good about myself, you know? Make tea and water my plants and get back in bed and let myself be proud for a minute. That’s when I feel like me the most.”
Soobin is quiet.
“Not very exciting,” Beomgyu says in a small voice.
“I wish I could be proud of myself,” Soobin says. “That sounds lovely.”
“I’m sure there’s something you can be proud of, too,” Beomgyu says. He feels a weight lift. Soobin doesn’t judge him for his simple, small life.
Soobin purses his lips again and shakes his head.
“Really. You seem thoughtful, and kind, and smart. You must do good things.”
“Maybe I can be proud of who I am, but I can’t be proud of what I’ve done. Not like you. You save lives.”
“Yeah, well, not all of them,” Beomgyu says, hand going to his necklace automatically.
“Not all of them,” Soobin agrees, lowering his head deferentially. He keeps his eyes on the road, watching it through his eyelashes. “But life always comes down to loss. It’s inevitable. And you’re doing something to fight back against that, even though it’s futile. It’s not your fault that life still ends in death.”
His hand is still draped casually over the steering wheel, his face relaxed as he checks his blind spot again and changes lanes. Beomgyu tucks his nail into the ridge of the marigold engraving. “No,” he says faintly. “It’s not my fault.”
“I’ve always thought it’s pretty deontological, being a doctor,” Soobin says. “Maybe that’s weird of me.”
“Deontological?”
“You know. Means are more important than the ends,” he says.
“You’re gonna have to explain that.”
He shrugs. “I feel like people think healthcare is all about utility, getting positive outcomes. But I think it’s more about the process, the patient’s experience along the way. The person themself is more important than brute-forcing them through whatever the doctor says is best. And you seem like you’d be that kind of doctor. One who cares about his people, and doesn’t just view them as cases to solve.”
The ease with which this is all falling through Soobin’s pretty lips steals Beomgyu’s breath. He’s a doctor, and even then he barely thinks about this kind of medical ethical shit, to be honest.
“You’re thought about this a lot,” Beomgyu says, totally taken aback.
“Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time in hospitals,” Soobin says. “And I was a kid, so they never listened to anything I cared about. It was all up to my dad, and he barely gave a shit.”
“Why?”
“Why didn’t he give a shit?” Soobin scoffs. “Because he checked out of my life after my mom died.”
“I mean, why were you in the hospital?”
“Oh, right. Duh.” Soobin laughs. “I had bone cancer in high school.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, Soobin.”
“It’s okay. I’m in remission, they caught it early. I was lucky.”
Lucky. Beomgyu’s eyes fall to the lucky jacket again. He doesn’t sound like he’s been very lucky. Hard childhood, cancer, loss.
“I never talk about it. I can’t believe I just said that, just like that.” Soobin’s voice sounds light, relieved.
“I’m a good person to talk to about health stuff,” Beomgyu points out. “And who am I gonna tell?”
“Is it weird how easy it is to talk to each other?” Soobin asks. “I’m never chatty like this. I can’t be. And yet it’s all just spilling out.”
“Not weird,” Beomgyu says reassuringly. “Tell me more. You’re into philosophy?”
Soobin nods. “Ethics,” he says. “It’s what I would have studied if I’d gone to college.”
“Why didn’t you?” It might be a sensitive subject, but Beomgyu’s too curious not to ask. Almost everyone went to college from their high school, and good ones.
“I thought I didn’t need to,” Soobin says. “Thought I was set up with something better. I was young and an idiot, and now I’ve got too much on my plate to go back and study philosophy.”
“I was terrible at philosophy,” Beomgyu says. “Why does it matter what a bunch of old dudes thought about the meaning of life? Why can’t I just think my own thing?”
He’s trying to tease, provoke, but Soobin doesn’t bite. “Well, what do you think the meaning of life is, then?” he says.
“No idea.”
“And that’s why we care about philosophers,” Soobin says. “If you had a theory, maybe I’d care about that too.”
They drive in silence for a while. The city is growing less dense around them, the gap between exits lengthening. The interstate is mostly empty, only a few cars around them, and any road sounds are drowned out by the steady whirr of the Porsche’s overpowered engine. Soobin hums something that Beomgyu can’t pick out. He wants to ask, but he doesn’t want to disturb the gentle peace of this moment. Maybe he’s happy here, existing out of his normal, in the surreal bubble of Soobin’s life.
“What about me?” Soobin says, finally. “What would you want to know about me?”
“Haven’t thought about it.” The question jars Beomgyu out of his trance, flustered.
“You should have known I’d bat the question back to you,” Soobin says. “What do you care about the most, when it comes to dating?”
Beomgyu’s mind flits back to his ex. A college friend who came back to New York with him, who was perfect for him on paper. He pulls his hand out of Soobin’s, piling them in his lap.
“I used to think circumstances mattered,” he admits. “Does he have a good job, do we have compatible…life goals, I guess.” He sees Soobin nod out of the corner of his eye. “But I wasn’t happy in that relationship. It was just…blah. Sounded good on paper, but I never really felt excited to wake up to him.”
“What matters now?”
“I want…I want that dumb love,” Beomgyu says to his hands. “The kind that makes you do stupid things for each other. I want someone who doesn’t care about anything about me, except for me.”
“So now’s the time you ask me if I would love you like that,” Soobin says. “Seeing as that’s what matters to you.”
“I’m not trying to say it has to be with you,” Beomgyu says, feeling flustered, but Soobin lifts his hand and blindly finds Beomgyu’s cheek.
“Ask,” he commands, stroking over it with the back of his fingers.
“Would you?” Beomgyu asks.
“I don’t see how I wouldn’t,” Soobin says. “One day, I’d make a fool out of myself over you. If we had more days.”
If it wasn’t just tonight.
“What a romantic,” Beomgyu teases. “Would you fight for me?”
Soobin flips his hand around to grab Beomgyu’s face, squeezing his cheeks together. Hey! Beomgyu complains, but he feels so cute, so small.
“You’re the one who said you want the big romantic love affair, lover boy,” Soobin deflects. “And duh. Of course I would. I’m a good fighter.”
“You fence,” Beomgyu garbles through his squished cheeks.
“Yeah, and I’d bayonet someone for you,” Soobin laughs. “Spear ‘em right through.”
He lets go of Beomgyu’s face, and Beomgyu leans back in his seat, mind still thinking about the question.
“I’d want to know what I could do to make your life better, too,” Beomgyu continues. “That’s what relationships are all about, right?”
“You’re a helper,” Soobin observes.
“Well? What could I do?”
Soobin doesn’t say anything, and Beomgyu stares at the side of his face, waiting. And waiting.
“You could do a lot of things,” Soobin says, finally. “I need a lot of help.”
Beomgyu walks his hand across the console, over to Soobin’s thigh. His leg is thick through his pant leg, too broad for Beomgyu’s hand to span it.
“Wish I could,” Beomgyu says.
“Tonight helps,” Soobin smiles. “It’s not every day I get to go on a mad adventure with an old friend.”
“Friend? Are we friends?”
Soobin puts his blinker on. “Oh, you want to be something else?”
Beomgyu pouts at him. Soobin gives his face a fleeting glance as he pulls into the exit lane, and groans.
“You’re too much,” he says. “Too much.”
Beomgyu doesn’t get complimented a lot. This one night with Soobin has sent his ego soaring.
“So tell me again where we’re going,” he says, trying to hide his glee behind a businesslike tone. They’re driving through spaced-out strip malls and undeveloped, scrubby lots, an emptiness Beomgyu’s never experienced on the East Coast.
“There’s a trail up here that gives you the best view of the city,” Soobin says. “We can’t really hike it at night, but we can scramble up the hill enough to get a good view. You’ve got good shoes on, right?”
Beomgyu lifts one of his Adidas sneakers.
“Those’ll do,” Soobin says, shooting them a look. “Probably would be better if you were in long pants. You might get a tick.”
“You can check me. Thoroughly.”
“That’s not sexy,” Soobin retorts, pinching Beomgyu’s hand where it still rests on his thigh.
