Found it! Too busy shitposting on Tumblr to edit it right now, but I might finish the second chapter I started awhile ago. Maybe. We'll see. They're my OT3.
Original notes: Day-late Valentine's Day fic for the 'Trapped in an airport together after their flights are canceled' AU prompt. Right now I'm kinda liking this, but keep in mind that I wrote the first scene and the kiss scene at one in the morning, and the rest is just connecting stuff. (And I'm sort of debuting my trigender Yuck headcanon, yay! It's mentioned only twice, because the story is in Roger's and Yang's POVs.)
Title: Can I be the boy that you meet in…
Pairing: Roger Jr./Yuck/Yang
Rating: Teen
Do you have a house on the hill and a bed for three?
xxx-xxx
The blue-haired kid Roger Jr. has been so-very-subtly checking out for the past few minutes lets his head slump onto the desk.
He nudges the person next to him, jerking his chin in the little scene's direction. "Could that possibly be another delayed flight?"
Yuck returns his partner's smile. "A snow flake probably landedright on the windshield."
"Ooo, that's pretty bad. I think ours was just a snowflake on the edge of the runway."
"Maybe it landed on the pilot and now he's in a shock-induced coma."
"Another life tragically taken as the eternal winter continues its siege. A- Oh, here he comes."
"Maybe he saw you staring at his ass." Yuck breathes out a small laugh at Roger's guilt-stricken, puppy expression and rolls his eyes. "Berger, how many times do I have to tell you that that's okay?"
"'m not used to a relationship like this," he mumbles in response, watching the kid talk briefly with another Asian girl (must be siblings, with their nearly identical profiles) before he sweeps purple eyes over the rows of seats. As she walks off, he starts again towards Roger and Yuck, readjusting the strap of a carry-on bag almost as wide as a doorway. He's rather short, like Yuck, though maybe one or two inches shorter. 5'3? 5'4? Come to think of it, he and Yuck do look similar enough to be cousins, round faces and tan skin, except the kid is wiry where Yuck is thick. (And he doesn't look like he shares Yuck's freckles and checkerboard chest, either.) He's wearing a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, navy bubble coat folding over one arm. Roger himself is about three heads taller than both, thick-boned and muscled without Yuck's extra fat, with a square jaw and baggy clothes.
When Roger figures he and Yuck have enough time before company arrives to get the topic over with, he asks, "So how you feelin'?"
Yuck seesaws his hand, swipes his other thumb across his phone screen. "Kinda boy, kinda girl. Mostly leaning towards 'can't be assed' at the moment." As a matter of principal, Alois 'Yuck' withholds giving the measliest fuck about anything until no earlier than noon (coincidentally the time he usually wakes up), even about his own gender. "'s nothing I can't handle."
Roger Jr. checked the time on his phone: about three minutes to two a.m. Three hours faster than where they were supposed to have been by now. (Roger wants to apologize for the delays, the traffic and the hotel fuckery and the snow, but he knows Yuck will chastise him for always apologizing for everything, and then Roger will apologize for that andgah—)
The kid sits down, unceremoniously dropping his bag and practically kicking it underneath his seat. He slumps into the plastic, lolling his head back, eyes closed. Without opening them, he asks, "You guys get delayed too?"
"Yeah. Should've been about to touch down in Las Vegas about 5 hours ago. You?"
"Sister and I are going out to Santa Monica. We're supposed to be meeting our mom."
"That's pretty far."
"You don't say." The kid gives a mirthless laugh and rubs his eyes. "It's a long story. Trust me. On the flight I was gonna try to convince my sister to write a book about us and sell the film rights. Millionaires "—he snaps his fingers—"overnight. She threatened to push me into traffic when I tried on the drive here. Want some of my coffee when she gets back?" He slides further down into the seat, rubbing his eyes harder, sighing deeply. With the exhale, it seems like he's releasing all the caffeinated and anxious energy that's been keeping him upright, and suddenly abreast to Roger sits a kid who has bags under his eyes to check into the Briar Rose hotel for a couple hundred years.
"No thanks," Roger replies.
"Eh, I didn't really wanna share anyway."
Roger breathes a chuckle, raises his eyebrows.
The kid gestures his arms out, raises his own, as if to say, 'Well—?'"It's polite to ask; it's like we're the survivors of a very dull apocalypse right now, with all this shit closing. The power's actually been out at my apartment for about three days—we have gas heat and a generator—the weatherman said this was a clear zone, but I fucking guess not." He sighs again. "Besides, I'm not entirely convinced she isn't gonna spike it with sleeping pills."
"She'd be doing you a favor, if you ask me."
