This time, when Beomgyu wakes up, it is to the dregs of fading warmth and vicious, cold longing stabbing right through his chest.

He gasps, sitting up, confused with his hair sticking to his face and his heart galloping, automatic tears pooling in his eyes as he tries to think through his disorientation.

Fact: he's in the love motel set. Fact: he fell asleep here with Yeonjun, and now Yeonjun isn't here. Fact: his jacket is, draped halfway over Beomgyu like something of an apology.

Hypothesis: Yeonjun lay awake battling a mess of conflicting thoughts before he decided on Spain.

Beomgyu lands back on his back with a soft groan, stubbornly blinking back tears. He feels...abandoned. Distraught. He's always felt this way, like every person he loves is just out of reach, like there's a wired fence between him and them that he could never cross. He's always felt that he was unlovable, unwanted by his parents who squabbled and tore at each other, unwanted by his relatives, too quiet and odd and angry to fit in easily anywhere he goes and-

Wait.

What?

Beomgyu turns around, frowning as he presses his face into the pillow. This isn't right. His mom is a sweetheart with the nicest smile, who dotes on him and sends him strawberry preserves every second month. His dad is just like Beomgyu, excited about engineering and growing weirdly shaped cacti in his spare time, always starving for physical affection and adopting stray dogs. His relatives all call him Beommie and bring him presents every time he's in Daegu, because he's their bright, big-mouthed, scabby-kneed kid who lives all the way out in Seoul doing some business they don't understand.

He doesn't feel unwanted. He hasn't felt like a misfit in a long time, not since he found Taehyun and Soobin and the niche of vintage that's worked so well for him.

Beomgyu scowls again and rolls back around, misery pooling in his gut. Why did he have to push away everything that was good? Why couldn't he just make an effort? But he was scared, scared of getting used to this, scared of having and being able to hold only for the things he loved to be ripped away from him-

"No, no," Beomgyu mumbles, sitting up. The jacket falls off him, and he picks it up, curls his fingers into the material, not understanding.

Then it hits him.

The leather whispers.

Oh, how the leather whispers.

His head feels full of it-the cold, sharp zing of pain held tight to the chest like a jewel; of loneliness so deep and rooted that it would feed on nothing else. Of sarcasm wielded like a knife in self-defense, and empty anger that means nothing. Of love and hope, complete and uncomplicated, held at bay with walls so high and tight nothing could get through.

Beomgyu chokes back a sob. He holds onto the soft material and crawls out of bed, nearly trips over himself in his hurry. He looks around for his clothes and spots them at the corner of the mattress, folded lovingly at a corner where his sleep-kicks can't reach them, and feels a pang in his heart that's all his own. He manages to pull on the boxers and pants, ditches the shirt for just the whispering jacket, and is using speed-dial to call Taehyun even as he does the few silver buttons.

Taehyun's voice sounds sleepy. "Beomgyuie? It's like. Four thirty."

"N-need you to pick me up," Beomgyu gasps out, a little sniffle escaping him. He can hear Taehyun inhale sharply on the other end. "P-please, I-"

"Where are you?"

"Studio."

"I'm coming. Hold on."

Beomgyu's bouncing from foot to foot and running his hands through his hair by the time Taehyun's car pulls up at the entrance of the studio. He throws himself into the shotgun seat before Taehyun can even open the driver's side door. Taehyun just looks at him, pale and worried, one hand on the ignition, like he'd been thinking of turning it off.

"Go, go," Beomgyu says, gasping. "Airport. Please."

"What in the-"

"I'll explain. Taehyun-ah, please."

Taehyun presses his lips into a thin line. "His flight is at six, so whatever you're thinking of-"

"Please, I have to try."

Taehyun sighs. Then he shakes his head and presses down on the gas, and Beomgyu curls up in the seat with his fingers still clenched tight into the jacket. He tries Yeonjun's phone once, twice, but it goes straight to voice-mail. He settles for stubbornly staring at the road.