Beomgyu can’t believe how desolate it feels here, only thirty minutes away from the glitz and noise of the Strip. Soobin turns off of the four-lane road onto a residential street, and they pass identical ranch house after ranch house, spread out on wide, flat lots. Most of them are darkened. It’s past midnight, after all. The car is quieter at street-speed, and Beomgyu’s ears feel empty without its steady hum.
“I should warn you that we’re technically going to be trespassing,” Soobin says. “I have a feeling this hill is someone’s private land.”
“Fine with me. Sounds exciting, honestly. I don’t get to break a lot of laws.”
Soobin suppresses a strangled sort of hmph. He turns a corner, pulling onto one of the identical side streets, and the car rolls to a stop in front of one of the nondescript houses. When he turns the car off, it’s pitch black around them. The nearest streetlamp is a half block away.
“I don’t see a mountain,” Beomgyu says. “Is this when the abducting starts?”
“I don’t want to park right by where we’re trespassing,” Soobin says by way of explanation. “This car grabs attention.” He pulls the key out of the ignition. “And send your friend that picture. Don’t let him think you’re not safe.”
Beomgyu had totally forgotten. He pulls his phone out, turning on the front-facing flash.
“God, no one looks good in a flash photo,” Soobin groans, but when Beomgyu squeezes into the photo frame he flips up a peace sign immediately, scrunching his lips to one side to make his dimple pop. It’s adorable.
“You’re so photogenic,” Beomgyu comments, typing out a text to Yeonjun with the selfie. “You look hot even with the flash.” Soobin says we’re at black mountain, wherever that is…if I dont text you by morning maybe a coyote ate me!
“Send him a pin, too,” Soobin says, watching Beomgyu type. “You’re not good about personal safety, are you?”
Beomgyu sticks his tongue out at him.
It’s a beautiful night out, a dry heat with a gentle breeze. Soobin holds his hand as they walk the two blocks to the trailhead, and Beomgyu swings their hands back and forth, skipping a few steps to make Soobin call him cute again.
“Why are you in Vegas so much that you know all these local spots?” he asks happily. “You’re such a good tour guide.”
“We have clients here.” Soobin doesn’t elaborate.
“Did you decide I’m good enough to hear what you really do?”
Soobin hmph-s again.
“I bet you’re a high-dollar prostitute,” Beomgyu says teasingly. “Right?”
“That would have been a good cover story, actually,” Soobin says, and he sounds genuinely annoyed that he hadn’t said it.
“So it’s something more illegal than that? Or are you just, like, a spy?”
“Prostitution isn’t illegal in Nevada,” Soobin says. “Only highly regulated.”
“You know a lot,” Beomgyu observes. “You’re like a walking Wikipedia.”
“Well, you talk a lot,” Soobin retorts. “It gives me lots of opportunities to show off the things I know.”
“I’m good at talking. I was a debater at Science,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin breaks out in a harsh laugh.
“So you can talk fast, too?” he asks, and Beomgyu giggles. “Fuck, you’re probably an obnoxious drunk. Which reminds me.”
He pats his jacket with his free hand, fumbling in the pocket and pulling out a flask.
Beomgyu gives him an exaggeratedly stern look. “Really? A flask? Aren’t you, like, thirty?”
“Public drinking is legal in Nevada,” Soobin says, offering Beomgyu the flask. “And I’m thirty-two, so it’s good shit. Blue Label.”
Beomgyu is a twenty-eight-year old doctor with a presentation on infant care to attend at nine in the morning. He shouldn’t be doing this, but he doesn’t hesitate to grab it from Soobin’s hand. It feels like the rules don’t apply to this night, that they’re existing in a liminal space, that the rows of identical ranch houses are a twilight zone where their disparate lives can blend together seamlessly.
He doesn’t want to let go of Soobin’s hand to unscrew the flask’s cap. Soobin notices him fumbling with it one-handed and reaches over, slowing their pace to twist it open himself. He smiles, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I thought you said this was a sober night?”
Soobin leans in. “Oops,” he says, kissing Beomgyu’s nose. “Don’t drink it if you don’t want to, then.”
Beomgyu crinkles his wet nose at him and tilts the flask back. He swigs it, and damn. It really is good shit, as far as he can tell. He isn’t exactly a scotch expert.
Soobin takes off again as Beomgyu coughs, good, it’s good shit. He wheels them around a corner, and Beomgyu can see the trailhead halfway down this new block. There’s an parking area in front of it, devoid of cars and dimly lit by an ominously flickering streetlight. Behind the sign labeling the trail is total blackness, a scrubby hill rising towards the low, looming mountain.
“I think we’ll just scramble partway up that hill and sit for a while.” Soobin says. “We can look at the stars.”
Beomgyu looks up for the first time and stops in his tracks, yanking Soobin to a stop too.
He’s never seen so many stars in his life. A web of them blankets the sky, pinpricks of light everywhere he looks, so many that the sky hardly even looks dark. Even the leaking streetlights and the light pollution creeping over the horizon to the north can’t mask the constellations.
“Oh,” Beomgyu breathes.
“Yeah, oh,” Soobin teases, squeezing his hand. “It’ll be better on the hill, away from the streetlights. Come on.” They take the rest of the block at a jog, Beomgyu’s eyes still fixed to the sky.
When they cross over from parking lot to trail, the first section is compacted dirt, with a texture close to paved. Soobin guides Beomgyu along it in the dark, his eyes fixed to the ground as Beomgyu’s stay lifted to the stars. Paradoxically, it seems like the world is getting brighter and brighter the farther they walk into the darkness, away from the streetlights. The moon and stars take over, their eyes adjusting to the grayscale world.
“Are there snakes out here?” Beomgyu whispers.
“Yep,” Soobin says.
Neither of them stops walking. After a minute, Beomgyu’s calves begin to burn. It’s not even that steep of an incline, but he’s hopelessly out of shape.
Soobin casts a look over his shoulder to check out their elevation. “Just a little higher,” he says. “Here. Let’s go off-trail a bit, shall we?”
The trail keeps going off to the left, but Soobin leads him to the right, clambering towards the crest of a low hill. Beomgyu has to watch his step now; there are no trees, but the plants that are there are tripping-height and prickly. The terrain is rugged, ragged, dry rock, the kind that can only sustain the most durable forms of life.
“I hope we aren’t trampling on any endangered species,” Beomgyu says. “Going off-trail is a no-no.”
“We’re just about done trampling, anyway,” Soobin says, pointing at a shadow that looks like a small boulder a few dozen feet ahead of them. “Wanna sit?”
They don’t sit. Soobin leans up against the boulder, and Beomgyu leans against him, pressing their fronts together. He twists open the flask, his arms bent up against Soobin’s chest, and Soobin tucks his hands into the back pockets of Beomgyu’s shorts, palming his ass through them.
“This feels so high school,” Beomgyu giggles.
“I didn’t do much of this in high school,” Soobin murmurs, dragging his lips over Beomgyu’s forehead. “Still in the closet.”
Beomgyu holds the open flask up. “Sip?”
Soobin puckers up in the dark, and Beomgyu tries to pour a sip down his throat. It drips sloppily over the sides of his lips, making him sputter.
“Sorry, sorry—”
“Clean me up now,” Soobin coughs, and Beomgyu licks off his chin, the scotch stinging his tastebuds.
“Soobin,” he says. It’s so dark out here he can barely make out his features, but when Soobin tips his head back the starlight catches in his eyes.
“What?”
“This is so nice.”
Soobin exhales.
“I wish I could have this, always,” he says. “Not even with you, necessarily. Just…just this, a version of this.”
Beomgyu understands. He’s lonely too.
“Why can’t you?” he asks.
“My job,” Soobin says.
Beomgyu waits, toying with the lid of the flask. He doesn’t have to ask. He knows Soobin will tell him, now that they’re here.
“It’s—not legal,” Soobin says, exhaling.
“That’s obvious,” Beomgyu says, heart racing.
Soobin lowers his forehead, touching it to Beomgyu’s. “I’m…in an art smuggling ring.”
Beomgyu’s motion stills on the flask. His brain slows, processing it.