"I didn't." But that tiny smile remains on his face. A nice smile. A very, very nice one.
"Honesty's my best policy. And honestly dude, you look a few hands caught in the Church donations box short of Hell." He extends a fist. "My name's Roger."
"Yang. Sister's Yin. Is he with you?"
At that exact moment, Yuck cursed (not so) under breath, tapping his phone as if to send out some Morse code telegraphs.
The kid named Yang revokes a few choice rights from Yuck ("Don't talk to me, don't look at me, don't even breathe my air") once they compare high scores.
xxxx-xxx
The airport isn't very crowded, since it's a Wednesday and all, which leaves a nice big booth in the Barnes and Noble's coffee shop open for them. Yang lies down on the seats, head on their pile of coats, feet in Roger's lap.
Yang stops looking at Yuck for a moment to look over at Roger, watching him run one meaty finger over the lip of his expresso cup as he reads the back of a softcover Yuck had gotten for him. And he wonders briefly if Roger Jr. knows he's been caught stealing glances.
Yang also caught Yuck planting a peck on Roger's cheek, hence why he's been watching the green-haired prick's visage for any reactions. If he at all feels like his territory is being impeded upon, however, it doesn't show. Maybe it was just a joke, playing up on how sweet (read: whipped) Roger Jr. (or Berger for some incomprehensible reason) is, knowing just how his friend likes his coffee.
(Yang remembers his ex-girlfriend telling him about similar stuff she'd done with her straight girl friends, which he'd just assumed was something an extra X chromosome did to you.)
Or maybe they're swingers.
Yuck continues to read samples of the stack of paperbacks on the table.
Yang pulls an earbud out and asks, "So Roger, you're Native American, right?"
"Sisseton. It's this tribe up in the Dakotas, but I've never actually been up there."
"Any particular reason?"
"My dad this apocalyptically bad fallout with his dad, though he still hasn't told me why. We celebrate the holidays and whatnot, but my dad's pretty loose about religion."
"Christ, can we trade? My dad loves to go on about these ancient proverbs he scrapped out of the bottom of a barrel of fortune cookies and all this other shit. I don't really hate it or anything, but I wish he had mute option, y'know?"
"Dude, that is literally one of the biggest conflicts in every movie about adolescence ever," Yuck says.
"Fortune cookies?"
"I think I saw a Japanese horror movie like that once," says Roger, more to himself. "Or maybe it was a porno."
Yang was going to be the first to comment that those genres seem highly differentiated in theory, but Yuck's chuckling suddenly becomes a snort, and Yang can't force words out past his own intensifying mirth.
xxxx-xxx
"So what made my heritage so interesting?"
"I like doing some background checking on guys I catch staring at my ass."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
—
And so it goes. They share stories, jokes, like longtime friends. Yang sees Roger Jr. and Yuck brush hands as they walk behind him, sees them whispering behind hands to each other.
He'll come out of the bathroom and see a look of worry on Roger's face, Yuck mouthing 'I'm fine' in response to it. And when they're running down the escalators , Yang will grab some of Yuck's black shirt to keep him from winning. He'll see the checkerboard pattern of skin tones on Yuck's back and learn what the word 'chimera' means.
And he feels their eyes, undressing him, studying him.
But he's having too much fun too think about meeting his mother for the first time, much more fun than he's had in a long while. Whenever he thinks about it, Yuck will have a story about an asshole-ish prank Roger pulls on him, or vice versa.
Now they're going outside, shrugging on their coats. Yang clamps his phone between his teeth so he can do the same.
xxxx-xxx
The air is so freezer-burned it stings their nostrils, and the snowing hasn't let up any than when they'd first arrived so many hours prior. The news of the flight delays has been out on the media waves for a while, so an already light flow has been reduced to the occasional drip of a new car pulling into the parking lot.
They're on the ground floor, a few yards away from the gray walls of the parking lot stack. Security cameras, but no people, aside from the aforementioned droplets. Green space along the side of the building, covered in enough snow to have become a white scaled recreation of a mountain range.
Snow balls are stuffed down pants, a lumpy snowman made, so hungover he's stumbled and detached his own head with the fall.
But it's early, it's late. When they collapse, Yang ends up betwixt Yuck and Roger Jr., all lying in the show with hoodie pillows. The snow melts on their faces in quick little cold kisses, and Yang opens his mouth to catch some.
Roger feels some blood seep into his numbing cheeks; he wants to suck the water right off Yang's tongue. Black eyes connect with orange as Yuck slips his hand into Roger's fingers, letting the pair rest limply on the third wheel's knee.
