Archive of Our Own

Donghyuck wakes up to Renjun sitting at his vanity, bangs tucked under a fuzzy, bear-eared headband. With the lamp on but all the other lights off, his face in all its slightly greasy glory is the only thing illuminated in the room, a glowing twink of an angel. 

“I know where your spare key is,” Renjun says in lieu of a good morning. Donghyuck wonders when breaking and entering became a normal part of their friendship.

Renjun doesn’t look down at the bed, instead patting over his right eyelid with a blush brush. A fucking blush brush. Five years, and he still applies eyeshadow with a blush brush.

They’ve been in these positions thousands of times before, during their messy undergrad and messier two years after graduation, living together and trying to remember what their art degrees were supposed to mean. Donghyuck slept in, Renjun used his make up while he slept, Donghyuck woke up and pretended he cared, Renjun went on a date late in the day with some guy that never treated him right, and Donghyuck pretended he didn’t care.

Everything has changed since then, and nothing has changed at all.

Donghyuck is waking up, and he’s still in love with Renjun, and it still hurts like a bitch.

“Good morning to you too.” Donghyuck rubs his forehead. When Renjun finishes his first eye and moves to the other side, Donghyuck can see oranges and pinks, blended into a tequila sunrise. He’s stunning, though that’s a matter of fact with or without the makeup. The makeup itself would probably look better if he applied it with a smaller brush. “Is that my Florasis palette?”

Renjun picks up Donghyuck’s succulent box from off the window sill and places it on the edge of the vanity. It doesn’t hide the products at all. “No.”

“The specs of glitter on you cost fifteen dollars each.”

“It’s our anniversary.”

The words are like a gunshot to his side, and the thoughts Donghyuck fills the gaps with are the barrel shoved inside, swirling his guts. “I would’ve—” Donghyuck’s voice cracks up an octave. Renjun laughs, and it’s only a little embarrassing how much lighter it makes him feel. Getting anyone to laugh is his instant panacea, it isn’t his fault Renjun’s laugh sounds so stupid it’s cute. “I would’ve let you use it if you asked.”

“I know.”

Renjun finishes his eyes and takes out actual blush, and the movement has the sleeve of his ratty graphic t-shirt falling off his shoulder. Donghyuck gets an eyeful of twilight bruises and tries really hard to pretend he didn’t by rolling over and burying his head into his pillow. If he stays there long enough, he can suffocate and die; he wouldn’t have to pretend he doesn’t care anymore because he’d be dead, and dead people don’t need to pretend anything at all.

“You look good.”

“You always say that.”

He always looks good. Donghyuck opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “I can’t believe you’re dressing up this much in the AM.”

“It’s in the PM.”

Like that, the pit in Donghyuck triples in size.

“Oh shit.” He’s late.

Renjun glances at him through the mirror with a small smile. A faraway, hopelessly endeared smile. A Mark Lee third anniversary date later today smile. A smile that makes Donghyuck want to die in more ways than two. “There’s an oat milk latte and a smoothie bowl on the counter for you. Your Uber should be here in five minutes.”

Donghyuck is late, and his day isn’t the worst: it’s more uniquely bad, sort of like an ice cream cone, but instead of the whole thing falling out of his hands, just the cone falls off.

He’s late, and it’s not raining hard enough to warrant an umbrella, but hard enough that his hair, his clothes, and his mood take a healthy soak, and wet enough that he almost slips down the stairs up to the studio.

He’s late, and instead of the entire cast bearing witness to his humiliation, his director chews him out in front of the production team, the people responsible for the rest of his career. Jeno squeezes his hand and spends the rest of rehearsal pretending he didn’t watch Donghyuck getting ripped to shreds, and when Donghyuck tears up mid-scene, he tells himself they come from the passion of a true connection with the Paris Uprising of 1832.

He’s late. Everything sucks a little bit.

Chenle couldn’t give less of a shit.

“Can you hurry up?” Donghyuck mutters. Chenle shuffles around their designated table, taking ample time to make space. “If I take half a second too long on this break, I’m gonna get eaten alive again.”

They’re in the dressing room again, a space Donghyuck has grown intimately acquainted with in the past month and a half. No matter how many square inches they’ve defiled, though, drowning in the sensations is easier than sitting alone in the studio, picking apart every last one of his mistakes. He’d rather be sad and fucked out, than sad and watching overproduced pizza guy porn in his bedroom later.

Right now, he’d rather be sad and fucked out faster. 

“Calm down, sunshine,” Chenle drawls, and Donghyuck lets out an embarrassing squeak when he sweeps him up in his arms and dumps him on top of the table. “We have ten minutes.”

“Yeah, and you—” He bites his tongue as Chenle finally undoes his zipper to wrap a hand around his half-hard cock. It’s rough, skirting the edge of painful, and so, so good, Donghyuck can’t help the way he jerks up chasing more. “Fuck.”

Chenle smirks. “What were you saying?” 

Instead of flattering him with a response, Donghyuck yanks the drawstring of Chenle’s sweats forward, bringing their mouths together in a mess of teeth and tongue. They’ve done this more times than Donghyuck can count on one hand now, yet today feels harsher, lava sludging through his body right under his skin. Loosening Chenle’s waistband is simple enough, and a sick sense of satisfaction settles in the back of Donghyuck’s head knowing Chenle is just as affected—it’s just the right amount of easy.

They finally pull apart for air, and Chenle starts nosing down his jaw. “You’re quiet today,” Chenle murmurs, “Are you tired?”

Yeah. Yeah, he is tired. “Tired of your shit. No marks.” 

“Oh, you really got me good with that one.” Chenle thumbs over his slit exactly the way he likes it, and Donghyuck has to dig his nails into his palms to keep from crying out. He strokes up once, twice, wraps his hand around both of them for the third time, and grins against Donghyuck’s mouth when a stray whine escapes him, higher pitched than what could ever be considered dignified. “Are you bored? Upset? Are you thinking about him?”

“Really?” Donghyuck kicks Chenle’s thigh, his entire mouth turning sour. Any other day, he would’ve gone cooked spaghetti soft. “Are we really talking about this, while your hand is on my dick?”