“First I was just a runner for them,” Soobin continues, lifting his head. “Ferrying things around. Package acquisition. Now I’m a bit…deeper into it.”
“What does that mean?” Beomgyu whispers. His mouth is hanging open, and it feels dry.
“Client management. Finding buyers. Finding…sources.”
“You mean you steal art?”
“Sometimes,” Soobin says. “Not me, personally. But the group. Looting, sometimes. It’s mostly forgeries, though. Laundering money, falsified documents.” He lifts one of his hands from Beomgyu’s rear and palms the small of his back instead, clutching him closer. Beomgyu doesn’t resist. He’s too frozen to resist.
“It’s fucked up,” Soobin says quietly, ducking his head. “It’s not right.”
“So…why?”
“Desperation.” He works his hand up Beomgyu’s back an inch, and another. It should feel predatory in this context, but it’s too timid, too tentative. “My dad told me to pay him back for all the medical debt, or he’d throw me out. Threw me out anyway, when I turned eighteen, but by then I was already running jobs for the boss and my eyes were starry about the lifestyle. All the money that came in after a job well done, and the luxury goods, and the rush of being above the system. And the boss said I could be his protégé, and I was, for a while.”
Beomgyu tries to imagine it: Soobin’s handsome face, shrunk down by a dozen years, his lanky legs and boyish hair surrounded by cigar-toting criminals in rooms full of shrouded sculptures. He has no idea what art theft actually looks like in practice. He only knows it from heist films and news articles about the FBI seizing stolen antiquities, and he has a feeling it’s much less glamorous in reality.
“I’ve been trying to get out of it for years,” Soobin says. “And I’m almost done. I’ve cut all my ties but one. Finished all my jobs. I have all the documents I need to leave it behind and be myself again.”
“Be yourself?”
“They all know me by my American name,” he says. “Sam Choi. And I’m going to be Choi Soobin again.”
Beomgyu presses the side of his head to Soobin’s chest, hiding from his eyes just in case Soobin can see better than he can in the dark.
“I don’t get it,” he whispers. He feels heavy. There’s panic rising in his chest, but it’s flowing slowly like lava.
“There’s nothing to get,” Soobin whispers to into his hair. “I fucked up. I can’t take it back. I’m just want to do better, for the rest of my life.”
“What are you going to do, when you’re out of it?”
“I don’t know yet,” Soobin says. “Anything. Go back to school. Volunteer at a museum. Work retail and take the bus.”
“Turn yourself in?”
Soobin pauses.
“Maybe,” he says softly. “If I can bring it down, it would be worth it.”
Soobin’s hand tiptoes up the back of Beomgyu’s neck, toying with the fringe of hair that brushes his nape.
“Will you still be mine tonight?” he whispers. “Even now?”
Beomgyu scrunches up his eyes.
There’s a sharp sound, and Soobin’s jacket buzzes violently between their bodies.
“Fuck,” he curses, dropping his hand to jam it into his pocket as Beomgyu startles in place, hastily wiping a finger under his eye. He lifts his phone behind Beomgyu’s head to check the caller ID. “Goddamn. Beomgyu, I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t answer it,” Beomgyu says.
“What?”
Beomgyu lifts his face to see Soobin’s again. He can barely make out his surprised expression.
“Don’t,” he says. “You can’t answer that.”
“I’ll just tell him I can’t talk,” Soobin says. “It’s okay, Beomgyu.”
“Don’t fucking answer it!”
Beomgyu grabs Soobin’s hand, yanking the phone from his grip. Before he can think it through, he flings it as hard as he can back in the direction of the trail, past another boulder and into a dark, scruffy patch of brush. It bounces twice, and he can see the screen weakly glowing where it lands, face-up.
“What the—”
Beomgyu bursts into tears.
“Hey, hey,” Soobin soothes, immediately pulling Beomgyu back into his chest. The flask falls to the ground, forgotten, and Beomgyu feels his warm breath on his ear, kissing the side of his face. “Don’t cry. What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Beomgyu sniffles. He turns his head to look at the distant light of the phone screen. “You just…you just couldn’t. You couldn’t pick up that call. It’s bad.”
“What do you mean?”
Beomgyu doesn’t know how to explain it. The moment that phone started to buzz, he felt a revulsion like he’d never felt before, as if he was watching a corpse decaying right before his eyes. He needed it gone, away from them, away from Soobin.
“Something bad was on the other side of that,” he gulps. “I don’t know, Soobin. I don’t know. I can’t, I don’t…”
He rolls his head face-first into Soobin’s chest, and Soobin rocks him side to side.
“I believe you,” he whispers. “You’re smart. You’re smarter than me.”
It’s quiet for a moment, only the sound of Beomgyu’s fading sniffles filling the darkness.
“Look at the view, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says quietly, slipping into Korean. Beomgyu lets him turn him around in his arms, resting his chin on the top of Beomgyu’s scalp. One of Soobin’s thumbs brushes over a wet eyelid, and Beomgyu dries the other one with his palm.
It’s glorious, the grid of golden lights, the flickering, flashing neon stretching out for miles. It’s more beautiful than any nighttime skyline Beomgyu’s ever seen, because he’s seeing it from here, from the darkness of the desert, under this canopy of stars. It’s the scenic destination Soobin promised, and Beomgyu couldn’t care less. He just wants to see Soobin’s face again.
“I think they’ve been tracking my phone,” Soobin says calmly above him. “I think they might come find me.”
Beomgyu leans back deeper into him.
“Fuck them,” he sniffs. “They can’t ruin this for us.”
Soobin snorts.
“I mean, they can,” he says. “They’ve got some big guys they could send.”
Beomgyu watches the Ferris wheel slowly spinning in the distance. It must be on its last run. It’s well after midnight, and doesn’t it close at midnight?
“I’m so sorry I sprung all this on you,” Soobin says, squeezing Beomgyu’s arms. “One night together, and I dump my life’s biggest regrets on you.”
Those words hit like an icicle. One night. It’s all this will be, and it’s all it should be.
“Tell me where you’re gonna go, when you leave it all,” Beomgyu says. He tries to say it in his most commanding voice, even though all his voice can muster up right now is a whimper.
“Where do you want me to go?”
Beomgyu tilts his head back, looking up into the void of Soobin’s dark face.
“New York,” he says, and he almost cries again at admitting it. “Come visit me.”
Soobin pauses for a moment. “I’d like that,” he says. His voice catches at the end, like something snared in his throat. “We could go to the museums together.”
“Isn’t that…a bit of a sensitive subject?” Beomgyu asks, swallowing, and Soobin laughs.
“Nah, I love art,” he says. “And that’s where it belongs. Museums. Except for the mummies. I’ve always turned down the mummy jobs.”
Something about that clicks in Beomgyu’s brain. “It’s wrong, right?” he says. “Mummies in an art museum?”
Soobin is smiling so wide he can see his dimples even in the darkness. “Completely. That shit’s sacred.”
Soobin leans his head on Beomgyu’s again, and Beomgyu closes his eyes, trying to still his racing thoughts. He’s on the verge of hysterical tears again, his heart pounding manically. He’s in the arms of a criminal, and he wants to be there. He feels safe there. Is that wrong? Is it wrong that he wants to stay instead of run, that he wants him more and more the more Soobin shares of his truth?
“Thank you,” Soobin murmurs. “I don’t know why you’re still here.”
“How the fuck would I leave?” Beomgyu sniffles.
“It wasn't literal,” Soobin says. “And I’ll walk you back to my car and drop you off back at your hotel, safe and sound, the moment you say you don’t want me anymore.”
“I won’t,” Beomgyu says, craning his head around to look at him. “I’m yours tonight.”
The kiss Soobin gives him is even wetter than all the others combined, on account of Beomgyu’s teary cheeks. Beomgyu stops breathing, going limp against Soobin’s chest. He tries to sidle through Soobin’s legs and accidentally knees the boulder behind him, wailing in pain into Soobin’s lips.
Soobin breaks away, laughing.
“If they’re sending the big guys after me, we should probably be quiet,” he says. “Let’s get out of here, okay?”
