It ends like this:

Junhyung and Sungho and Taeyeob, hands gripped tight, sirens in their ears and lights in their eyes, teetering on the edge of a bridge in someone else’s shoes.

I know something you don’t know.

It’s nowhere Junhyung hasn’t been before.  Taeyeob always dreamed of flying.  Sungho has endless faith.

The only way out…

...is up, then down.

It starts like this:

Sungho never liked running in school.  He found it boring and exhausting and tiresome, going around a track like a hamster on a wheel, on and on, no destination and no motivation.  Enough to make any sane person go crazy.

Now, streets ahead and streets behind, Sungho can say that he’s starting to understand the joys of a good run.  He just needed that fire under his ass — a debt, a bad deal, a fight he’s never going to win, and he’s off like a rocket through the warren of side streets that make up the city’s underbelly.  Faster, faster, until his heart pounds and his lungs burn and he’s laughing because there’s only one way this ends — with a bang and a whimper, both his.

He takes the first punch with a grin, the second with a grimace, and the third with a groan.  Crumpled on the ground, oozing blood and gasping to regain his breath, he thinks that maybe he should have taken his physical education more seriously back in school.

Sungho patches himself up as best he can with a convenience store first aid kit.  He’s lucky that his face took the least of it, only a cut up near his hairline that it’s easy to disguise with a bandage and pushing his bangs to the side.  He goes through the world relying on his soft features and soft voice and generally unthreatening appearance to gain access to places he might not otherwise.  It’s how he gets into a bar, gets close enough to palm some girl’s car keys,  easy with a little misdirection.  It was one of the first grifts he learned.

And then he’s out, behind the wheel and nowhere to go.  He’s sure he’ll find a destination soon enough — he always does.

Taeyeob knows he’s pretty.  Pretty eyes, pretty lips, pretty everything.  And he likes making other people pretty, too, knows how to bring it out of them with quick hands to paint a lip red or brush carmine dye onto hair.  A deft expertise that keeps his customers coming back.  He never stains a client’s skin.  He takes pride in his work, and he doesn’t make an exception for the guy that walks in just as he’s about to close.  He seems polite enough, Taeyeob thinks, drawing a cape around the man’s shoulders.

Ten minutes later and Taeyeob’s panicked and desperate on the floor.  This is a different kind of stain entirely.  This is a stain he can’t wash out, all over the ground, all over his hands, his body, his clothes, red all over and what is he going to do?  This is his store, it’s in his name, and he’d taken so much pride in that even just this morning, but now it’s one more nail in his coffin when the police come to find him.  They don’t care about boys like him, not with a man that rich and important bleeding out on the ground.  No one will care what really happened.

He stumbles outside, shivering in just his tanktop since he left his blood soaked shirt behind.  Into the parking garage — maybe if he can get to his car fast enough, if he can drive somewhere no one knows his name or why his hands tremble, he won’t get caught —

The events that lead him to the passenger seat of Sungho’s stolen car are blurry and vague.  Maybe there’s a psychic kinship in running from something you can’t escape.  Maybe they’re both just damned.

Frankly, Taeyeob doesn’t care, as long as they drive away, away, away.

Junhyung thinks twenty-four years on this planet is enough for him. He's had enough.

He might have been gone at twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three if he weren't such a coward about it.  Every birthday he thinks about it, climbs up to the bridge and looks down and then goes home and smokes until he can't think about anything anymore.

Sitting around his apartment is kind of a death of its own, he thinks, unpaid bills piling up alongside empty takeout containers and unanswered voicemails.  He's overdue on rent by two months at least, and every day could be the day he's kicked out of the shitty complex for good.  It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened — before this apartment, he’d been surfing couches for months, and when friends couldn’t take him, he’d spent a few nights sleeping on the floor of the ballet studio he’d been working at part-time.

Tonight is no different from any other night. The air inside tastes stale and rank enough to drive him outside, wandering with nowhere to go in particular. The streets are empty as a graveyard, nothing to take him out of his haze.