Chenle laughs, squeaky and dimpled and everything Donghyuck wishes he could loathe. “Do you want to swap spots next time? You can pretend I’m Renjun.”

“What the hell?”

“You can’t seriously tell me Renjun tops. I mean, unless you’re into that—”

“No, I mean—shut up!” he groans, reaching his hands up to shove Chenle away, ears burning up. Donghyuck thought he was used to Chenle poking and prodding his buttons after years of being competition and years more being friends; something about sex, a development at the start of the show season, however, makes him ten times more brazen. Two times hotter, maybe. Five times more insufferable.

“Hey, hey, this is a safe space, I won’t judge.” One of Chenle’s hands easily grabs both of Donghyuck’s wrists and pins them against the wall. It definitely doesn’t steal the air out of his lungs, because that would be embarrassing and Donghyuck doesn’t get embarrassed from Chenle Zhong.

“I don’t think about—about him when we—you know, and I’m not thinking about him now!” he sputters. “Can you get on with it?” He swallows his pride. “Please?”

A strange light flickers to life in Chenle’s eyes, and like that, they’re moving fast and harsh again, their kissing devolved into ragged breathing. Donghyuck is no stranger to sex, except it’s never felt like sin the way it does with Chenle; something inside him twists and turns, writhing and clawing to get out, a part of him too desperate and ugly to acknowledge from the front. At least, too desperate and ugly to show in front of the guy he plays Overwatch with on the weekends.

It doesn’t take long for the urgency in Donghyuck’s veins to push him off the edge, and he splits at the seams in Chenle’s arms, shaking as his come spurts through the gaps between Chenle’s fingers. Chenle follows soon after with a grunt.

Everything fizzles out of Donghyuck, steam hissing from a doused fire. A quick glance at his phone shows four minutes left of their break: a new record. Exhaustion sinks in, bone deep as always, and all he can do is watch Chenle as he cleans them off with their depleting pack of baby wipes. If they hadn’t spilled the orange juice that came with a complementary cast breakfast last week, they would’ve had at least five more baby wipes.

“Seriously,” Chenle starts again, once they’ve both tucked themselves away, “You are quiet.”

“I might be a little tired,” Donghyuck admits. “Not that much. I’m like, sixty-nine percent not tired.”

“Right.” Chenle picks a random bottle of perfume off someone else’s table and spritzes it into the air. It smells like expensive farts, and Chenle snorts at whatever expression Donghyuck makes. “You know director Kim doesn’t actually care that much about you being late, right? You’re his best actor, so he—”

“Not his best,” Donghyuck says under his breath.

“So he puts you to a higher standard,” Chenle finishes, unphased. A beat passes, and Donghyuck can’t decipher Chenle’s thoughts. He’s an open book, and Donghyuck hates flipping to a page he can’t understand. The closest comparison he can think of is a cat locking eyes on a suspicious, mouse-shaped lump, except Donghyuck isn’t suspicious nor mouse-shaped; he’s just a lump. 

“Was I—?” Chenle purses his lips. “Was I pressuring you?”

Donghyuck’s eyes widen. “No!” Instant relief floods Chenle’s face, and Donghyuck can’t tell if he feels better or worse because of it. “No, God no. I promise I would’ve told you.”

“Well?” Chenle crosses his arms. “Give me something to work with. I can’t read you.”

There’s a new message at the top of Donghyuck’s notifications, and he swipes it away and stuffs his phone into his pocket. Despite the conversation happening between him and Chenle, his brain is still stuck in the purgatory of his bedroom, watching Renjun apply eyeshadow with a God-forsaken blush brush for the fifth God-forsaken year in a row.

Outside, it’s still raining. Last night was a new moon. Mercury is in retrograde. His shirt tag is itching his neck. Maybe that’s why Donghyuck’s mouth is loose enough to mutter, “It’s their third anniversary today.”

Third year of good night texts, expensive coffee shop dates, and matching jewellery.

(Fifth year of shared Spotify premium plan, 7-11 therapy dinners every other weekend, and Shakespearean flavoured misery.)

Chenle lets out a low whistle. “They’re basically married now, huh? You’re shit out of luck.”

“Don’t say it like that!” Donghyuck squeezes his eyes shut. “They’re good together, and Renjun is happy. I wasn’t ever going to intrude on that.” He was the one who introduced the two of them in the first place, and aside from fried eggs and a slightly better sense of humour, there was nothing he could do (nothing he can do) to outmatch bikes to reduce carbon emissions, cleans gum off the sidewalk so birds don’t choke, busks for charity on his days off Mark Lee.

“I don’t—” Donghyuck coughs. “I really don’t think about him. That’s gross.” He used to. Chenle doesn’t need to know that, and not a day goes by where Donghyuck doesn’t actively try to forget the fact anyway.

Chenle looks at him funny, then shakes his head and the expression melts off into neutrality. It never fails to chill Donghyuck, watching Chenle shift through emotions, how there’s hardly a difference between on and off stage. How Chenle doesn’t so much know how to act, as he knows how not to act. 

“Loser pays.”

Donghyuck snaps out of his trance. “What?”

Chenle raises his fist. “Rock paper scissors, loser pays.”

Donghyuck is tired, but Chenle’s spent years and years poking and prodding Donghyuck’s buttons, and firing him up works like a charm. “Oh, you’re going down.”

Donghyuck loses, demands a best of three, loses again, and gears up for a best of seven, only for Director Kim to pound on their door and shout at them through the wood.

It isn’t so bad, though, even if they’re dead on their feet by the time they get out, and it’s still cold drizzling, and the nearest Gong Cha runs out of aloe jelly.

It isn’t so bad, because it isn’t the worst. Chenle lets Donghyuck sip from his order, some garish combination of mango yoghurt, white pearls, coconut jelly, and way too much sugar, and laughs at the way Donghyuck has to wash it down with half of his own cup of orange green tea. Renjun sends Donghyuck some pictures from their anniversary date at an English style fancy tea house, and instead of wallowing in his own misery, he and Chenle make fun of Mark’s outfit until they’ve grown three and a half abs from crying laughing. 