“Don’t you dare get that phone,” Beomgyu says. “It dies out here.”
“Aye aye.” Soobin wraps up one of Beomgyu’s wrists in his broad hand. “Tread carefully. Snakes.”
They inch back to the trail, taking it slower on account of Beomgyu’s teary vision.
“What are you thinking?” Soobin asks, as their feet find the trail again.
“I’m not,” Beomgyu sniffs, and it’s true. He can’t find the right place to start.
Why does it matter what Soobin is? He’s a stranger, a one-night-stand. He doesn’t even have to be a one-night-stand. He’ll leave Beomgyu at the hotel and disappear into the night, and Beomgyu will tell Yeonjun about it on the phone in the morning, that guy from my old church told me some weird-ass story about being a criminal and I told him to get lost. No, of course I didn’t sleep with him.
But it’s been twenty-four years since they last met, and something brought them together tonight. Beomgyu can feel it, and it’s terrifying.
Beomgyu isn’t a superstitious man. He’s a doctor, a man of logic and reason. He sleeps with the fan on and steps on sidewalk cracks. He also clicks all his pens closed three times before pocketing them and needs to tell every emergency patient he treats “hope to never see you again!” or else it’s his fault when they have another emergency.
“Soobin,” he whispers. “What do you feel when you look at me?”
Soobin slows, waiting for Beomgyu to catch up to him. “I can’t describe it,” he says. “I feel…warm, in a sense. Maybe it’s because you’re so hot, is that it?”
He’s trying to lighten the mood, but the bad joke soars over Beomgyu’s head. All he hears is warm.
“Me too,” he says slowly. “Why?”
Something moves in his peripheral vision, and Soobin sees it too. He wheels his head around towards the base of the hill.
“God fucking damnit,” he whispers, and Beomgyu’s eyes flit towards the distant trailhead.
A dark van is pulling into the empty parking lot, hundreds of feet away down the scrubby hill. It’s the only other moving car they’ve seen since turning off the main road into the neighborhood, and it’s moving far too quickly.
“Fuck,” Soobin spits into the darkness. “Jesus Christ. That was fast.”
“Is that…?”
“Maybe. Yes.” They’re still for a moment, frozen on the trail, gazing down the hill. The van squeals to a stop in the parking lot, haphazardly parked in the middle of the driving lane.
“So what do we do?” Beomgyu whispers, panicked.
Soobin lets go of his hand to card both of his own back through his hair.
“You take the keys, and you go,” Soobin says, turning to him. “Back to the car. You get out of here.”
“I can bring the car around if you hide,” Beomgyu says, grabbing at Soobin’s sleeve, but Soobin shakes his head.
“You know that’s not what I meant, Beomgyu. I meant you run.”
Two car doors slam.
Beomgyu yanks Soobin off the trail, back into the brush. There’s really nothing to hide behind; there are no trees to be seen and hardly any boulders large enough to take cover behind. But Soobin lets him tug him off the path anyway, and there’s a waist-height outcropping of rock a few dozen feet away that Beomgyu beelines for in the moonlight. It’ll do, for now.
“Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin begins, the moment they’re both squatting behind the rock, and Beomgyu slaps a hand to his mouth.
“No,” he whispers. His hand is shaking on Soobin’s face. “Tell me what they’re gonna do to you.”
He peels his fingers away enough for Soobin to speak.
“You can’t be here when they get to me,” Soobin whispers, and that’s all. His face is expressionless.
“Then we don’t let them get to you,” Beomgyu urges. “We run together. We wait for them to get on the trail, and sneak past them on the hill.”
“Babe, we can’t run down this,” Soobin says, and he’s right. Off of the trail, the terrain is impossibly ragged, all loose stone and craggy, sharp desert plants. It’s too dark to safely pick their way through it at anything more than a slow jog. They’d be spotted immediately. “It’s okay. I’ll just go out and deal with it. You take the car and get home safe, okay?”
Faintly, Beomgyu hears voices. It’s been so silent out here that the tiny drops of noise hit his eardrums like explosions. He peers around the top of the rock to see two tiny circles of light making their way up the foot of the trail; these men obviously aren’t worried about getting caught trespassing.
“How could I even get past them?” Beomgyu whispers. Even his whisper is coming out squeaky, pitchy.
“I’ll run up the trail and draw their attention,” Soobin says. Beomgyu starts to shake his head, but Soobin presses on. “You just book it down the trail once they’re past you. They’re here for me anyway, Beomgyu.”
The circles of light are meandering, growing larger as they work their way up the trail. Beomgyu moans. “Soobin, I’m scared.”
“Here,” Soobin says. He unzips his jacket and slides it off. “Keys in the front pocket, and there’s cash in the inner one,” he says, draping it over Beomgyu’s shoulders. “It’s for luck. You’ll run like the wind in it. No one will hurt you”
Soobin’s mind is made up. Beomgyu grabs his hand and squeezes it, dropping back behind the rock.
“I’m bringing that car around, and you’ll fight them off and get in it,” he says, willing himself to believe it. “You will. You’re a good fighter, right?”
The moonlight catches on Soobin’s smile. “Sure,” he whispers. “I’ll bayonet them.”
“Is the car a stick shift?”
Something about the mundaneness of the question makes Soobin laugh under his breath, and Beomgyu can’t help but smile, too. A comedy of errors in the middle of this impending tragedy. “Yeah, it’s a manual. Let me guess, you can’t drive stick?”
“Your car’s gonna get wrecked,” Beomgyu whispers.
“Fuck my car.” Soobin kisses him one more time, and Beomgyu sucks his bottom lip through his own, as if it taking it would make it his.
When Soobin pulls away, he shoots up.
“Run, Beomgyu-ya,” he says, and takes off up the trail, hollering here, fuckers!
The reaction is immediate. Beomgyu hears a yell, and when he takes a tiny peek around the side of the boulder, the two lights are rushing up the trail, focused on their goal now. He jams his hands through the too-long sleeves of Soobin’s jacket and into the pockets, waiting for the men to pass by his hiding spot so he can run down the trail and to safety. One hand closes around the car key, the other around something smooth and oblong, cool to the touch.
He turns it over in his hand. What is it? There’s a catch on the side, and when he tucks his nail into it he feels the shape start to split in two. A pocketknife.
Beomgyu feels a cold flood of adrenaline. He knows what he has to do.
The two shapes rush past him up, one of them bellowing something after Soobin’s long-gone form, Choi, son of a fucking bitch, just come do the job or we’ll — and the instant they’ve cleared his hiding spot, Beomgyu charges out onto the trail.
He has no idea if either of the men notices someone behind them; he’s running as fast as he can in the other direction, sprinting down the trail to the beckoning lights of the parking lot. His fists are pumping frantically, the key clutched in one and the knife in the other. The whole way is downhill, and he feels like his own acceleration is going to tear his legs off at the hinges. Run, run.
His feet hit the pavement of the parking lot and he finally looks behind him; no one is following. The men must both still be chasing Soobin.
Beomgyu races for the van, springing the blade open in his hand. He’s never done this before, obviously, but it can’t be hard. He lunges for the first tire and the pocketknife sinks in easily, gashing the side of it angrily. He can already hear it deflating, the hiss of air escaping.
He makes quick work of tires two, three, and four. That beautiful sound fills the air, the sound of a ton of metal squeezing the air out of four ragged, torn tires. I need to help him, and Beomgyu kicks the side of the van over and over and over, pounding the metal of the knife’s handle against the driver-side window until with a crack, it shatters, sending glass cascading across the seat.
The van’s alarm nearly deafens him, erupting into the silence. Will the sound make them come back? Will Soobin get away from them?
Get the car. Beomgyu takes off again, barely remembering to close the knife. He’s a terrible runner, and he’s so out of breath that his mouth tastes metallic, but it feels second nature to run, run, keep running. He’s suspended in time, so singularly focused on getting to that car that he might as well have blinked and found himself in front of it.
The car door unlocks as he grabs at the handle, the key in his hand triggering its automatic lock. He flings himself into the driver’s seat, jams the key into the ignition, looks at the three foot pedals, and panics.