He doesn't make a conscious decision to stumble out in front of the car — one moment he sees headlights and the next moment he's sprawled on the pavement with pain in his ribs and blood on his teeth. He grimaces a laugh — pain is good, pain is wonderful, it sparks in his veins and makes him feel alive in a way nothing else does, like the burn of ash or the sharp ache of dancing en pointe.

Just as Junhyung’s staggering to his feet, one of the most beautiful boys he’s ever seen gets out of the passenger seat and punches him in the face and, fuck, yes. Junhyung laughs some more, unable to stop — he offered his body up to the universe a while ago, and if this is what the universe wants to do with it, he's just gonna let it happen.  A second guy trips out of the driver’s side, tries to drag pretty boy off, but it doesn't work. Pretty boy goes at it again, a mean left hook that has him seeing stars.

The driver finally does succeed in dragging pretty boy off Junhyung, offering a hand to pull him up. Junhyung doesn't miss that he’s pretty too, and that he has the remnants of blood under his fingernails, the detail cutting through his brain fog. Pretty hands, he thinks, stuttering over words as the guy wipes blood off his lip, eyebrows knit together.

He doesn't learn their names until he's in the backseat of their car, speeding off into parts unknown.

They drive through the night, Sungho's eyes fixed on the middle distance. Taeyeob doesn't dare ask where they're going. Junhyung doesn't care.

With the dawn comes an empty gas tank, and Taeyeob quietly requests that they stop for food. The gas station is so remote that he doubts they even have a working TV, so no news reports that could give them away.  Sungho pulls in with a slight screech — he says he’s still getting used to the touchy brakes on this car.

"I’ll grab us something,” Sungho says.  “You got money to fill up?”

Taeyeob nods.  He watches Sungho head into the attached convenience store for food and coffee.  He doesn't miss the way the clerk's eyes follow him.  Taeyeob checks quickly to make sure Junhyung's not dead in the back (he isn't, just half-asleep and curled up in a way that must be uncomfortable) and hops out to fill the tank.

Sungho returns with three coffees in a flimsy cardboard tray and some shitty pre-packaged pastries in a bag just as Taeyeob pops the trunk. Sungho doesn't drop the coffee, but it's close thing.  Instead, he puts the tray on the roof of the car and bangs on the back window.

"Junhyung," he calls, banging harder when he doesn’t get a response.  "Junhyung, come out here."

"What?" Junhyung mumbles.  He exits the car looking like death warmed over and comes to stand beside the two of them.

Silence hangs heavy in the early morning air.

"Oh."  Junhyung pushes his bangs away from his face; his eyes are wider and more alert than the other two have yet seen them.  "Well, shit."

"Yeah," Sungho agrees.  "Shit."

They drive far enough that Taeyeob starts breathing easier and Sungho no longer feels like a caged animal and Junhyung stares out the window in wonder at scenery he’s never seen before.  Then they drive some more.

They stop at gas stations and rest areas and weird little roadside attractions more and more frequently as they get further away from their origin point and closer to their… destination?  Destiny?  It doesn’t matter, as long as they leave dust in their wake.

Taeyeob laughs as he puts a series of ridiculous novelty hats on Junhyung’s head at an out-of-the-way museum along the highway.  If Sungho didn’t know better, he’d think that Taeyeob was too pretty and delicate to be out here with people like them, a flower in the desert yearning for rain, except that Sungho has seen him cleaning the blood off his hands.  Saw the flint in his pretty eyes.

Sungho might be distracted keeping one eye on the exit at all times — an instinct he developed fast and early — but he’d have to be blind and stupid to miss the way Junhyung bends in Taeyeob’s direction like he’s the only thing tethering Junhyung to this world.  Something sharp makes itself known in Sungho’s chest — jealousy?  Irritation?

Taeyeob turns to look at him, quirks those pretty, pretty lips.  Junhyung, cowboy hat still crooked on his head, follows like a puppy, handsome even with dark circles under his eyes.

