Beomgyu tries valiantly to stay awake through the drive to the airport. He tries to engage Yeonjun in conversation, but learns quickly that he's not going to get anything but grunts in reply to his (very valid) concerns about Royal Bengal Tiger. Then he takes to playing with the radio dial, and Yeonjun slaps his hand away.

"Cut it out."

"I want the pop station."

"Not your car, Beommie. Cut it out."

"Hyung, you're listening to white noise."

"I like white noise. It's relaxing," Yeonjun's tone is astoundingly flat. "And don't say that's weird. You have 10 hours of Nyan Cat downloaded on your phone; Kai saw and told me."

"Nyan cat is a rainbow cat," Beomgyu says, distractedly, focusing his attention on drawing faces in the condensation. "Hyung, look, I drew one that looks like you."

Yeonjun sighs. "Can you sit still? Go back to sleep."

He asked.

Beomgyu tells himself that's why he finds it difficult to wake up even when they reach the airport, even when they park, even when Yeonjun walks out of the car and then comes back to tell him his flight is canceled.

"-did you even hear me? Beomgyu."

"Whaa-aaat?"

"What do you want to do? Your flight's canceled. Foul weather."

"Oh." He frowns, raising his head a bit, and immediately presses it back down against the glass. The glass is nice and cool. His head feels hot. He's way too drowsy. "When's the next one? I have to go to Tokyo. Promised Taehyun."

Yeonjun sighs. "Just how much syrup did you drink, Beommie ?"

"A lot," Beomgyu mumbles."It was sweet. Strawberries."

He thinks Yeonjun asks something about rescheduling, something about four hours, and there's a small window of time for which he's semi-awake and there's airport security and some giant, glassy lounge with a lot of plants that he's never seen before. There's a big round sofa as well, and he imagines this is what heaven's like, curling up on that nice sofa with his hands wrapped around a cushion that Yeonjun throws at him.

Beomgyu comes to-willfully, properly-what feels like hours later, in that expensive looking airport lounge with a dry mouth and the sight of Yeonjun curled into a very tiny ball on a very tiny looking armchair.

It takes a while for this to register. Beomgyu sits up and fiddles with the hem of his jacket for a while, eyebrows knit and frowning as he tries to figure out what's going on here. Yeonjun should be home by now, possibly cussing Beomgyu out as he works on his next award-winning campaign or whatever, not sleeping in an uncomfortable airport lounge chair with his cheek smushed up against the upholstery and hands curled into fists. He even looks kind of adorable, but Beomgyu's world-weary enough to know that this adorableness is in the way of those weird mantis shrimp.

Bright and beautiful and creatively murderous.

What's he doing here? Beomgyu clambers slowly over the sofa to hang off the edge and poke Yeonjun experimentally with his toe. It's probably the safest position to attempt this from. Survival rates look way better than, say, if he goes next to the armchair to shake Yeonjun awake.

"Hyung."

Yeonjun flicks opens one eye immediately, in a move that looks calibrated precisely for horror movies. Beomgyu's so startled he nearly falls off the sofa.

"Holy fuck! I thought you were asleep."

"I was."

Beomgyu clambers up to the point of optimum safety again. "Hyung. What are you doing here?"

Yeonjun yawns, sitting up and wincing as he rubs at the back of his neck. "What does it look like I'm doing, Beomgyu?"

Beomgyu's nonplussed. What it looks like is that Yeonjun dragged a half-awake, hazy Beomgyu through security, then bought him a replacement ticket to Tokyo, and then dragged him into this lounge. And now he's waiting around because....Beomgyu's an idiot and would probably miss his flight?

Fuck.

Beomgyu leans to grab a water-bottle, trying not to show his mortification. He's not usually this pathetic, he wants to tell Yeonjun. It's just that Yeonjun seems to have an uncanny knack for throwing him off his usual patterns and then hanging around to see that he doesn't fall.

"You can leave now, hyung. I'm awake."

Yeonjun snorts. For a minute he says nothing, just watches Beomgyu sleepily, fractionally hostile and eyes dark as pitch. Then he leans forward, bridging the gap between them, and it's terrifying just for a moment, has Beomgyu gulping and nearly somersaulting away. But then Yeonjun just flicks his forehead and presses his palm to it, halfway rolling his eyes in exasperation.

"You're an idiot," Yeonjun says, grumpily, and he may as well have been speaking the gospel with the amount of nodding Beomgyu does in agreement. "And you're sick. And if I were going to leave, Beomgyu, I don't think they'd let me in the lounge. You need tickets for that."

This doesn't compute. His head still feels thick and hot, but Yeonjun isn't saying what Beomgyu thinks he said, is he? Because that would be ridiculous. Nobody did that. Least of all a purported misanthrope like Yeonjun claims he is.