Beomgyu has absolutely no idea how to drive a manual transmission. He barely drives at all. He got his license when he lived in LA and has done nothing but take the subway since moving back East. He’s driven a stick shift once, when he accidentally signed up for the wrong kind of rental car on a family vacation, and it was mostly a disaster.
Fuck it, he thinks, stepping on the clutch. That’s how you start it, right? Clutch, brake, turn the key. Where the fuck is the parking brake? He finds it, and the car jerks as soon as it’s released.
Beomgyu can’t worry about getting it perfect. All he has to do is get it into first gear, and he tries to remember the right way to let up on the brake, tapping the clutch as he nudges the gear shifter. The car makes a kind of stuttering sound as it shifts into gear, but it doesn’t stall, and Beomgyu just wings it, nearly flooring the accelerator.
He veers around the corner, almost shrieking as his un-buckled body tips inside the car. Fuck, this car is fast, and Beomgyu doesn’t drive, much less drive dangerously. He knows the screaming engine is only further destroying all the late-night peace of this sleepy neighborhood, if the van’s alarm wasn’t enough. Maybe witnesses would be a good thing.
The car covers the two blocks to the parking lot in seconds flat, and Beomgyu hits the turn too fast again, screeching to a stop just feet from the bumper of the van.
Fuck. He leans on the horn and collapses onto the steering wheel, adding another shrill sound to the cacophony of the car alarm.
After a few seconds, he lifts his head and chances a peek up the trail. Nothing, no movement.
Beomgyu’s heart rate is in tatters. He’s prone to arrhythmia, and it’s been off-rhythm for what feels like hours at this point. He climbs out of the car, throwing caution to the wind.
“I’m here!” he bellows, cupping his hands around his mouth to send the sound further into the wilderness. He doesn’t know if he’s even audible over the car alarm, and he can’t say Soobin’s name. They don’t know his name. “I’m here! Come here!”
A voice bellows back, distantly. “Beom—”
“Yeah!” Beomgyu shouts back into the darkness. He doesn’t see any lights on the trail as he scans up it. Could that mean…?
Something is moving on the trail. Beomgyu clutches the open car door, prepared to leap back into it, but he doesn’t move yet. He just squints into the darkness, hoping and hoping.
“Let me drive,” Soobin shouts as he comes into view, barreling down the trail, and Beomgyu cries out in relief. “Other side, Gyu!”
Soobin isn’t alone. Beomgyu can see another person behind him, moving at a slower clip. Soobin runs fully into the light of the parking lot right as Beomgyu races around to the passenger side of the car, and he gets a clear look at his ripped-up shirt, blood all down the right side of his face. He wants to scream, what happened, but his body is still on fight-or-flight mode, with one foot in each camp, and he just wheels around the car, flinging himself into the passenger seat. There’s no time to talk or think. They just have to go.
Three seconds later, the car shakes as Soobin’s body collides with it, using it as a backstop. A moment later he rolls through the open driver’s door, slamming it shut, and he shifts into reverse so fast that Beomgyu barely even has time to brace himself for the car to move again.
“He’s gonna follow us in the van,” Soobin spits. “This is so—”
“I slashed the tires,” Beomgyu cries. He had forgotten. In all the chaos, he had totally forgotten that he’d slashed the van’s tires. But he had, and they can’t follow. They’ll be safe.
“You…”
They peel out of the parking lot in reverse, and Soobin stops the car, looking at Beomgyu. His face is in a state, blood trickling from a series of scratches that must have come from colliding with the rugged terrain, and a bruise already blooming under his left cheekbone. His shirt sleeve is torn up, dirty and bloodstained.
“Slashed the van’s tires,” Beomgyu says. “Go, go!”
Soobin’s terrible face melts. “Beomgyu-ya,” he says.
“Fucker! Drive!”
Soobin obeys. He steps on the gas, and as they rocket down the street Beomgyu sees his lone pursuer finally reach the van, surveying the shattered glass.
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu moans. “Holy…”
“Shh,” Soobin says. His bloody knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “Let me put distance in. Let me get you safe.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m perfect,” Soobin says, and he starts to laugh. It’s hysterical, borderline unhinged, and it’s contagious.
“Oh my god,” Beomgyu laughs. “I have a presentation on infant care at nine in the morning.”
“You just knifed a gangster’s car,” Soobin cackles. He hits a hard turn, speeding onto the main road well above the speed limit. “You fucking idiot.”
“What else should I have done?” Beomgyu giggles. “Let them follow us back to our hotel?”
“You still wanna fuck me? Now that I’m a comic-book bad guy?”
“So bad,” Beomgyu laughs. “I got to be the comic-book hero.”
“Beomgyu, fuck,” Soobin says, tousling the back of Beomgyu's hair so aggressively that his head snaps forward. “You’re so fucking sexy.”
“What, that I ran away? That’s sexy?”
“You didn’t wreck my car.” They can’t stop laughing. “God, I can’t even see right, one of my eyes’ all fucked.”
“I’ll fix it for you. I’m a doctor.”
Soobin pinches Beomgyu’s cheek.
“What happened to the other guy?” Beomgyu asks.
Soobin shrugs. “He froze up when you set that alarm off. I hit him with a rock while he was distracted. No clue after that.”
He gives Beomgyu a look out of the corner of his eye, evaluating his reaction.
“No point hiding it,” he says. “I’ve done bad shit, Beomgyu. I do bad shit. And I’ll drop you off and never see you again, if you want it that way.”
“You don’t do bad shit anymore,” Beomgyu says, sticking his jaw out. “Not if you’re gonna come visit me in New York.”
“No,” Soobin exhales, and he sounds like he might cry. “No, not anymore.”
The interstate feels like freedom. There’s no van anywhere in sight, no blaring police sirens. Soobin rolls down his window, dangling his arm out into the rushing air and hooting.
“Hey, I might love you,” Soobin says gleefully, merging into the left lane and hitting ninety miles-per-hour on the empty road. “Maybe. Haven’t had a lot of time to think on it.”
“You don’t even know my birthday,” Beomgyu chortles. “You’re a stranger.”
“March thirteenth,” Soobin says. “You told me constantly. Nearly every Sunday. Still like lemon cake the most?”
He’s not a stranger at all, really.
The drive back to the hotel takes much less time than the drive out took, on account of all the speeding. Beomgyu tries halfheartedly to get Soobin to slow down — getting pulled over would be a very bad thing, with the amount of blood all over his face — but Soobin doesn’t listen, and Beomgyu doesn’t really care.
He asks him to explain what happened out on the hill, and Soobin tries, but when he starts picking apart the details, Beomgyu realizes none of it matters. He just watches Soobin as he talks animatedly, trying not to cry as he starts to come down from the adrenaline. He splays his hand out on Soobin’s thigh, feeling it jittering underneath him.
“They were just Manny’s guys. Manny’s been kind of pushed out — he’s high up in the organization, on the sourcing side. In Italy, mainly. But he’s been getting sloppy with his paperwork and the boss thinks he has an FBI tail. So he’s just panicking, really, trying to get me to get this last job done faster so it’ll make him look good to the boss, and he got wind of the fact that I’m bailing on the whole gig and didn’t take it—”
“I don’t care,” Beomgyu interrupts. Soobin is talking rapidly, gesticulating with one of his bloody hands, and it’s so sexy, the way his words speed up and spit out of him. “Fuck Manny. Fuck all of them. Are they gonna come for you?”
“Probably,” Soobin says. “Not if they can’t find me, though.”
His phone is still out on that hill, tracking someone who'll never come back.
When they pull into the hotel garage, Soobin parks next to another black Porsche. “It blends in Vegas,” he says. “But my next car’ll be a minivan.”
“For all the kids you’re gonna have? Is your next career a suburban housewife?”
“Up to you,” Soobin smiles. “You’re the one who likes kids.”
Beomgyu scoffs. “The last thing I want to see when I get home from my job working with kids is more kids.”
“Then we’ll be childless forever,” Soobin says, killing the engine.