It may be uniquely bad, but as the rain fizzles out later in the evening and Chenle hugs him a long goodbye at the bus stop, Donghyuck can’t help thinking it isn’t so bad, because it isn’t the worst. 

“So…” Donghyuck trailed, watching Renjun and Mark fucking Lee head down the street towards Mark’s decrepit sedan, “Have they fucked yet? Renjun won’t tell me.”

Mark’s roommate, Chenle, laughed so hard, he almost knocked his head into the traffic pole behind him. It was the first time the two of them met, and Chenle’s head was huge, a fact Donghyuck noticed during brunch and a fact that grew more prevalent now that they were outside the restaurant and Donghyuck could compare him to the passersby with normal sized heads. Donghyuck wanted to make him laugh more, wanted to see if he could get Chenle to smash through a brick wall from the sheer force of his head.

“Whatever happened to true love?” Chenle said once he recovered, “Why does it have to be about bumping uglies?”

“I hear enough about their late night walks and drive-in movie theater dates already,” lamented Donghyuck, “I want the real details.”

He didn’t mention how Renjun, giddy and giggly and gleaming from love while he dressed up for his Mark Lee rendezvous, made him kind of sort of want to die. At the very least, Donghyuck knew he got around more than Mark, a guy that did slam poetry on the weekends for fun, and whatever awkward horizontal tango Renjun got up to with Mark couldn’t be more world-rocking than what Donghyuck had to offer. The middle ground satisfied Donghyuck’s nosiness without making him want to vomit his heart out of his oesophagus.

There were a million words written in Chenle’s stare, phrases flicking past his face: bewilderment, indignation, discomfort, and he settled somewhere around amusement. “They had sex after they made it official,” he said, voice light, “Mark lit candles and made me get rose petals to scatter around the apartment so it was ‘more romantic’.” Chenle rolled his eyes. “Then he sexiled me, and only let me back in after he tried to make Renjun breakfast in bed and ended up setting off the building fire alarm.”

Donghyuck wasn’t sure if he was good at picking up on faces, or if Chenle was particularly expressive; either way, reading Chenle was almost too easy, and the disappointment painted over his fond smile was bright and reflective in the afternoon sun. Donghyuck wondered if it hurt Chenle as much as it hurt him. With the way Chenle’s eyes gleamed, it didn’t seem like anything could hurt him. 

Donghyuck knew better.

“Anyway.” Chenle shook his head and looked at Donghyuck with curiosity this time. “Are you busy? Mark is taking Renjun back to the apartment, and I’d rather jump off a bridge than go with them.”

The sun shone, soft and warm, and the clouds dotted the downtown area with patches of shadows. Last night was a full moon. Donghyuck’s Venus was opposite to Mars when he was born that day. Maybe that was enough of a sign.

Donghyuck examined the street, examined across the street, and said, “I could go for boba.”

Chenle nodded, then raised a fist. “Rock paper scissors?”

“What?” Donghyuck frowned, but complied. “Damn.”

“Yes!” Chenle whooped, brandishing his winning scissors in the air. “You’re paying!”

“What—what the hell?!” Donghyuck spluttered, and chased after Chenle as he jogged towards the Gong Cha past the intersection. “Hey, get back here, asshole! We never agreed on that!”

Donghyuck paid that time.

The next time, though, Renjun borrowed Donghyuck’s apartment for a pizza making night; he won with rock and Chenle paid. The time after that, Renjun stayed over at Mark and Chenle’s apartment; Chenle won with paper and Donghyuck paid.

And the time after that, when Donghyuck ran into Chenle walking his dog, Chenle won with scissors and Donghyuck paid.

Time and time and time again, until their texts were more than invites and their calls were more than complaints and Chenle got over his problems (and Donghyuck did not get over his) while the Earth orbited the Sun time and time again. 

“Do you and Chenle fuck in the dressing room?”

Donghyuck chokes on his water and almost spills half of it onto his shirt. “What?! No!”

The stage is empty, all the ensemble dismissed for the day, the leads not called for another hour, and the construction crew on their lunch break, meaning no one Donghyuck can use as a convenient escape. He starts running through every single excuse he can think of, flimsy patchwork stories with holes filled in by his terrible humour and a healthy amount of denial. The longer he fumbles to answer, the less impressed Jeno seems. If God was real, God would strike Donghyuck down within the next second.

Jeno grimaces. “Donghyuck.”

“No, we don’t,” Donghyuck repeats, his resolve crumbling the longer Jeno fixes him with his kicked puppy eyes. If everyone in the world had a superpower, Jeno would have two: retaining his ocean’s worth of patience despite being soon entering his fifth year of stage management, and having the ability to make everyone feel like a monster at will. Or maybe having the ability to make everyone see the truth in themselves, Donghyuck’s truth being that he’s a monster.

“Donghyuck, we clean those rooms. I clean those rooms.”

“We do not fuck in the dressing room, and—” Donghyuck clears his throat— “I will make sure we don’t fuck in the dressing room in the future, because it would be cruel to make you clean a room in which two people have fucked in, even though we have never fucked in the dressing room before.”

“What’s going on between you two, anyway?” Jeno asks, bumping their knees together. Their legs hang off the edge of the stage, over the pit. “Is it just sex, or have you finally gotten over Renjun?”

“Hey,” Donghyuck protests weakly, “Low blow.” It stings, pins and needles inside his chest.

“It’s been years, Hyuck.” Get a grip goes unsaid, and Donghyuck can’t even make a pot-kettle jab anymore, not since Jeno got his shit together and asked out the assistant choreographer last week.

“Fine wine gets better with age, and baby...” Donghyuck leans back and lays flat on the stage. “I’m an alcoholic.”

Albeit, Renjun isn’t so much wine as he is some kind of fucked up moonshine: a mere thought makes Donghyuck’s liver churn.

Jeno remains unimpressed, going so far as to cross his arms and raise an eyebrow so high, it disappears under his growing bangs.

