cold | junhao

二十八

By the time the five of them stumble through the hotel lobby, the sky is dark above them, the golden lights of the city twinkling like tiny stars over the rippling water. Jun and Minghao split off from yeji and Yuqi as they venture towards the front desk to collect their room keys. Renjun loiters off to the side by himself. He hasn't spoken much since they met up at the airport, but it's obvious he's shattered, so Jun leaves him be.

The girls walk back over and hand them a key, passing one to Renjun and keeping the other for themselves.

Before they can walk off, Yuqi quickly holds them back. "So tomorrow," she says. "What time should we eat? And when will we leave?" It's in that instant that Jun realises, damn, this is the first time they've been together without having someone setting out a strict hour-by-hour schedule for them. He chuckles nervously, suddenly tongue-tied.

Thankfully Renjun beats him to it. "It's not like we're on a shoot," he laughs dryly, "We can do whatever we want! We've got three days to do whatever we want to do." He slowly takes a step back, rubbing at his eyes. "So see you at midday, earliest." With that, he trudges up the stairs, turning his back on them as Minghao stifles a laugh.

With a huff, Yuqi shrugs and bids the two boys goodnight, before following after Renjun with Yeji tagging along behind.

Jun slips behind Minghao to grab their suitcase, taking it from him as Minghao lets out the biggest yawn he's ever seen. Jun chuckles, ruffling his boyfriend's hair and locking their fingers together. "Come on," he prompts, trying to hint at the barely conscious Minghao to follow him to their room.

"I'm not strong enough to carry you as well as the suitcase." As much as he would like to, there's no way in hell Jun is going to carry Minghao on his back whilst also lugging a suitcase up the stairs. Eventually Minghao wakes up enough to let him lead him up the stairs, feeling his feet drag with every step until finally, they stop in front of a door.

Both of them flop onto the bed as soon as they step through into the room. Leaving the suitcase discarded by the entrance, Minghao instantly falls asleep, still fully clothed with his shoes on while Jun sits on the edge of the mattress on his phone.

When he looks over at Minghao, he smiles. Slowly, Jun eases his shoes off as well as the scarf around his neck, hoping to make him a little more comfortable. Minghao lets out a small sigh, tucks his knees closer to his chest and wraps his arms around them, quickly falling faster asleep and stopping Jun from doing anything else.

He checks his phone. It's barely eight o'clock. He can still hear the remnants of the day's festivities from outside the window, with faint music fluttering through the cracks in the frame as well as cheerful and giddy voices bouncing off the buildings.

Jun shrugs his coat off, leaving it hooked over the armchair in the corner of the room and takes his jeans off, quickly replacing them with a pair of joggers before crawling under the bedcovers.

He only stays awake for another half an hour or so, before the jet lag catches up to him and Jun goes out like a light, leaving the bedside lamp turned on beside him as he sinks into a deep sleep.

Early the next morning, when the streets are barely quiet and the city is yet to wake, leaving the birds chirping to each other under the bright and blissful sun, Minghao finds himself waking up much earlier than he's used to.

"What the hell?" he mutters to himself after switching his phone on. It blinkers in his face to tell him it's just gone 5 am and normally, Minghao would be fast asleep right now, except he's wide awake and knows he has no chance of sleeping another wink. Letting his gaze drift around the room, at first he's confused at the unfamiliarity, until it clicks. Right, he thinks to himself. This is why.