Greed, Sungho thinks.  That’s a feeling he’s very familiar with, spark to flame to ash.  Greed never ends well for him, but god, will he enjoy it while he has it in his grasp.

Taeyeob dyes his hair black in their shitty motel mirror, lips pursed and concentration lining his face.  Junhyung watches him from the bathtub where his own bleach job is settling in.  Sungho can’t help but smirk remembering the way Junhyung’s eyes had closed at the feeling of Taeyeob’s fingers against his scalp — had he even been aware of how obvious he looked?

Taeyeob doesn’t seem to mind, though, humming along with the radio as his hair goes from chocolate to the color of dark ink.  Sungho concentrates on counting the stacks of bills they have, stashing it in various duffels and items of clothing that they’ve picked up along the way.

“I got some for you, too,” Taeyeob calls as he washes the bleach out of Junhyung’s hair.  “If you want it.”

Sungho likes his hair just the way it is, thank you, but he’d be an idiot to pass up the extra layer of safety that comes with the change.  Sighing heavily, he strips his shirt off and allows Taeyeob to sit him down on the edge of the tub.  He balks when he sees the box Taeyeob pulls out.

“Absolutely not —”

“Come on, it’ll look really nice on you,” Taeyeob wheedles, shaking the box of orange-red dye.  “Redheads are sexy.”

“Don’t you have any more black?”

“This is what I got, take it or leave it.”  He pouts those pretty lips and Sungho feels his resolve crack slightly.

“Just let him do it,” Junhyung calls from the other room.  “He’s good at it.”

Sungho groans and crosses his arms, resigning himself to his fate.  Taeyeob gives him a pleased smile that shatters his heart the rest of the way open.

He can’t deny that it feels nice to have Taeyeob’s hands on him, warm on his scalp even through the cheap plastic gloves.  The dye is cold and sticky but Taeyeob’s soft humming keeps him warm.  He cracks his eyes open to catch Junhyung watching them through the open door, his gaze trailing over Sungho’s bare torso before snapping to his face.  Junhyung’s ears redden at being caught.  A dull pleasure takes root in Sungho’s stomach, brings a tiny smile to his face.

Someone’s lit a fuse, the little flame taking in fibers and oxygen greedily, and it’s winding its way towards the three of them.

“Let’s find a party,” Taeyeob suggests later, as Sungho’s combing fingers through his new auburn hair, oddly pleased with the color.  “I think we deserve it.”

One shot, two shots, and they quickly discover that Junhyung can’t hold his liquor at all.  He requires both of them to hold him up, red-faced and giggling and limbs everywhere.  Taeyeob’s laughing, too, faring a little better despite also being a lightweight — at least he seems to know his own limits.  Sungho’s easily caught up in it, swept under a like a riptide, exhilarating and dangerous.

They’re dancing close, Junhyung pressed between them despite being the tallest of their trio, the pretense of holding him up fading quickly under the deep red lights that sweep the floor.  So many anonymous faces, sweat and skin and life, and they’re just three more — no past, no future, nothing but hot blood and adrenaline.

This close, Sungho can feel Junhyung’s chest against his own, the jut of his hipbones under Sungho’s hands as Sungho pulls him even closer, dancing dirty just because he can.  Over the bass thudding like a heartbeat, he can just barely hear the little noise Junhyung makes as Sungho’s thigh presses up between his.

His skin sparks electric when Taeyeob’s hand lands on Sungho’s waist, squeezing the three of them even tighter — a closed circuit, a shared secret, three near-strangers dancing like they have nothing to lose.

They dance until the party’s over and their feet ache.

They stop at a drive-in movie theater, sitting on the roof of the car and bickering over snacks.  After the movie ends, fireworks begin to split open the night sky.

“What’re we celebrating?” Sungho asks, hugging his knees to his chest, eyes wide and reflecting hues of green and blue and red.  Junhyung hangs off his back like a cat seeking out the nearest source of heat.