"You're freaking me out," Taehyun says, in a voice just barely south of wobbling. "What happened? Why are you wearing his jacket?"

"I can't let him run away again," Beomgyu says, gritting his teeth. All the heaviness and sadness that this piece of clothing carries around-has Yeonjun been carrying all of the same in his head? Does he really believe that he's unlovable? Beomgyu can point to a whole lot of people who think otherwise, but he knows how brains work. It's never that easy. Never that simple. These are the kind of thoughts that carve runnels down to the fundamental rock of your soul. They all have their demons, untrue and unwarranted, that they just cannot exorcise. Yeonjun's just feel a lot more potent. "I just can't."

Taehyun glances at him, worry writ clear on his face. "Beommie, I think-"

"Taehyun, I don't think he wants to go," Beomgyu clarifies, croaking through the lump in his throat. "I know he doesn't want to go."

Taehyun's gaze travels from his face to where his fingers are gripping the jacket, and something seems to click. "Oh," he says. "Okay. It's not-not one of your bad episodes, though, is it?"

"No. I don't-I just need to get there."

He sits very still for most of the ride, mostly because his mind roils with turbulence. Beomgyu doesn't wait for Taehyun to park before he's flying out of the car and towards Departures. Everything feels awful and impossible and lovely and curious. The bright lights of the airport falls across sleek wet asphalt like searchlights looking for something evasive. The leather jacket around his shoulders feels like a piece of dream, a sliver of something bright and imaginary that Beomgyu had been allowed to hold. His heart thuds against his chest. Part of it is the way the whispers crawl through him, guilty and soft and afraid to hope. He doesn't think that's the cloth alone. Has to be more than that; has to be him, too.

The other part of it is the list of flights that flicker by on the screen, only just slightly visible from the maze of cars and trolleys and disembarking passengers.

He's looking for a Paris flight.

Out of the three that he can see, craning his head over the hustle and bustle,one is on Final Call, and the other one is already showing status as Departed. There's a third that's still boarding, but Beomgyu feels his heart begin to sink anyway.

He steps back, scowling, thumbs pressed into the jacket, squaring his shoulders against the heavy weight thick in his ribs. Thoughts and images barrage him. Yeonjun, eyebrows furrowed and thoughtful, telling him how Beomgyu was stupid for placing his trust in other people. Yeonjun, fingers twined with Beomgyu's, telling him he matters. Yeonjun, blue-drenched in vague fairylight, asking him what if, what if he hurts Beomgyu again, but Beomgyu has weighed and dissected and learned a hundred different what-ifs, and he wishes he could tell Yeonjun how this is not the one that matters.

His thoughts flicker like lightning, half his own and half propelled by the heaviness of the heart that this jacket carries around in its fibers. The rain cascades down. It's just the twilight hour before dawn, the blue-warm light of a breaking morning, and Beomgyu loves this time of the day usually, loves the way the clouds all silver-up and orange threads gently through the blue. He can't focus on it today. He moves mechanically from one end of the Departures bay to the other, hoping against hoping for a familiar face, that he might catch hold of a sleeve and grab onto a hand and say stay.

Stay.

Because this is still the original story, stay.

Beomgyu bites his lip hard, trying to push away thoughts of a raging father. An indifferent mother. Hard, callous gazes that offer no warmth. Beomgyu pushes away self-doubt and hate and wall after wall raised against person after person. He reminds himself that this is not real, but these whispers are not like the glove at the auction where everything felt like a violent virtual reality game taken too far. This is not real, not to Beomgyu, but it is real to someone.

To someone he likes.

Someone he likes an awful lot.

His skin goes cold. He staggers to a bench and sits because he doesn't trust his legs, and this time there's no Yeonjun to catch him if he falls. People bustle around him, with mounds of luggage and banter and the rustle of their clothes all amplified. He digs his fingers into the side of the bench and breathes.