“I bet it’s easier to fuck in a minivan.” Beomgyu reaches for the door handle, but Soobin’s arm shoots out, grabbing him by the wrist. Beomgyu whips his head around, and Soobin is already climbing over the central console, his head grazing the low roof of the car.
“Soob—”
“You wanna try it?” Soobin breathes into his ear. “Fucking in here?” He reaches down the side of the seat to lower the seat back until it’s parallel to the ground, and Beomgyu squirms, pressing his hands against his chest.
“But you’re hurt, you’re all—”
“Feel fine.” Soobin licks down the side of his neck, crouching over Beomgyu’s body now.
“Someone could—”
“Tinted windows.” Soobin pulls himself upright, heaving, his bloodstained fists on either side of Beomgyu’s head. “Do you really not want to? You really wanna go upstairs?”
He darts his lip across his cupid’s bow, lingering above Beomgyu’s face, and Beomgyu feels his cock throbbing. Soobin is bloody and beaten-up, and there’s a perfectly good bed up there, but…
“I want to,” he exhales, cupping Soobin’s face. “What the fuck. Fuck me in a Porsche.”
Beomgyu doesn’t think much about sex in his daily life. He gets horny, sure, but his general state of exhaustion makes that a less-than-frequent occurrence. He gets off to amateur porn a few times a week, sometimes fingering himself under the shower head if he’s feeling especially frisky. Mostly he just whines about his sexless existence to Yeonjun and then does absolutely nothing about it.
This night is, without exaggeration, the horniest that Beomgyu has felt since the year a teenaged version of himself discovered masturbation.
“Oh my god,” he gasps into the seat, Soobin’s tongue buried in his asshole. He’s on all fours, his shorts down around his knees, and he has a feeling that Soobin’s head has slammed into the car roof at least five times, but he’s too caught up in Soobin’s tongue in his asshole to care.
Soobin moans into his rim, and Beomgyu can feel the vibrations all through his stomach. He twitches, cock jerking in Soobin’s broad hand, and Soobin just digs in deeper.
“Soobin, Soob…”
Soobin pulls his tongue out, flicking it along Beomgyu’s pucker as he withdraws. He laves it down to Beomgyu’s balls instead, leaving a trail of heat along his skin. Beomgyu squeals, cringing away from the intensity of the feeling, but Soobin has a finger through his asshole before he can escape, hooking him.
“Feel fucking incredible,” Soobin groans, kissing his balls before he lifts away. “Beomgyu. Your hole is soft.”
Beomgyu’s toes curl.
“Arch up?”
Beomgyu arches mindlessly, and Soobin drops hold of his cock to run a hand down his back, pushing his layers of clothing up towards his head. “Fuck, what a pretty picture,” he says throatily. His finger thrusts deeper into Beomgyu, and Beomgyu tries to remember to breathe, breathe, relax. But his body is twitching desperately, his thighs quivering. The crisp leather smell of the seat crammed against his face is so overwhelming that he feels woozy.
“More, baby?”
Beomgyu whimpers.
Soobin slides his index finger out, replacing it with his middle and ring fingers instead. He tweaks them down towards Beomgyu’s belly, brushing them against his prostate, and Beomgyu bites down on the leather to stifle his sounds.
“No, don’t hide,” Soobin says. “God, you sound so gorgeous. Don’t hide it.”
“I…more,” Beomgyu chokes.
Soobin groans. “Yes,” he exhales. “You’ll get more.” Beomgyu feels something hot and heavy fall along his ass cheek, and he whips his head around to see Soobin’s cock, hanging through his open pants and resting on Beomgyu’s ass. It’s…
“Soobin, what the fuck, that’s gonna fit?”
There’s a dull thud — Soobin’s head into the roof again, but he only laughs it off. “Gonna give myself a fucking concussion before I give it to you,” he says.
“When…n—now? Give it to me now?” Beomgyu hangs his head again. He sounds whiny and needy, and he feels that way, too. He wants it, he wants it. He wants Soobin’s cock, he’s wanted it all night. And he’s never fucked a cock like that.
“Yes, now,” Soobin teases. “Well, not now. Not when you’re still so tight.”
One of the bottles in the glove compartment wasn’t hand cream, but travel-sized lube. It sits in the cup holder now, lid popped open, a drip of lube bubbling crudely over the top. Beomgyu hears Soobin grab for it, and a moment later he hears the grotesque sound of a glob squirting out of the bottle and onto Soobin’s hand.
Beomgyu clenches.
“Shy?” Soobin asks, tenderly pressing just the tip of his index finger against Beomgyu’s tight pucker.
“Y-yeah. Fuck, that’s cold.” Of course he’s shy. He’s on his knees in a public parking garage, his shorts around his knees like a desperate teenager.
“Don’t be. You look like a porn star,” Soobin breathes, working in that third finger.
Beomgyu’s abs tense up, and he exhales again, relax. Soobin’s cock is thick, and he has to let him take this part slowly, so it won’t hurt later. But he wants it, now, before the night can end.
“Want it, Soobin.”
“You’ll have it, baby. Hang tight. I’ll get you ready.”
Soobin grabs a handful of his ass cheek, pulling it to the side to make more room for his fingers, and Beomgyu spreads his thighs as far as they’ll go. It’s not far, hemmed in by the confines of the seat and his own shorts around his knees, but Soobin still likes it.
“Good boy, Beomgyu,” Soobin coos. Beomgyu seizes up around his fingers, and Soobin wiggles them deeper, laughing. “Oh, you like that, baby? Like being my good boy?”
“Yes,” Beomgyu whispers. Oh, he likes it.
“Taking such good care of me tonight, fucking up that van for me…” Soobin twists his fingers, spreading him wider. “Getting so stretched out on my fingers, getting ready to take me, Beomgyu…you’re a dream, honestly.”
It’s too romantic for this setting, for the vulgarity of their half-nude bodies in the tinted light of the garage. Beomgyu can’t handle Soobin prying into him any more. He collapses on his belly onto the seat, dropping off of Soobin’s fingers. It’s his turn to take charge.
“Gimme your dick,” he pants. “Put it in my mouth.”
“I was gonna put four in you,” Soobin says, his wet fingers still in midair. He sounds disappointed.
“Don’t complain when I’m about to lick your dick,” Beomgyu says, rolling onto his back and giving Soobin a once-over. He’s kneeling in the footwell below the passenger seat, hunched over just enough so that his head can fit mostly upright in the car, his erection bouncing between his hefty thighs. He’s shed his torn-up shirt, only wearing his undershirt, and Beomgyu can’t help giving his bare arms a look too. Banged up, but not seriously injured.
“Are you checking me out right now?” Soobin asks slyly. “Like, doctor check-out? Really?”
“I’m just looking,” Beomgyu defends himself. “Just taking a peek.”
Soobin crawls over his body, hauling himself up onto the lowered seat and pressing Beomgyu’s back flat to it. “You wanna be my doctor?”
“Jesus, Soobin.”
“Bet you have a stethoscope, right?”
Soobin is lighting up, and Beomgyu shakes his head incredulously.
“You’re a creep,” he says.
Soobin slides his legs further up Beomgyu’s body, his knees on either side of Beomgyu’s shoulders now. He has to bend over almost in half to fit without slamming his head into the car roof again. “But you do,” he says. “And doctor coats, with your name on them. Right?”
“At home,” Beomgyu says, swallowing hard. Soobin’s cock is close enough to his face that he can see a bubble of precum work its way out of his slit. He pulls himself up on his elbows and lets his jaw fall slack, an inch from Soobin’s cock, and peers up at Soobin’s stricken, tense face.
“Fuck, we have to play with them,” Soobin says. “Beomgyu…”
Beomgyu slobbers down Soobin’s cock, taking it as deep into his throat as he can at the awkward angle. Soobin combs through his hair, breath stuttering, and Beomgyu feels his saliva overflowing down the sides of his face and into the car seat, too much dick in his mouth to leave room for his spit.
He pulls off, drooling all down Soobin's shaft. “Ruining your car,” he chokes out wetly, and dives in again, closing his eyes and focusing on the feeling of Soobin’s heat on his tongue, the slight saltiness of his skin. Soobin laughs, and his cock jerks in Beomgyu’s lips, bouncing against the roof of his mouth. Beomgyu squeezes the base with both his hands to steady it, so tightly that Soobin gasps.