“I don’t know,” Taeyeob replies.  “I’m not sure what day it is.”

Sungho goes out for cigarettes and comes back to a strangely quiet motel suite.  He assumes the other two are asleep and collapses on the shitty couch, the door to the bedroom slightly ajar.  He lights up, exhaling a long plume of smoke into the already-stale air when he hears a creak, a low murmur.

It’s not that hard to figure it out.  Sungho’s fucked before — it’s been a while, but he hasn’t forgotten what it sounds like.

He doesn’t know what they sound like, though, and so he stands as quietly as he can and lingers near the open door.  They’d see him, if they were to turn around and look, but he doesn’t care — what does it matter if he’s caught looking?

A groan — Junhyung’s, he’s sure, by the tone.  Taeyeob coos, says something soothing and gentle that nonetheless makes Junhyung shake the bed with the force of his squirming.

Sungho wants desperately to flip on the lights, to see exactly what it is that Taeyeob’s doing to Junhyung that’s making him lose his mind like that, but it’s not the right time.

Instead, he slinks away, grinding his cigarette into the ashtray on the coffee table and heading into the bathroom to jerk off.

Tonight’s bar is more of a dive, less of a club.  Only a few people are dancing, and the music’s slow and sedate.  No DJ in sight, just whatever the bartender decides to play out of the decrepit sound system.

Taeyeob’s up at the bar, waiting on their drinks.  It looks like he’s talking with the woman sitting next to him, his posture relaxed and easy-going.  Sungho’s always envied those who can chat people up wherever they go – he has a few scripts he falls back on when he’s running a grift, but genuine conversation with strangers has always eluded him.

“You’re distracted,” Junhyung says.  He squeezes Sungho’s waist, brings his attention back to the places where their bodies meet.  They’re not dancing dirty – this isn’t the place for it – but it’s close.  Intimate.

“Sorry,” Sungho replies automatically, adjusting his arms around Junhyung’s shoulders, one hand cupping the side of his neck.  He can feel when Junhyung hums acknowledgement, then goes quiet.

He likes that about Junhyung.  He likes the quiet.

They sway, and sway, one song melting into another.  Sometimes they get too close to another couple on the floor and Junhyung guides them smoothly away, hands steady, his lead easy to follow.

“You’re a good dancer,” Sungho says.  He surprises himself with the lack of motive behind the compliment.  Junhyung smiles sheepishly.

“Yeah, well, I was supposed to be…”  He looks over Sungho’s head, gaze somewhere else.  “Supposed to be something.”

Sungho wants to ask what happened, but a selfish part of him doesn’t want to know.  Wants to keep Junhyung like this, swaying in this bar, without any baggage or pain encroaching on them.   He wants the best parts of Junhyung, wants to give Junhyung the best parts of himself in return and keep the worst hidden away.  If they never speak it aloud, maybe it can be like it was never there at all.

They drive and drive and drive.  Taeyeob thinks they must have reached the end of the world by now, but the road just stretches on.  The landscape shifts with the days but never seems to change.

Sungho always drives, no matter what.  Junhyung never learned how, but he doesn’t think it would matter — Taeyeob offers, but Sungho refuses each time, even when he’s clearly exhausted and there hasn’t been any sign of civilization for twenty miles.

It’s on one of these infinite days that Junhyung finally asks the question that none of them have been willing to voice:

“Where are we going?”

Sungho remains silent, but Junhyung can see the way his knuckles go white on the steering wheel.  Taeyeob cranes his head back from the front seat and shoots him a look, but Junhyung ignores it.

“Why?” Sungho bites out.

“I just —” Junhyung starts, but Sungho cuts him off.

“We’ll know when we get there.”