“It’s fine. It’s whatever! I’m fine,” Donghyuck insists, staring up at the catwalk. Trying to make out which ropes connect to which rigs is less painful than having Jeno bore holes into the deep recesses of his inner thoughts. Chenle would’ve laughed. “I’m so fine. Like wine.”

“I believe you.” Jeno shifts against his leg and soon enough, he’s lying down too, so that they’re pressed up shoulder to shoulder. The rush of familiarity is instant, and Donghyuck loses a second remembering all the times they stayed after rehearsals and performances, pretending the spotlights were stars in the sky. “So. Chenle.”

“Yeah.” Turning his head to the side has them looking at each other. Donghyuck reaches a hand out to brush Jeno’s hair aside, and Jeno closes his eyes at the touch. Once upon a time, it meant something.

Now, Jeno’s gone on to greater conquests and Donghyuck’s ass hasn’t left square one.

“Yeah, we’ve been hooking up,” he admits. “He’s nice. Funny. We were friends before we got casted, and our schedules make it easy.” From rehearsals past midnight to shooting pixels on a monitor to unwinding in his hands, Chenle makes everything easier.

If Chenle were here now, this conversation would go easier. He would joke in a way that diffused all the tension off Jeno’s shoulders, then would find some masterful excuse for the two of them to leave so they could relieve stress somewhere not in the dressing room.

Instead, Chenle was dismissed early, and he’s probably out gorging himself on too-sweet coffee or watching basketball highlights at home.

“Chenle is my best friend,” Jeno says, and Donghyuck doesn’t get to ask why the hell he’s bringing that up before Jeno continues, “We met in college, after he dated my roommate, then became friends after he dated my cousin. He’s dated more people than I can count on my two hands.”

“Homie hopper?” Donghyuck jokes.

“Donghyuck, be serious for once in your life.” Jeno exhales and reaches down to play with Donghyuck’s fingers. His hands are bony and calloused as they’ve always been. Colder than Donghyuck is used to. “He’s a romantic at heart. He goes into every relationship expecting to find true love. He falls like a meteor, way too fast and all at once.”

“Is this your dad with a shotgun speech?”

“No, Chenle can take care of himself fine. I’m telling you not to get burned from his fire.”

Jeno’s phrasing is funnier than it should be; Chenle is a water sign. There’s a joke somewhere in there, something about Donghyuck already being burned by an actual fire sign, a joke far too dramatic for even him to say aloud. “We’re keeping it casual,” he insists, “We told each other we’d break it off if either of us wasn’t comfortable anymore.” As far as it’s gone, sex with Chenle is good. Fun.

Easy.

“Right.” Sitting up, Jeno casts Donghyuck narrowed eyes. For as long as Donghyuck can remember, picking apart Jeno’s expressions has been more difficult than muted, blindfolded trackpad Valorant, and Donghyuck barely picks off a puzzle piece of judgement. 

Jeno sighs and pulls together a tired smile. “Speak of the devil.”

Sitting upright makes Donghyuck’s head spin, and once the spots fade, he can see Chenle standing in the right vomitorium, closing the door behind him and hitching a tote bag higher up his shoulder. “The audio engineers are supposed to be here any minute,” Jeno says, rising to his feet, “I’ll let you two be. Don’t fuck on the stage.”

“We weren’t going to—!” Donghyuck groans as Jeno leaves with nothing more than a laugh. 

“What were you two talking about?” is the first thing Chenle asks after Donghyuck hops off the stage and takes a seat on the house floor next to him. Chenle’s sneakers have a faint trace of mud on the soles and his hoodie is thicker than the ones he prefers, parts of the sleeves damp. He must’ve changed to beat out the rain before coming back.

“Nothing.” Donghyuck picks at a hangnail. He falls like a meteor, way too fast and all at once bounces around his head, phantom echoes leaving a weird tingling at the base of his neck. “What’d you come back for?” Who did you come back for? is the question he swallows back. He isn’t sure what he’d do with the answer anyway.

“My roommate isn’t home and I made too much lunch.” From the tote, Chenle pulls out a tiered metal lunch box, the kind Donghyuck remembers rich kids bringing to Saturday Korean school.

One by one, Chenle takes off the lids and unveils container after container of steaming food, none of which are unidentifiable to him and all of which smell too good to be real. Donghyuck is used to limiting his meals during show seasons, but with actual food in front of him and not cheap courtesy snacks from the directors or convenience store meals, his stomach claws at his insides with newfound vengeance. “What is all this?”

“You say that like you’ve never had Chinese food,” Chenle scoffs, sliding over a lid and a set of wooden chopsticks. They’re longer than the ones Donghyuck is used to, with a more pointed end and a heftier weight.

“Well…kinda,” he admits, waiting for Chenle to take a bite first, then picking out a piece of glazed meat. “Other than hot pot and the appetisers you can get at hot pot. Plus Korean-Chinese food.”

The noise Chenle lets out is so full of offence, Donghyuck can’t keep himself from laughing into Chenle’s shoulder.

The food is good.

Really, really good.

So good, Donghyuck can keep his eyes down and avoid the way their thighs brush against each other, avoid the way Chenle looks at him, avoid the way his stomach starts to fill with a pressure he knows isn’t from each bite of rice. 

Becoming friends with Chenle had everything to do with Mark Lee, but becoming friends with Chenle had nothing to do with Mark Lee.

It had nothing to do with Mark Lee, but it had to do with Renjun, because back then, everything in Donghyuck’s life had to do with Renjun.

Life wasn’t moving in a straight line. Working two part time jobs was a trial by fire college hadn’t prepared Donghyuck to face, and late nights spent updating songs into karaoke systems one by one and sorting paper clips by colour and size didn’t offer much time to practise and prepare monologues or choreo for larger scale auditions. It took a miracle and a half for him to land a shabby Shakespeare production with Renjun’s friend of a friend of a friend, and another stroke of luck for him to bump into a casting agent on closing night.

If it wasn’t for Renjun sitting with him through all the late nights, rehearsed lines, and balled up papers thrown around his bedroom, Donghyuck would’ve gone insane from his own frustration.

