Running to You | Park Han + JL + Steven | Haneulz + Stejay AU

Chapter 78: Coming Home

Seoul had not changed.

Not in the ways that mattered, anyway. The traffic still moved like it was being chased. The neon signs still flickered in the haze. The air felt filtered through old paper, a little too close to your skin, like the city had opinions it wasn't voicing.

JL stepped off the van and felt none of the usual comfort of homecoming -- no familiar warmth, no relief. Just the city waiting,  blank-eyed and disinterested. It hadn't changed at all.

But JL -- he had changed.

He stepped off the van and squinted at the skyline, half-expecting it to react to the version of him returning. This wasn't the JL who'd left. This one had been kissed by two different men in the span of two weeks. This one had posed in front of cameras, pulled tight by invisible strings, caught between hunger and heat and the quiet realization that maybe, just maybe, he was worth fighting over.

The others poured out around him. Shuaibo announced that Australian pillows were a scam, whatever that meant. Woongki made dramatic gagging noises about reheated airplane bulgogi. Steven walked ahead, wheeling JL's suitcase with one hand, not looking back. JL didn't ask him to. Steven had started doing that lately -- small kindnesses disguised as routine.

And Han was already waiting ahead of everyone else. Of course he was.

Standing by the gate like a sentence you didn't want to read again, arms crossed, gaze unreadable, buffeted by the wind blowing across the tarmac.

JL's stomach sank -- soft, involuntary. Not from dread.

It was want. Clean and terrifying. Because Australia hadn't been a dream. Han had kissed him, twice, and JL had kissed back.

He was still humming with it, like a string that hadn't stopped vibrating. Han stepped forward and took his duffel like it belonged to him. Their hands nearly touched.

JL's breath caught. He didn't look up, because if he did, he might forget that he was supposed to act like nothing happened. Like he was still the same boy who had landed in Australia with plans to keep his head down and his scholarship intact.

Wanting was dangerous. Wanting meant forgetting why he was here.

* * * 

JL's apartment looked exactly the same, just more stale.

Dust had colonized the corners. The air smelled of old routines and unopened mail. JL dropped his bags at the door, stood there for a moment, and stared at the fan. When he finally turned it on, it sputtered once, wheezed like an old man, then groaned into rotation.

Everything was exactly as he left it, and somehow that made it worse. He felt wired. Edgy. A little drunk on the last few days -- on luxury villa sheets and stolen glances, on Steven's soft voice at midnight and Han's impossible gaze burning into him like it had always belonged there.

He stripped off his shirt -- clothes still holding the ghost of detergent from a different house and the scent of sunscreen. He kicked off his sneakers and jeans and stretched out on the floor like it was a bed of grass instead of tile. His phone buzzed. He ignored it. He wanted the silence to last.

 Then he opened his laptop. No notifications. Except one.

Subject: saw the ad.

He didn't have to guess who it was from. But he clicked anyway.

this is what you do when i'm not around?
prance like a peacock with privileged pretty boys like you're one of them?
you've gotten so soft.
let me remind you --
you're not one of them, and never will be.