Why did you have to go? He thinks, and the whispers give him the answer. Because I didn't think I had any other choice.

The jacket tells him that the world was filthy and profane and messy and unfair. The jacket says survive. Beomgyu lets it wash over him because is this not only a fraction, only an infinitesmally small piece of everything that pulls at Yeonjun to make him leave again and again? Amplified-yes, true, that's what his clothes trick does-but the idea that any of these thoughts have ever passed through Yeonjun's head itself is enough heartbreak.

"Beomgyu-ah?"

There's a grounding touch on his shoulder. Beomgyu focuses on the locus of warmth that the hand provides and shivers when Taehyun slides onto the bench next to him. Taehyun's arms come up around him, pulling him to his chest, and Beomgyu gives up and just shudders against him, fighting the wild misery trying to contort his face, staring blankly at the little diamond cross-stitches on Taehyun's sweater.

Taehyun runs his hand up his back, warm and heavy."You have to take it off," he says. 'Come on, Beommie. You have to take the jacket off."

"No, not yet."

Taehyun sighs. "You're cold as ice. You're shaking. This whole trip is ridiculous. Let's go home, okay? We'll go home and we'll try his phone again. Leave a message. This is not the end of anything, right?"

"How-how do you know that?"

"I don't," Taehyun says, truthfully. "But then who does?"

"I don't want to lose him," Beomgyu says, and the wind is so strong out here now that it nearly swallows up his words. "I don't know how to explain it, I just-"

"Ssshh, you don't have to."

But he does. He does want to explain how it's so many tiny moments stacked against each other that makes up the whole picture of them-him and Yeonjun; how it's conflicted and contradictory and paradoxical but here they are; how they bicker and badger each other and speak with weaponized words but still see through each other better than most. He wants to put it into words because only then would the picture come together; wants to talk about it because only then would it make sense why he's here, in the wind and the cold, waiting around for someone who's by all means on his way to a place halfway across the world where Beomgyu can't reach him.

He wants to explain how falling for Choi Yeonjun is like a fucking avalanche-stillness and nothing and then everything-and now Beomgyu doesn't know what to do.

Taehyun runs a gentle hand through Beomgyu's hair. "We're going home now," he announces. "It's almost morning. We're going home, and then we're going to get waffles for breakfast, and then we're going to write Yeonjun hyung a long email suggesting what an idiot he is, how fucking cute you are, and what he's missing by running away every time. And we're telling him to get us some good vintage flamenco shit because god knows ruffles are fucking in and I wanna make some cash off those."

Beomgyu both sniffles and snorts because he isn't sure if Taehyun is being serious. "Tiers," he says, with a sniff.

"What?"

"Tiered skirts are in, too."

"That's my boy."

It's impossible to not keep looking back. Impossible to not hope, even as Taehyun steers him through the crowd towards the car. Beomgyu's always been a bit of a drama enthusiast, always very quick for his mother to persuade to watch sappy romances with her. He remembers curling up with her to sniffle over dramatic airport reunions and then sigh at the subsequent happily ever afters. It's not that he'd expected the happily ever after-they're messy and complicated and they're going to run against six thousand brick walls before they can even think of assembling any sort of an ever-after-but he wants at least the fucking dramatic reunion now.

He wants it.

He wants it now, so much.

"Come on," Taehyun says, tugging at his hand. Beomgyu had barely realized he'd stopped, and now he's at the very edge of the bay and the car is right here. "Beommie-"

"Yeah. Sorry."

Don't look back again, he thinks. Don't.

He loses that fight. He's still hopefully casting glances about as Taehyun pulls the car off the temporary parking spot. Still looking for him as Taehyun eases it out past the toll gates. Still hoping against heartbreak that he can at least talk to Yeonjun once, before he disappears again; that he at least can explain that he understands. He understands-so maybe come back. Maybe not now, not today, not this month.