(Instead, he went insane from stolen makeup, goodnight texts, and peeled tangerines on the counter.)

A couple days later, Donghyuck stood at a bus stop with a few creased business cards in one hand and his phone in the other, staring at a two weeks’ notice template. He was Atlas, his shoulders weighed down by the world, and he wrapped his jacket tighter around himself to fend from the cold while replaying every accidental pause and awkward gesture from an hour prior. 

Life was a new Starbucks limited edition flavour of watery misery.

“You should fix your posture.”

Donghyuck looked up and saw Chenle coming to a stop next to him. He was the only familiar face in the green room, and they sat next to each other the entire time waiting for their call; he had reread his side for the forty-fourth time over while Chenle hoarded the complimentary lozenges and played video games on his phone. He was wearing a t-shirt that day despite the brisk fifties, and stretching across his forearms were the outlines of what would soon become sprawling floral tattoos. 

“Thanks for letting me know,” Donghyuck said with as much cheer as he could muster. Moving his face had the same sensation as bending plastic into shape.

In Chenle’s hand was one of those ice pops with two sticks meant for sharing, and he broke it apart to offer to Donghyuck. Unlike him, however, Donghyuck wasn’t insane; he didn’t eat ice cream in this kind of weather. He shook his head and Chenle shrugged, nibbling on both and alternating on a whim.

Out of all the things Donghyuck expected Chenle to bring up—how the audition went, his thoughts on the show as a whole, ample small talk about the shitty weather—he wasn’t prepared for, “Why do you always do that thing?”

“Huh?”

“That thing,” he repeated, biting off a huge chunk of popsicle and gnawing on it caveman style, “You make your voice higher pitched so it sounds like you’re happier than you actually are. Why do you do that? If you want me to shut up, you can tell me.”

His words were blunt, landing right at the sore spot he’d been trying to cover up since he met Chenle in all his glowing, headstrong glory.

“I don’t want you to shut up,” Donghyuck said eventually, kicking a rock off the sidewalk and into the street. He dropped his voice, and despite how rough it sounded to his ears, it made Chenle smile. “It’s a pretty shit day.”

“Why?”

Donghyuck hated opening up in most scenarios, hated the way vulnerability left a trail of acidic slime in his throat every time he said something five inches within his heart. But there was so much earnestness in the question—an invitation for honesty in the form of a tilted head and sharp eyes—he couldn’t help blurting out, “I think I’m in love with Renjun.”

It was the first time he said it out loud, and for all the weight sinking into his stomach, an equal amount fell off his shoulders.

He repeated, “I think I’m in love with Renjun.”

“Oh shit.” Chenle blinked. “Happy for you?” He finished his ice cream and tossed the sticks in a nearby bin. “Or sorry that happened.”

Donghyuck laughed. He didn’t know which fit better, either. Lightheaded from the confession, he blurted out, “Can I ask you something weird?”

“I don’t have a foot fetish.”

“You’re so—” Donghyuck punched his arm, well above the fresh ink, and Chenle barely swayed from the force. “Can you, like—?” He tried and failed to think of more approachable phrasing, opting to swallow all his inhibitions and take a plunge. “Can I get a hug?”

Donghyuck didn’t know how Chenle was such a good actor when it was so easy to read the twitches in his face. The evident confusion was humbling, to say the least. “That is weird.”

A small piece in Donghyuck threatened to crack. “Sorry, I’m kind of— it’s my love language and I don’t— if I say please, will—?”

Before he could finish, Chenle wrapped his arms around Donghyuck and squeezed, his body steady and solid. He brought his head down to rest in the crook of Donghyuck’s neck, hands curling into the fabric of his sweatshirt. Everything about the touch was warm, Donghyuck closing his eyes to let Chenle press the pieces together. 

The painting is of two figures in each others’ arms on a full cycle of sky, one lit by the sun and the other, shrouded by the darkness save for slivers of skin highlighted by the moon. Their expressions are indiscernible, as is the beginning and end of their individual bodies. Despite how tangled the figures are, the sun and the moon are positioned in opposite corners, neither of their colours touching. Stars scatter across the background, swirling patterns filling the negative space with order and light. All the inky blacks, golden oranges, shimmering silvers, and skin tones are held by a simple wooden frame, mounted on the wall so Donghyuck is eye level with their intertwined hands.

The figures are as familiar as they are abstract alien shapes; the evocative feeling is as familiar as it is stone cold foreign. Donghyuck tries fitting a myriad of faces onto the figures, tries fitting two specific faces onto the figures.

Synestia. Gouache on canvas.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring, pulled into the colours by a force at tenfold, until someone tugs on his sleeve, clearing their throat beside him.

“Gay sex in space. Nice.”

Like that, the moment dissipates. Donghyuck elbows Chenle. “You have no appreciation for art.”

“Not true!” he protests, “These two men are human, reiterating the idea that gay people are human too, and they’ve been existing as long as spacetime has.”

“Of course,” Donghyuck drawls, holding his laughter. “Two men exploring bodies while in space, like how humankind explores the universe.”

“Gay people are universal, and it’s our job to explore them,” Chenle hums.

“Are Marius and Cosette exploring each other right now, too?”

“Neither of them would ruin the sanctity of an artistic space.” Chenle wrinkles his nose. “The bathroom might be free territory, though. Youth nowadays.”

The amount of times the two of them have fooled around in public bathrooms is far greater than it should be, and definitely greater than Renjun and Mark. 

Donghyuck still replies, “Disgusting. Insatiable. Barbarians.”

“Disgusting, insatiable barbarians, it’s true.”

They’re at the local art gallery Renjun landed a new job with, using up his four complimentary tickets to burn through the midday. Donghyuck is plenty used to being dragged around by Renjun to different exhibitions across the city—for a long time, he thought of it as their “thing”—and, even after Mark started tagging along, Donghyuck enjoys himself more often than not. Today, they drifted off towards different sections with a promise to meet up at the café later; Donghyuck started with the hall dedicated to the evolution of motifs across art history while Renjun headed upstairs to the modern art section, Mark at his heel.