“Beomgyu, Beomgyu, babe,” he groans. “Fuuuuck. You’re—”
Beomgyu takes him against his throat again, gagging tight on its head, and Soobin curses again, pushing him off by the forehead.
“Flip over,” he commands. His face is all squished, his shoulders scrunched against the roof of the car. “I wanna fuck your ass, I need to. Please, baby?”
Beomgyu pancakes onto his belly, awkwardly holding himself up over the hinge of the seat. “I can’t see you like this,” he whines. It sounds so needy, but he needs to see him to know he's real, that he's safe.
Soobin strokes one hand soothingly over the nape of his neck, the other fumbling for the condom.
“You’ll see me. I promise. We can’t…can’t really fit if we don’t do it this way.” He has a point, and Beomgyu snorts into the seat despite his frustration. Stacking up their bodies like this is the most efficient use of the long, low space, and it just reminds them that there’s really no reason at all that they’re doing this in the goddamn car instead of the perfectly good bed upstairs.
“Shut up,” Soobin says. “I see you giggling.”
“For a sexy car, it's so hard to fuck in,” Beomgyu laughs, but he swallows back his breath when Soobin spreads his asshole with both thumbs.
“Then we’ll make it quick,” he says. “Don’t worry about the leather. I’m gonna have to ditch the car to get out of this town anyway.”
The leather? Beomgyu’s leaking cock is rutting up raw against the seat. He’s gonna destroy it if he cums, and he’s definitely gonna —
Beomgyu barely remembers the first few thrusts afterwards. It’s been years since he’s had sex, years since he’s had anything but his fingers and the occasional toy inside him, and Soobin’s cock is so wide pressing through his rim that Beomgyu has to bite down on Soobin’s fingers to keep himself from tensing.
Breathe, breathe, Soobin whispers into his ear, inching slowly into him, and Beomgyu sucks on his fingertips as his resistance weakens, moaning into the seat. Soobin’s wide hips rock gently into his slender ones, but Beomgyu jolts back sharply, his ass suddenly meeting Soobin’s thighs.
“Fuck,” he cries.
“Fuck,” Soobin groans. “Okay, you okay?”
“Feel…oh my god…”
“I’ll be slow. Beomgyu, shit, you’re like velvet in there.”
“Wearing a damn condom,” Beomgyu chokes to the seat.
“Yeah, you still feel fucking luxurious,” Soobin laughs. “Baby, can I…”
Soobin doesn’t really have to move. Beomgyu fucks himself on him, slamming his ass up into Soobin’s hips until his lower back feels numb from the motion and Soobin’s wrists are shaking from holding himself half-up above Beomgyu’s body. That’s when Soobin takes over, dropping flat onto Beomgyu’s back and thrusting so heavily into him that Beomgyu feels the impact vibrating in his ribs. And Soobin didn’t lie. His face is right there to look at, tucked over his shoulder. Kissing Beomgyu’s jaw, whispering you’re so perfect so perfect against Beomgyu’s cheekbone until he can’t say anything but you you you.
Beomgyu closes his eyes as he comes, his world shrinking down to Soobin's fist on his cock, his senses filled with the smell of leather and the blood dried into Soobin's hair.
They really should have put a condom on Beomgyu, too. The seat is disgusting when they’re done, Beomgyu’s load sprayed all over the seams of the fine leather cushion.
“I told you,” Soobin pants, collapsed in the driver’s seat and tenderly tying a knot in the spent condom. “I’m switching cars anyway. Getting that minivan.”
Beomgyu just moans weakly, curled up on his side.
Soobin smiles a lopsided, proud grin as he looks over Beomgyu’s crumpled up, worn-out body.
“Did a number on you, huh?” he says, reaching out a hand for Beomgyu to take. “Let me put you back together and carry you upstairs. It’s the least I can do, after ruining our date night.”
Beomgyu squirms, his bare ass sticking to the seat. “It was one-of-a-kind, that’s for sure,” he murmurs. It sounds like he’s purring.
The hotel room is nothing special; it’s a nice hotel, but not a luxury one. Beomgyu likes to keep his suitcase neat while he travels, so at least everything is tidily tucked away, no dirty underwear strewn around the room. That would have been mortifying.
Soobin is supporting him against his larger body, and he starts dragging him toward the bed the moment the door closes. But now that his raging urges are dying down, Beomgyu’s in doctor mode again, and Soobin looks pretty rough. He’d barely noticed the dried blood all over half his face while they were fucking in the dark car, but in the elevator, it was all he could look at.
“Lemme clean you up,” Beomgyu says. “Come on. You should see yourself.”
“I want to hold you,” Soobin whines. “Please. I’ve had a traumatic night, and my dick’s tired.”
“Let’s take a bath, okay? You can hold me in the bath.”
The bathtub isn’t massive, but it’ll fit them both if they cuddle. Soobin splashes water on his face in the sink while Beomgyu gets the bath running, inspecting the swelling around one of his eyes in the mirror.
“Not too bad,” he says, leaning closer. His eyes find Beomgyu’s reflection. “What do you think?”
“Come over here,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin turns around, leaning down to where Beomgyu is sitting on the edge of the tub. Beomgyu gives him a once-over, lifting his eyelid to peek at his cornea, and it looks undamaged. “You’re just roughed up,” he says. “No real injuries. Nothing time won’t fix.”
“Take this off,” Soobin says, his hands resting on Beomgyu’s shoulders, and… right, Beomgyu’s still wearing his jacket. He’d kept it on the whole time they were fucking. “You look adorable in it, but I want you in less. I already got lucky enough tonight.”
“Why is it lucky?” Beomgyu asks, letting Soobin strip it down his shoulders.
Soobin smiles. “I’ll tell you in the tub.”
Beomgyu hasn’t been naked in front of anyone for years. He ducks his face as Soobin strips him, working through his shirt buttons, unbuckling his belt.
“I can’t stop touching you,” he murmurs, draping his hands down Beomgyu’s back, running them down to his ass as Beomgyu drops his shorts. He flicks over his cock, stirring the tiniest bit again. “It’s so pretty. Big.”
“Average,” Beomgyu corrects, feeling himself blush as he kicks off his briefs. He wriggles free of Soobin’s hands and practically dives into the tub, catching the crestfallen look on Soobin’s face as he hides himself in the water. “What?”
“I wasn’t done appreciating,” Soobin says.
“Appreciate in here, then. Come on.”
Soobin tears through his own clothes eagerly, showing no sign of feeling self-conscious about stripping down, and why would he be? His body is gorgeous, long and broad and cut from a much more muscular cloth than Beomgyu’s. He rips off his boxers and Beomgyu doesn’t try to hide that he’s staring at his dick again, which is semi-hard and already the size of Beomgyu’s at its fullest.
“You look thirsty,” Soobin teases.
“I can’t believe that monster fucking fit in me,” Beomgyu says.
“Yeah, well, you were stretchy,” Soobin says, clambering over the side of the tub. “Oh fuck, that burns…”
His face seizes up as the hot water hits a line of scratches along his forearm, where his shirt had torn in the fight.
“It’s a good hurt,” Beomgyu says, reaching out his arms. “Toughen up.”
He thought they would be all over each other again the moment their naked bodies finally made full contact, after the taste they got in the car. But Soobin just cuddles into his arms, floating his hands across the front of Beomgyu’s body, and Beomgyu strokes down his spine, feeling Soobin’s cock growing harder against his thigh.
“Let’s take it slow now, okay?” Beomgyu murmurs. “It’s our one night.”
“One night,” Soobin sighs, fanning his fingers out over one of Beomgyu’s pecs and toying with his nipple. “Feels like it’s been longer.”
Feels like so much longer, but it's not long enough.
He noses into Beomgyu’s neck, and his chin catches on the chain around his throat.
“What’s this?” he asks, fingering the pendant.
“Marigold,” Beomgyu says. He combs through a tangle in the back of Soobin’s hair, his wet fingers sticking in the strands.