Beomgyu just wants him to know that he can come back. That he won't disappear like black-moneyed houses or opportunistic mothers. That he will be here, like the halfway quirky side character in every fucking origin story, armed with pompoms or giant Lego models of the Death Star or whatever.

"It'll be okay," Taehyun says, and reaches to pat his knee.

Beomgyu nods. Looks one last time, his gut clenching in pain, rapidly blinking against the stupid tears threatening to escape.

He knew those fucking dramas were lying about the statistical probability of successful airport reconciliations.

***

It's with a defeated set of shoulders that Beomgyu climbs out of the car when they reach Taehyun's place. The upstairs light is on, which means Soobin or Hoseok or both are awake and waiting for Taehyun to return. The light is still hazy outside and Beomgyu doesn't want to impose, not after waking Taehyun up at this ungodly hour for a wild goose chase, so he triumphs over Taehyun's protests for him to stay and tells him he'll meet him for waffles instead. The store is only a few blocks away, and there's that perfectly awesome couch up there.

He takes the walk through the freezing drizzle, mind still hurtling in the calm light of the early dawn. Winding residential neighborhoods thrum with the first sounds of the morning-water running and pans sizzling, harried mothers hissing at sleeping children, the footsteps of joggers as they pass through the twisting routes. A convenience store clerk curses the weather as he brings out trash-bags. Beomgyu pauses to grab a warmed can of milk coffee, folding his fingers around the heat as he approaches their area.

The jacket continues to whisper.

Beomgyu sways a little. There's nothing he would like more than sleep. Blessed, peaceful sleep, for a few hours at least, just so that his thoughts clear up. Maybe he won't even miss Yeonjun that much, once divested off this jacket (who's he kidding.)

He's yawning as he unlocks the door and then bolts it from within, sighing as the sea of whispering from the store washes over any specificities. He runs his fingers through his damp hair, shakes it out like a dog, and thinks of his dog. Maybe he'll go get Blue before the waffles thing, and take him on a walk. That might help clear his head.

The bell rings when Beomgyu's on the first stair on his way to the couch.

Beomgyu's breath catches and his blood rushes hot and he's a fucking idiot to hope.

Still, he clenches a fist into the front of the jacket as he trudges back toward the door.

"Oh," he says, when it's open, because it is him. Yeonjun, with his backpack on his shoulder and wet hair and a soggy boarding pass still clutched in one hand.

His teeth chatters when he tries to talk. "K-knew you would be here."

Beomgyu nods, not trusting himself to speak.

"Did you-did you come to the airport?"

Beomgyu nods again. Yeonjun smiles at that, a gentle smile, lashes cast low and his fists clenched lightly against his sides, fingers falling slowly open.

"Saw you," he says, so soft the wind tears through most of it.

"Why didn't you-?"

Yeonjun's face twists up a little. "Couldn't."

"Okay."

Light, from some unknown source somewhere to his left, reflects off Yeonjun's cheekbone, rendering him stark and shadowed and lovely. Beomgyu feels an unsettling inside him, a gentle riot, and tries to brush it away. Yeonjun's lashes flutter.

"I didn't want to come back," he confesses, reaching out to take Beomgyu's hand, hold it hostage against his chest. "I almost got on that plane."

Beomgyu croaks, "Why didn't you?"

Yeonjun's smile is a quiet, dead thing, no mirth in it, and his eyes are bright. But his hand at least is warm, and so is the knee that knocks into Beomgyu's shin when he steps up, closer, into the store.

"Everyone fucks up in the origin story," Yeonjun says. "Everyone takes off the mantle of responsibility and throws it away for a while. Natural response, fight or flight. But everyone-everyone comes back, too. They always come back. Always, no matter how scared they are."

Beomgyu nods. "Because that's what makes it the origin story, isn't it? The first step into an unknown," he pauses a moment, thinking, and then says, "I know it's scary, hyung. I-I understand where you're coming from. I'm only asking for one chance. One chance to show you that it's worth it."