As for Chenle—

“You spent all this time getting—that?”

“Hey.” Chenle cradles a mini statue of a naked man at half mast closer to his chest. “Don’t be mean to Stephonious.”

“Stephonious,” Donghyuck repeats. “Stephonious, what, Curricles?”

“The greatest philosopher of antiquity,” Chenle affirms gravely. “He’s going to make an excellent addition to my living room decor. I also got these.” From his bag, he fishes out two folded up booklets and two ball point pens with Stephonious Curricles printed on the sides, handing a pair to Donghyuck. It’s an informational scavenger hunt worksheet typically given out to kids, the first few boxes already filled out with rather large, rather neat, all capital handwriting. IMPRESSIONISM. FACETED DOME. OIL PAINT.

“There were placards near the gift shop and in the main atrium,” Chenle explains, flipping over a few pages for Donghyuck. “We’re on the first floor, which is on this page.”

“Do we get anything if we finish them?” Donghyuck asks. In the painting “Synestia”, what are the celestial body MOTIFS symbolic of?

“Bragging rights?” Chenle shrugs. “Enrichment from the pursuit of knowledge.”

Another glance at the painting has Donghyuck trapped in a trance again. There’s so much to note in the lack of detail, a sprawling game of I Spy for alternative meanings hidden in the brushstrokes. The figures are the focal point of the painting, all the chains of lines made by the stars directed at where their hearts would be, yet what holds his eyes the longest are the sun and the moon. Regardless of how far apart the sun and the moon are, as far as the canvas allows, the sun washes the moon in a glittery glow.

Pale skin against tanned skin, hand in hand while never touching. The sun and the moon, locked in their system.

“Hey, what are you writing?”

“No copying,” Donghyuck snickers, scrawling out distance that can’t be crossed. “Be original. Enrich yourself with the pursuit of knowledge.”

Chenle clicks his tongue. He doesn’t push otherwise, using his phone as a flat surface for his paper to write out a four letter word Donghyuck pretends he doesn’t see, for the sake of his racing pulse. 

Renjun isn’t hooking up with Mark in the museum bathroom; he’s washing his hands when Donghyuck steps in, nose scrunched in his signature brand of annoyance.

“Where’s boy wonder?” Donghyuck asks, moving to stand beside Renjun in front of the sinks.

“Had to take a phone call,” he mumbles. He rips off a few paper towels with more aggression than necessary, flicking excess water onto the mirrors in the process. “He forgot his mom’s birthday was coming up and now we’re flying up to stay for a month.”

Mark is forgetful, especially with his chaotic mess of a schedule, so hearing so is not much of a surprise. He runs his head through all the possibilities of why Renjun would be so upset and his eyes widen to the size of the moon at the thought he lands on. “You haven’t met his parents before?”

“It’s not that.” Renjun’s hands come to rest on the counter in loosely curled fists. He takes some time to say, “Those days are tech week for you. I don’t want to leave you stressed and alone.”

They’re words Donghyuck has wished to hear for years, yet today, all it does is dry his throat. Knowing Renjun thinks as much is a path too dangerous for Donghyuck to tempt, and frankly, he doesn’t want to. He can’t see the end, can’t promise himself it won’t lead to total doom and self destruction of sorts, like one of the paintings he saw earlier: a bunch of spirals, all in red or black, titled Bad Decisions.

“Aren’t you and Mark planning on moving to a new apartment soon?” Donghyuck tries, “It would be good to break the news together.” At Renjun’s skeptical side eye, Donghyuck tries another angle. “He’s your boyfriend, he’s more important than me.” Renjun shakes his head and Donghyuck sighs, fiddling with the hem of his jacket. “I won’t be alone. Stressed, definitely, still not alone. There’s Jeno, Jisung the choreographer I told you about, Dejun, Chenle, Sungchan the assistant stage—”

Renjun interrupts, “What’s with you and Chenle?” and Donghyuck’s gears stutter to a stop.

“What do you mean?” There’s hundreds of indecipherable layers in the glare Renjun shoots him, and all of them make Donghyuck squirm in place. “We’re friends.”

“Just friends?” Renjun waves a dismissive hand. “Nothing is just friends with Chenle.”

No matter how much Donghyuck is used to brushing off Renjun’s double-edged judgement, the comment is too targeted for him to ignore. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Hyuck.” His voice turns cold, as if he’s lecturing Donghyuck, or worse, patronising him, and it feeds into an ugly part of Donghyuck he knows he shouldn’t unleash in a public bathroom. “Chenle was in love with Mark for the first year we were dating. It was so fucking obvious.”

Hearing his vague suspicions confirmed aloud with such venom makes Donghyuck flinch. “So what?” he argues anyway, “Is that such a big deal? He never cheated, and you two are clearly doing fine.”

Chenle loved Mark with Renjun as much as he loved Mark himself, and Donghyuck can’t stand the bite in Renjun’s words.

Falling for Mark wasn’t wrong, loving a friend wasn’t wrong, Chenle didn’t do anything wrong.

“I don’t care that he had feelings,” Renjun retorts, catching Donghyuck off guard, “I care that he refused to be honest with himself about them. Mark couldn’t figure out why Chenle was so weird around us, and it made him so upset, seeing him lose his best friend in real time. They’re better now, but I can’t forgive Chenle for icing Mark out, for making Mark feel as if he had to choose between the two of us. It wasn’t fair.

“I don’t want that to happen to you. I know you care a lot about him. I can also tell he’s catching feelings for someone again, and if he couldn’t even confront them with Mark, I don’t know how the hell he’s going to act towards you.”

He finishes with a deep breath and a rare frown.

Donghyuck has no idea what the hell to say.

Renjun lowers his head and shoves his hands in his pockets, muttering something about leaving to check on Mark while stalking out.

The only thing left in the bathroom to accompany Donghyuck is his own swirling thoughts, each harder to process than the last.