Soobin starts to laugh.
“What?”
“Do you believe in fate, Beomgyu-ya?” he asks in Korean.
“Um, not really?”
Soobin twists onto his belly, flattening out on Beomgyu’s legs and kicking up one of his own. There’s a black flower tattooed on the back of one of his calves, a familiar round blossom.
“You’re kidding me.” Beomgyu's heart is off-beat again.
“Marigold,” Soobin says. His smile is crinkling his eyes so tightly that even the good one looks swollen. “What the fuck, Beomgyu.”
Beomgyu doesn’t know what to say. He yanks Soobin’s head down onto his own, and Soobin pours into his mouth, rips into his hair. No more taking it slow.
Beomgyu dreams that he’s in the casino bar that night, and everything is purple. Purple walls, purple drinks, purple card in his wallet. Purple hat on the bartender, and when he opens his mouth to speak, the man’s teeth are stained magenta.
It’s an odd dream, tame but unnaturally eerie, and Beomgyu shakes himself out of it with a cold chill in his throat and a sinking feeling in his chest. He sits bolt upright in bed, palming at his eyes, and when he finally blinks them fully awake, they immediately land on the lump in bed next to him.
Soobin is propped up on his side in bed, snoring lightly, his bare chest emerging from the covers. They hadn’t closed the curtains, and the room is full of crisp morning light. Beomgyu shoots a panicked look at the alarm clock, but it’s only eight-fifteen. He’s got time before that damn infant care session, and he inhales and exhales, trying to soothe his fuzzy mind.
He lies back down, scooting closer to Soobin’s form. It feels surreal that he has a conference to go to today, that life will just go on as usual despite everything that happened overnight. That tonight, he’ll return to his hotel room to find it empty, and that Soobin will hopefully be halfway across the country in his rental car, fleeing everything he wants to leave in the past.
Beomgyu feels something itchy in his throat, the panic of loneliness.
“Soobin?” he whispers, and Soobin’s snoring slows. He rolls a tiny bit closer to his body and tries again. “Soobin?”
“Mmm?” Soobin doesn’t move.
Beomgyu runs a finger over the curve of his side, tracing it through the thin sheet.
“What is it?” Soobin asks again, eyes still closed.
Beomgyu's afraid to say it out loud. How to say it?
“I don’t want you to turn yourself in,” Beomgyu says in Korean.
Soobin blinks his eyes open in surprise. They’re bleary, one of his eyelids still swollen from the fight.
“You said you might.”
“Yeah,” Soobin says. He stretches under the sheet, squinting his eyes as they register the brightness of the room. He’s barely awake. “I might.”
“I don’t want you to do the right thing. I don’t want to...give you up.”
Beomgyu fists his hands into the pillow. Is he allowed to be selfish? He doesn’t act like this, ever. He does what’s good for his patients, his family, his future. He’s a good person. A helper.
“I don’t care what you did. I want you.”
Soobin slowly raises the sheet, exposing his naked body. His chest is streaked with red from Beomgyu’s nails raking over it during their second round the night before, and it’s the most beautiful thing Beomgyu has ever seen. He’s got a soft spot for beautiful things.
“Come here,” Soobin says sleepily, and Beomgyu rolls into the vacancy, balling himself into his smooth chest. His arms are strong around him, even with all their scratches and scabs. “I’m not doing anything yet.”
“It’s wrong,” Beomgyu whimpers. “I shouldn’t. But I do. I want you.”
“Nothing’s wrong about it,” Soobin murmurs. He tucks the sheet back around them, cocooning them both in his warmth. “You can have me, jagiya.”
The weather back in New York is a shock to the system after five days in Vegas. Beomgyu had totally forgotten that it’s February, and that February is cold in New York. He wore shorts on the plane.
“What the fuck are you wearing!” Yeonjun calls at him, leaning up against a row of empty baggage carts in the arrivals terminal. “It’s thirty-five degrees out, Gyu!”
“I know, I know,” he moans, hurrying toward him. Yeonjun reaches out for him, giving him a quick embrace, and Beomgyu immediately drops to open his suitcase. “And I fucking packed my jacket, too, it was a frigid hellscape in the jetway leaving the plane…”
“So tell me about it,” Yeonjun says smugly, falling to his own knees next to Beomgyu as he unzips his luggage to rummage for his jacket. “About the boy. You were so fucking vague in the texts, I wanted to punch something.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Beomgyu says, trying to sound chill. “There’s not much to say.”
“You just jumped a mile in your sneakers when I said the boy, so there’s obviously a lot to say,” Yeonjun drawls. “All you did for the last three days was text me Jun you won’t believe what I have to tell you, I can’t wait to tell you all about it, and now you’re playing coy?”
Beomgyu finds his jacket, neatly rolled into the foot of his suitcase. “Yeah, well, maybe I was just being dumb about it,” he demurs. “Overreacting.”
“You fucking weren’t,” Yeonjun says, leaning over to re-zip Beomgyu’s suitcase as Beomgyu slides his arms through the sleeves. “You never get excited about guys. This was a legit thing, wasn't it?”
“Maybe,” Beomgyu says, biting back his smile. “You took a cab here?”
“Right,” Yeonjun says. “You have to get the return fare, because it wasn’t cheap. Why did you want me to meet you here, anyway? You really needed a receiving party that badly?”
“You’ll see.” Beomgyu clambers to his feet, zipping up his jacket, and scans the signage inside the terminal’s exits. The leftmost door reads Pickup Zone A.
“So, back to the taxi stand?” Yeonjun says, standing up too and taking the handle of Beomgyu’s luggage.
“Gotta show you something first,” Beomgyu says, grabbing Yeonjun’s hand and taking off.
“At the airport? What—Gyu, slow down!”
He’d left a message on the first day, I’m on a payphone in the Rockies, you wouldn’t believe the stars here. More than in the desert, even. The second day, it was an Apple Store outside Chicago, you owe me for this phone, and I’m getting the newest one, with the three cameras. It’s not cheap. That morning, the sound of car horns honking in the background as he sat in traffic on the George Washington Bridge, Pickup Zone A at the Delta terminal. I’ll be there all day, Beomgyu-ya. Fly safe.
Beomgyu let it ring through to the machine each time his phone lit up from an unknown number, so he could listen to the recordings again, and again.
He sprints out of the terminal, beelining for the pickup lot. He’s been doing a lot more running than usual lately.
“Gotta go slower, Beomgyu! I’m an old man.”
“Yeonjun,” Beomgyu laughs back at him, as the rented minivan looms into view, idling right at the edge of the pickup lot. It’s hideous, a maroon monstrosity, the polar opposite of the Porsche. “Yeonjun, that’s him.”
Soobin is leaning against it, one hand in the pocket of his varsity jacket. His face is still a little dinged up, greenish smudges under one eye and brown scabs across the other cheekbone. He chews his lip as their eyes meet, his cheeks cracking.
“What? He’s here?”
Beomgyu lets go of Yeonjun, slowed by the suitcase. He sprints the last fifty feet, nearly tripping over his feet in his excitement to leap down from the curb, and cannonballs into Soobin’s chest.
“Hi,” Soobin whispers, tilting up Beomgyu’s chin with his index finger. “That wasn’t graceful.”
“This car is fucking hideous,” Beomgyu cries, wrapping his hands around Soobin’s neck. He’s here, in New York, in his lucky jacket, no danger in sight.
Soobin barely has to lean down to kiss him. Beomgyu’s already up on his tiptoes, pecking him over and over.
“More room to fuck in, though,” Soobin murmurs when Beomgyu finally lets him breathe. “Is this your friend?”
Beomgyu swings his teary head around to see Yeonjun standing five feet away, staring at the bruising on the side of Soobin’s handsome face in a state of mild shock.
“Yeonjun, this is Soobin,” Beomgyu laughs. “The boy.”
Yeonjun’s hand goes limp on the suitcase handle. It tips over, clattering to the ground.
“Holy fuck, Beomgyu,” he says, eyebrows shooting up. “What the fuck did you do in Vegas?”