Yeonjun's hand comes up to touch gently at the leather of his jacket on Beomgyu's body.

"I should be the one asking for chances," he says, with a wry smile. "Does, uh. Does it tell you things?"

"Yes," Beomgyu says, and presses his lips together. He sees Yeonjun's gaze glance off him and away, and is struck again with how perceptive Yeonjun is. "Did you hope that it would?"

"On the contrary," Yeonjun says, and his voice is chaotic. "Hoped it wouldn't. I just thought you might wake up cold. Starfish sheets only do so much."

"Pretty chivalrous for someone who runs away so much."

Yeonjun's face contorts. "Beommie, you know I-"

"I know. You came back. That's what matters."

There's something stretched thin in Yeonjun's expression, something painfully hopeful, and he stands with his chin ducked, gaze uncertain, shrugging his shoulders.

"I still want to run. I want to run and keep running. But I'm going to-to try. Like you said, put work into this. Into you. Do you think you'd be...would you be alright, with that?"

"I'm good with that. You know I am."

Yeonjun touches his fingertips. It seems almost like a question, and Beomgyu answers it by not pulling away. "Even if it's a lot of work."

"One day at a time," Beomgyu says, biting his lip to hide his smile. Vintage is work-he thinks. Sometimes the clothes that come to the shop are tattered, stained; years worth of yellowing ruining lace, runs in silk, tears in wool and tulle and taffeta. His fingers knows work, and his mind knows patience. It couldn't be special if it didn't need work. "One minute at a time. I'm good with that too."

Yeonjun nods. The relief is palpable in the set of his shoulders, in the soft flush creeping over his cheeks. He leans forward, one hand snaking around Beomgyu's back, the other pulling him close, hugging him gently. Beomgyu closes his eyes against the first rays of sun, shining off a parking mirror across the street, hands curling against Yeonjun's chest, his own heart warm.

"You know," Yeonjun whispers, "You look like a badass in that jacket."

"Not as much as you, hyung."

"True that," Yeonjun shrugs and pulls back a bit. The curve of his mouth is savage and sweet. "You rock the vintage grandpa style the best, though."

Beomgyu stands at the threshold of his store-the slightly messy, miraculous, beautiful dream that he's made into reality, with a lot of help and a lot of love. He stands there, in the light of the rising sun, looking at this man-messy, miraculous, and beautiful as a dream.

"Are you crying?"

"What? Huh. Only a little."

Yeonjun holds his gaze, unflinching. "Why?"

"I don't know, the light is pretty."

"Weirdo," Yeonjun says, soft. "You know there's also always a kiss in the origin movies?"

"Yup," Beomgyu says. "But then the love interest gets kidnapped by the bad guys."

Yeonjun groans. "Can you just-just go along with me, for once?"

Beomgyu closes his eyes and leans forward, just a little, palms on Yeonjun's chest still and fiercely aware of the thump of his heart beneath his fingers. Yeonjun chuckles a bit, and then his lips are warm on Beomgyu's, the slide of his tongue hot and wet against Beomgyu's mouth.

He feels bigger than his body. Warmer than the sunlight splayed across their skin. He recognizes the galloping happiness that comes from loving something, something strange and difficult and wonderful that also loves you back. The galloping happiness that feels so big, so all-encompassing, that it floods his whole body with the sheer, massive giddiness of it.

"Oh," he squeaks, when Yeonjun pulls away to look at him. "By the way, this origin story isn't PG 13, okay?"

Yeonjun grins, big and gummy and bright. "Nope. It sure isn't."

Then he smiles and kisses Beomgyu again.

The whispers of the jacket quietens, fades to nothing in the rush of blood in Beomgyu's ears. He thinks, with luck and love, that they might really fade away, become nothing.

He thinks he would love that. He knows Yeonjun would love that.

Beomgyu could get used to this.