"Hyung, I-"

"I'm coming with you," Yeonjun says, simply, and plucks his hand away from Beomgyu's forehead to curl into his armchair again. "You're still burning up. Can't have you dying in a foreign country alone-Hyung would never forgive me."

Beomgyu sits up properly now, heart clenching a bit, because fuck. This is nonsense. He's no one: Yeonjun's made that clear. Just a business acquaintance with a knack for getting into trouble. His stomach twists at the thought of being an inconvenience. And shit, how out of it had he been that Yeonjun thought this was necessary?

Yeonjun's looking at him lazily, careless and with something close to fond disdain. "What?"

Beomgyu hopes he doesn't sound like he feels: like he's trying to scrape up whatever dignity he has left off the fucking floor. He's mortified. It's probably not a good look on him: he wouldn't really know. Beomgyu's never usually mortified. "You don't have to do this, hyung. I'll manage."

Yeonjun raises one eyebrow. "Oh?" he scoffs. "The track record hasn't been great for you, Beomgyu-ah."

"I know," Beomgyu tries, fingers creeping involuntarily towards the cushion he'd been hugging and-no. No, he doesn't deserve to hide. Not after what he pulled. "I know. But you don't have to come to Tokyo with me, I'll take care of it. Please, just-just go."

"Possibly too late for that," Yeonjun says, checking his watch. "We have maybe an hour until boarding."

"But you have work tomorrow-"

"Nothing Kai can't take care of." Yeonjun smirks a little, dropping his head back onto the armchair as Beomgyu gives up and wraps himself around the cushion. "Speaking of-Kai would kill me if I let his favorite new curiosity get hurt."

"Hyung, really, you don't have to babysit me."

Yeonjun yawns again and picks lightly at his fingernails. "Whatever happened to I only adopt good humans?"

Beomgyu groans and slams his face into the cushion. "I'm a disaster."

When he looks up again, Yeonjun looks almost amused. There's a definite curl to his lips that isn't a Pitying Sneer as much as it is an Entertained Smirk. It comes with a heavy side dosage of slow, stirring delight that he tries to quickly disguise in a grumpy pout.

Beomgyu can tell, though. He can always tell the various ways in which Let's Laugh at the Idiot manifests in people, and usually it sort of crawls cold up his spine, but Yeonjun's not being malicious-Beomgyu doesn't think.

He just seems genuinely both exasperated and entertained.

"I don't know," Yeonjun says now, in a placatory tone that does nothing to quell Beomgyu's growing anxiety at the whole situation. "I haven't taken a break in a while."

"You don't want to take a break at an auction, hyung," Beomgyu tries, desperately. "It's always a bloodbath."

"Haven't seen a bloodbath in a while, either."

Beomgyu pouts into his cushion again. "I thought you said I was annoying and hard to work with."

"You are," Yeonjun says, dismissively. "It's just the snob appeal of the whole situation. A fucking vintage auction in Harajuku-will there be expensive wines? Cheeses and truffles and amuse bouches?"

"...Yes."

"Well it's wasted on you with this cold, isn't it?"

Beomgyu frowns, picking at a thread on the cushion, casting his thoughts out in an effort to figure out what he's going to do. There's always his favorite mental exercise-WWKTD (What Would Kang Taehyun Do)-but he doesn't want to listen to the answer this time, because what Kang Taehyun would 100% do is throw up his hands and embrace the fact that he now has a willing if terrifying travel partner. (Kang Taehyun would also add the descriptor hot to those previous adjectives, but Beomgyu is not going there.)

Anyway, the variables that WWKTD has taken into account are not the only variables in this equation. There's the fact that Yeonjun's looking at him now like a cat catching sight of something to play with. There's the fact that Yeonjun's spent most of the last day tormenting him with the name of that accursed play, just because it riles Beomgyu up. There's the fact that it might be hard to concentrate on the auction with Choi Yeonjun-inspiration but also infuriation-looming over his shoulder.

There's also the fact that Yeonjun's doing this for him.

It's sweet and kind and Beomgyu's trying not to associate those words with him, because everyone and Choi Yeonjun himself has told him that it doesn't fit. That way only lies heartache. But even now, he feels like Yeonjun's gruff protestations are just that: a mask, a front of defense.

And maybe Beomgyu's familiar with that-with how it feels to obsessively construct your own self-image to protect what's inside-but now there's a muddled knot in his chest when he thinks of Choi Yeonjun, and he doesn't know what to do with it.

All he can do now probably is just embrace the fuck out of it.

He looks at Yeonjun and sighs. "I really want to kick myself right now."

Yeonjun hitches an eyebrow. "Be my guest."

Beomgyu stands up, and very carefully, very delicately, kicks up at his own thigh.

"Yay," Yeonjun says, punching the air with the laziest fist ever, his tone a dead, flat thing that sounds like it came out of a murderbot. "Vacation time."