Yang cranes his head up and laughs. "Need a room? There 're some bushes over there you could use." He sets his head back down, wiggling closer to Roger Jr., which makes Yuck follow, scooting closer to Yang than before. Yuck even dares to halfway rest his head on Yang's clavicle, responding to Roger's panicked glares with a devilish smirk.
They don't let their fingers go.
"So," Yang asks. "What are you guys, anyways?"
"Too gay to be friends," Yuck replies, snuggling more of his head into Yang's coat. Although Yang tenses, and Roger notes blood in his cheeks, his shoulders relax. "But not quite gay enough to be boyfriends."
A quirked eyebrow. "You two are practically an old married couple."
"That's relatively small on the overall queer scale. Something momentous would be—"
"Joint checking accounts," Roger offers, and Yuck gives that a kurt nod.
"Too gay to be friends but not gay enough for joint checking accounts…How does that translate into Facebook status lingo?"
"It's a lexical gap," Roger says.
"Huh?"
"When there's no word for something."
"Oh." Yang turns his gaze back skyward, tracing constellations as his eyelashes catch the snowflakes. Roger lies there on his side, gently, habitually stroking Yuck's fingers with his thumb. He watches Yang's visage, studies his mouth, occasionally looks to where Yang's eyes are but sees nothing but faint pinpricks of white in the dark sky, when there are some other purple things he'd prefer looking into.
…And after a short while of this, Roger moves closer. Pressing his body against Yang's sides, moving his hood to the snow above Yang's shoulder. Yang's tenses again, Roger hesitates setting his head down, and then they both relax.
Yang's heart beat has been quickening, his skin steadily growing too hot for his winter coat. But he likes this. He likes their warmth and the silence that seems to shrink the edges of the world into this plot outside an airport, two people fitting so comfortably into Yang's sides they are like puzzle pieces sanded down to fit, all fuzzy, cardboard edges. (And it's lucky he likes this, because it seems like Yuck has fallen asleep on him.)
Yuck sneezes Roger's hand; another look is shared. Roger ignores the stab of energy into his chest and props himself up on an elbow, staring the blue-haired kid straight down. "Can I… kiss you?"
A frozen expression.
And expression which is shattered almost immediately when Yuck latches his lips onto Yang's thin, available sliver of neck and nibbles. The victim jerks his head away, turns it, bumping noses with the green-haired prick beside him. "Had to ruin the moment, didn't you?"
Yuck slides onto his stomach, chin on ball of palm, smirking. "Of course."
Yang leans up and catches Roger's lips. Before Roger can appreciate it it's over and a gloved hand has come over his and Yuck's mouths. "Now you're even. And I'm feeling my phone buzz, so—"
Roger can't stifle a laugh. "Fucking liar!" Before Yang can possibly defend himself, four hands pin him down, and two pairs of lips descend. Overwhelming their crimes is the sound of all three's peals of laughter.
xxx-xxx
Back at the gate, Yang manages to sleep with his sister slumped into him, while Yuck makes a small nest of their blankets and pillows on the floor. Roger stretches his legs out in the freed seat, letting a hand fall over, because he wants to be equally close to Yuck and Yang. More ideally, naked in a real bed together, but you have to make due with what you have.
Roger almost never dreams, but he does sleep peacefully.
xxx-xxx
Hours later, five flights to Las Vegas have been cleared. With so many eyes around, they don't kiss. They exchange phone numbers and pump fists as Yang pretends not to notice a certain green-haired prick chatting up his sister.
"You know he's harmless," Roger says.
"I'll take that as the biased testimony that it is." He steps into Roger's arms, a big, friendly hug.
And Roger starts to leave. Yang watches him pull Yuck away from his twin, walk towards the thin crowd filing past the doors. With some warm feeling bubbling at the back of his throat.
"Hey!" He shouts.
They both turn around. Yang steals to them, slings an arm over each neck, says, "Now don't be too busy screwin' each other to text me."
"Fuck that, I'll be hungry."
"You're always hungry, Yuck."
"We should try to head back on the same day, alright guys? So we can meet up again."
Yuck gets Yang in a headlock and rubs his knuckles across his crown. "Grow a few shoe sizes and then you can talk to me, Bleu Balls."
"If I see your luggage I'll definitely accidentally steal it," Roger adds. Which is really all the goodbyes they need.
xx-xx
Their plane vanishes into a sky that's just welcoming yellow to wash out the gray. Yang would have watched them fly off if he was a lovesick schoolgirl, if his own flight hadn't just been announced.
As they walk down the hallway with their own crowd, his sister asks, "Are you excited, Yang?"
He gives a helpless shrug. "It'll be something, at least."