Junhyung’s chest tightens with irritation, but he snaps his mouth shut.  Even in this short time, he’s come to understand that it’s no use arguing with Sungho when he’s like this.  He crosses his arms tightly across his chest and glares out the window instead, at the endless trees shooting by.  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Taeyeob put his hand on Sungho’s shoulder — tentative, like he’s approaching the tangle of wires in a ticking bomb.

“We can’t keep going forever,” he says, gently.  Sungho won’t look at him, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

They keep driving.

It’s a club tonight and Taeyeob’s dancing with him, pressed so close that Junhyung can’t breathe.  Taeyeob’s arms around his neck, hands in his bleach-fried hair, thigh between Junhyung’s legs and hips shifting to the thrum of the bass that rattles his bones.

Like this, Junhyung feels unstoppable.  He could do anything, take on the world and win, jump off a bridge and fly instead of fall.  He wants Taeyeob to fuck him right there on the dancefloor, wants to get in the car and go a hundred-fifty down the highway until they crash and burn.

He wants—

A prickling on the back of his neck, and he turns just enough to see Sungho at the bar, just… watching.  Junhyung feels his ears go red but he doesn’t turn away.  He looks back, fingers tightening on Taeyeob’s waist.  Look at us.  Don’t you want us?

Sungho’s eyes are hungry.  It makes Junhyung shiver, the promise in them.

The song shifts to something slower, something lower.  Sungho turns away and orders another drink.

Junhyung crawls into his bed the next night, with the moon shining past the grimy curtains.  Sungho can hear his breath over the roar of the window-unit air conditioner.  Strong arms wrap around Sungho’s waist, a cold nose nuzzling against his collarbone.  Fine hair brushes under his chin.

Sungho thinks for a moment about asking, demanding to know what this is — Taeyeob is right there, why him?

If they wanted to stop moving, they could easily leave him behind.

Sungho tentatively slings his arm around Junhyung’s shoulders.  Something tender and soft inside him cracks and bruises at the way Junhyung slumps and curls in closer.

Taeyeob insists on doing them up properly for once, laying out his haul on the table — the best the drugstore had to offer.  He does his own makeup first in the bathroom mirror, glitter on his eyelids and brushed onto his cheeks, a dark stain on his lips to accentuate their curve, followed by gloss that shines in the low light.  Junhyung can’t stop staring.

Sungho goes next, sitting in the armchair that seems to follow them from motel to motel — always the same color, always the same scratchy fabric.  Junhyung watches cross-legged from the bed, rapt.

Taeyeob brushes shimmering powder on Sungho’s eyelids, creating a shadowy effect that accentuates the way they always seem to sit half-closed.  He’s good at this, though Junhyung supposes that it makes sense, given his line of work.  He holds his breath, watching the way Taeyeob touches Sungho so delicately, so gently.  Knowing how those fingers feel on his own skin, wondering how Taeyeob might be different if they were to —

“Junhyung?”  Taeyeob’s smiling, like it’s not the first time he’s said Junhyung’s name.  Junhyung flushes on the tips of his ears and goes to take Sungho’s place in the chair.  He closes his eyes immediately before Taeyeob can ask.  Taeyeob hums a pleased noise.

“Good boy,” he says, quietly, and even that small thing has Junhyung shivering.  He can’t help it.  He just barely catches a low noise from his left — Sungho.

Taeyeob doesn’t spend much time on Junhyung’s eyelids, doing something that feels simple.  Then, a wide brush on the lines of his cheekbones, spreading a powder that smells faintly sweet.

Last, his lips.  Junhyung inhales shakily as Taeyeob taps on his bottom lip to coax them open slightly.  He waits for a long moment, anticipating sticky gloss or the chemical scent of lipstick — he doesn’t expect the quick, warm press of Taeyeob’s lips against his for a long moment.  Before he can kiss back, Taeyeob’s pulling away.

“Yeah,” Taeyeob says, “that’s pretty.”  Junhyung presses his lips together, feeling the sticky pull of the gloss that’s transferred.