Sudden memories of all the time Donghyuck spent with Chenle after they first met, going from acquaintances in the same floating group of friends to seeing each other on a daily basis, come flooding back to him, and in Renjun’s eyes, Donghyuck can see all the strained smiles and surface-level small talk awkwardness at the time, things he never thought twice of.

What was Chenle hiding behind all his cordiality? Why hadn’t he ever told Donghyuck?

Is he hiding something now?

In the mirror, the main overhead light burns Donghyuck’s eyes, worsening his headache and doing nothing to illuminate his completely dark mind. 

The first thing tumbling out of Donghyuck’s mouth when he swings open Chenle’s car door is, “Are you still in love with Mark?”

Chenle blinks at him from the driver’s seat, seat belt in hand hovering an inch away from the buckle. “What?”

“Are you still in love with Mark?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Just answer.” Donghyuck shuts the door behind him and doesn’t take his eyes off Chenle’s. “Are you?”

“God, no.” He lets his seat belt retract, turning his body to face Donghyuck. “Have you seen him around Renjun? They make me homophobic.” Donghyuck doesn’t laugh and Chenle clears his throat, sobering up. “No, I’m not. Seriously.”

“Okay.” He exhales. “Okay, good.”

“Why?”

“You never tell me anything about yourself.” Chenle opens his mouth to protest and Donghyuck cuts him off with a stern frown. “I know all this stupid shit about you, like your obsession with the NBA, your favourite kind of dog, and how you used to want to become a k-pop idol, but I don’t know you. You’ve done so much for me, and you still never tell me if you’re hurting or if you want something or if you need something.”

There’s so much more Donghyuck wants to say, so many more things he wants to pull out of Chenle. He settles on, “Don’t give me your ‘I don’t have strong emotions’ bullshit either, okay? Be honest, for me,” and finishes with a quiet, “Please.”

The weight in the silence is stifling. 

It takes close to a minute for Chenle to speak up again, in a soft voice Donghyuck has only heard from him on stage, during his solo lament. It’s somehow more gently tragic than in scene. “I’m not in love with Mark anymore. I don’t know if I ever was in love. At that point, I’d never been in love before. Mark rode the line of someone I wanted and someone I wanted to be, especially considering I was figuring out my entire identity in college. I’m sure all the idolisation bullshit faded away into something more substantial. Didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t in a place to pursue a relationship, and I knew I wasn’t a match for him, anyway.”

He reaches a hand out and grasps Donghyuck’s fingers, running his thumb over his knuckles. “I’m serious, Donghyuck, whatever I felt for him is long gone and left in history.”

“What about now?” Chenle tilts his head in question, and Donghyuck clarifies, “Have you ever been in love since then? Are you in love now?”

Asking the question is terrifying, and the hesitation in Chenle’s face even more so. “No,” he says, closer to a question than a declarative statement. “Not love.” Not yet hangs in the air between them, unspoken and reflective in his eyes. “Donghyuck, I…”

Compelled by his gravitational pull, Donghyuck leans over the console to push Chenle’s flannel sleeve up, fingers resting on the plum blossom branch. He lets Chenle’s eyes flutter shut before he closes the gap, pressing his lips against Chenle’s and silencing the rest of his words. 

His mouth is soft and sweet, tasting of the tangerine chapstick Donghyuck leant him last rehearsal. Chenle exhales, and it gives Donghyuck the chance to part his lips with his tongue, as carefully as he can muster. Donghyuck runs his tongue across the roof of Chenle’s mouth and closes his mouth again to kiss his bottom lip. Without a clock to race, Donghyuck casts aside his usual haste to focus on taking Chenle apart—and he’s succeeding, if Chenle’s shaky exhales are anything to go by. 

There’s rhythm to their movements, a slow dance they’ve rehearsed time and time again. The space is cramped and they’re in the museum’s parking garage, where anyone could catch a glimpse through the barely tinted windows, both details feeding the rushing in Donghyuck’s veins. When Chenle slides his hand up Donghyuck’s torso to cup his cheek, Donghyuck knows it’s a signal to keep going, to keep pushing. 

A kiss on his nose, a kiss on each cheekbone, a kiss over the mole on the lobe of his ear, Donghyuck leaves a bit of love everywhere he can reach. The loose neck of Chenle’s shirt makes it easy to pull the fabric down and nibble his collarbones, marks faint enough for only the two of them will notice. 

Chenle pushes Donghyuck to sit, but Donghyuck stays steady, murmuring, “Let me. Let me take care of you, this time.”

Chenle nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing. His “Be gentle” is hoarse and breathless. 

Donghyuck has to shift his body to make sure the gear shift doesn’t hit his ribs as he bends down to unbuckle Chenle’s belt and pull his waistbands down. It only takes a bit of coaxing to get Chenle fully hard, and Donghyuck wastes no time licking a long stripe from base to head. 

The groan Chenle lets out is loud and drawn out, as if it’s been stuck in the pit of his stomach for ages, and it makes Donghyuck preen. All the times they switched positions, they never changed the order: Chenle gave, and Donghyuck took, took, took with everything he had. Now, Donghyuck can’t help the heady satisfaction clouding him with every noise Chenle makes because of him. He could get used to it. 

A little bit more teasing later, spreading the slick combination of Donghyuck’s spit and Chenle’s precome over his shaft and peppering kisses on either side, Donghyuck wraps his lips around Chenle’s cock and starts to go down. Both of them moan at the same time when Chenle’s cockhead hits Donghyuck’s soft palate, solid, warm, and so much all at once. 

Donghyuck pulls back, licks away the string of spit connecting them, sucks in a deep breath, and dives down, this time pressing his nose as close to the patch of trimmed hair at the end as he can in one go. After a few more bobs up and down, nails digging into Chenle’s thighs and tongue running everywhere Donghyuck can’t reach, Chenle buries one hand in Donghyuck’s hair, the other ghosting over the front of Donghyuck’s throat, right over the bulge he makes. 