Taeyeob takes hold of Junhyung’s chin with sure fingers, turning him to look at Sungho.  He’s watching from the bed, pupils blown wide.  His undisguised lust is only accentuated by his makeup.

“Isn’t he pretty?” Taeyeob asks, sly smile apparent in his voice.  Junhyung watches Sungho swallow.

“Yeah,” he replies, hand clenching in the fabric of his pants.  “You’re so pretty, Junhyung.”

It’s like they’ve been dragging a rubber band all the way from the city and it’s finally, finally snapped.

Junhyung breaks free of Taeyeob’s hold, surging out of the chair and over to Sungho in two long strides.  Sungho catches his momentum, draws the kinetic energy into his own body and transforms it into heat and spark.  Junhyung’s lips are sticky with gloss, a little chapped underneath once Sungho’s licked it off, and perfect.

The bed dips behind him, Taeyeob’s hands around Sungho’s waist, Taeyeob’s lips on the back of his neck, and Sungho’s taken with the overwhelming desire to consume them both, to cut them up into little pieces and hide them away like he hides their money and car keys and valuables, precious and safe and untouchable.

Sungho discovers that Taeyeob smiles into his kisses like he's hiding a secret; that Junhyung just wants to be told that he's doing well, doing so good, making them feel good; that when they're together, time slows to a syrupy thickness.

He finds that Junhyung’s hair still feels silky despite the bleach, that it makes him shiver when Sungho runs his fingers through it and tugs.  That Taeyeob’s sadistic streak makes itself known when he leaves bruises on their skin and presses into them later, drags his nails with a little too much force just to get a reaction.

Sungho watches, rapt, as Junhyung opens himself up on his fingers and rides Taeyeob, undisguised pleasure on his pretty face.

He whines to be kissed, beckoning Sungho to him, catching his lips with a pleased moan as he rolls his hips down on Taeyeob. Sungho never wants to stop kissing him, either of them, in love with the way they move together and the way they fall apart.

After, curled like commas with Junhyung between them, Sungho knows for certain that it doesn't matter where they're headed. With Taeyeob's hand on his hip and Junhyung's breath warm and gentle on Sungho's collarbone, he knows that this was their spark reaching the end of its fuse, and when it's done? Nothing can stop them.

No secrets between them now, caution thrown to the wind as it whips through their hair. Young and wild and free, they're full of the kind of magic that others only dream of.

Junhyung yells out the sunroof of their third stolen car, screams to the sky just because he can, because the universe should hear his voice. Taeyeob laughs and laughs, twisted in the passenger seat to watch him with a possessive kind of love in his eyes, wrapped in a siren-red leather jacket he'd found in a consignment shop two towns back, sunglasses perched on his head.

Sungho kicks the accelerator, floors it across the empty highway, nothing but potential ahead of them.

Like all things, nothing wild and free and magnesium-bright can last forever.

It's nothing that any of them have done besides growing generally reckless. Perhaps if they had really started over, found an actual city and made new names for themselves and really worked at it, they might have made it out.

If Taeyeob had found a new dead-end job, doing the work no one else wanted and clawing his way up again.  If Junhyung had stilled his feet and cut his hair short.  If Sungho had kept his head down and left everything good and terrible behind.  If they pretended they’d never met.

But then, where’s the adventure?

It ends like this:

Sirens blaring behind them, red and blue in the rearview, racing down the streets going a hundred, laughing because they always knew they would end up here. Taeyeob yells out the windows, inaudible over the rush of wind and piercing sirens. Junhyung has a vice-grip on Sungho's leg, though it's not fear in his eyes as he stares ahead.

The police stop them on a bridge — nowhere to go but quietly, or down. There's really only one answer to that — none of them are well-suited for jail.

Teetering on the edge, hand in sweaty, lovable hand, they laugh and laugh.

"I have a good feeling about this," Taeyeob says. Junhyung’s eyes gleam. Sungho shoots them both a tight-lipped grin.

One, two, three...

And at the bottom? Another car, another highway. No questions asked:

They drive.