“Hyuck,” Chenle grits out, “Hyuck, Donghyuck, sunshine, I’m gonna—”

Donghyuck looks up and nods for Chenle, then closes his eyes as Chenle curses, both grips tightening. Chenle drags Donghyuck up halfway until his head rests right on his tongue and comes, almost too much for Donghyuck to contain in his mouth. His entire body goes rigid, only loosening after Donghyuck has pulled off and swallowed every last drop. The taste is bitter and unpleasant, crawling down his throat all wrong, and it’s worth the wonder painted across Chenle’s face.

“You could’ve spit,” he pants, letting go of Donghyuck to drag his boxers into place. “I had—like, tissues and shit ready.”

“I don’t mind,” Donghyuck rasps. “I like it.”

Chenle grimaces. “You like the taste of jizz?” 

Laughter is sandpaper rubbed around Donghyuck’s mouth. “I like when you let go of yourself.”

He doesn’t let Chenle comment any more, rushing forward to kiss him again and again and again, if only to indulge in the fog shrouding all the feelings at the back of his mind, at the front of his heart. 

Donghyuck stopped counting all of Renjun’s failed dates after the seventh. He told himself it mattered less if he could get all the nights spent erasing Renjun’s tear lines with makeup wipes to blur together in his memory. It was easier forgetting names and faces than it was forgetting everything else.

“What if no one ever treats me right?” Renjun asked, chin shaking against Donghyuck’s touch. They were on the floor of Donghyuck’s dorm, carpet rough and nightlight barely enough to illuminate either of their faces. “What if there isn’t the one?”

It was the closest Renjun came to falling out of love with his romanticism, meaning it was the closest Renjun came to falling out of love with himself, and it left Donghyuck with a black hole in his chest.

I would treat you right.

Renjun sniffled and Donghyuck realised belatedly he voiced his thoughts aloud. “You better. You’re my best friend, you would break my heart if you didn’t always treat me right, and best friends aren’t allowed to break each others’ hearts.”

Donghyuck was so used to Renjun being right, he didn’t question any of what Renjun said; he assumed the hurt in his chest wasn’t from heartbreak, because best friends weren’t allowed to break each others’ hearts.

For all intents and purposes, Renjun never breaks Donghyuck’s heart.

Renjun tells Donghyuck about Mark over a phone call, and he doesn’t break Donghyuck’s heart.

Renjun kisses Mark for the first time in Donghyuck’s living room, and he doesn’t break Donghyuck’s heart.

Renjun doesn’t always treat Donghyuck right, and he doesn’t break Donghyuck’s heart.

This poses a problem, when years pass by and Donghyuck falls in tandem step beside Chenle, and he can’t tell where the cracks in him come from; maybe they’ve been there all along. 

Renjun doesn’t break Donghyuck’s heart, and he won’t anymore, not with the way the moon pulls the tide off Donghyuck’s shores to reveal a different kind of sand: coarser, paler, and easier to hold in his fingers. Sand warm and smoothed by careful erosion. 

Maybe the cracks have been there all along, and it’s a thought so terrifying, it threatens to pry apart Donghyuck’s fingers to let the sand slip past. 

The show doesn’t wait for Donghyuck to sort out his newfound feelings. Days of constant reruns, final tailoring, and last minute blocking changes sweep him up in a cyclone with no space to breathe. Soon enough, he starts marking outside of the theatre and wearing heeled shoes around the clock, scrambling to eat, sleep, and maintain some modicum of humanity between all the rehearsals.

The first day of sitzprobe flies by in the blink of an eye, and in the time it takes for Donghyuck to get used to the blare of brass, it’s almost midnight and all he has left to run on are fumes and the promise of his air conditioned apartment. He strips out of costume and organises his dressing space as quickly as he can, not wanting to stay any longer in the cloud of ensemble sweat and nerves than he needs to.

As expected, Chenle is already changed, donning jeans and a loose sleeveless showing so much skin, Donghyuck’s breath hitches. His exposed skin, covered in a thin sheen of sweat and satisfaction, glows under the half house lights; petals of his flowers glitter with dew. He’s sitting at the edge of the pit chatting with one of the musicians, a rather pretty guy their age with ridiculous pink lemonade hair, the rest of the orchestra and crew filing out one by one.

From the wings, Donghyuck can hear their conversation, the two of them so loud, their voices echo around the stage.

“I’m called first thing in the morning tomorrow,“ he says with a pout, “If I could go out to eat with you, I would.” Past the heavy layers of cringe is a charm Donghyuck curses himself for finding cute. With all his basketball talk, chronic gamer slang, and personal sound effects, Donghyuck didn’t know it was possible for Chenle to pull off sweet talk.

“Seolleongtang? Sushi? Pho? I know you wanted to try the new restaurant on my block.” The violinist inches closer towards Chenle, who doesn’t lean away, and makes Donghyuck itch for something to tear at with his nails. “C’mon, I’ll treat you to something nice and expensive. My baby boy needs food to grow.”

Jesus Christ. Donghyuck decides he hates that guy.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I promise,” Chenle coos, reaching out to pinch his cheeks. “My princess Jaemin can’t even go a day without me? How adorable.”

The guy, Jaemin, looks ready to argue, only to notice Donghyuck off to the side. Like melting plastic, his gummy grin falls to a cordial half smile, and he waves Donghyuck over. “Are you waiting for him?” he asks, voice suddenly an octave deeper without any trace of the saccharine lining. The whiplash throws Donghyuck off kilter.

“Hey,” he says, clutching his lunch bag closer and tighter as he walks downstage. “I’m Donghyuck Lee.”

In rapid succession, Jaemin’s eyes widen, narrow, widen even larger, and reset. He beams and sticks a hand out to shake; Donghyuck accepts it, and resists a wince at the sheer strength behind the grip. “I’m Jaemin Na,” he returns, “It’s nice to finally meet the face behind all I’ve been hearing about for the past couple of months.”

Donghyuck blinks and Chenle shoves Jaemin with a loud groan. “You’re so insufferable.”

“You could’ve told me the real reason why you wanted to stay back,” teases Jaemin. He slings the strap of a banana yellow case covered in cutesy stickers over his shoulder and wriggles his fingers in a wave goodbye. “I’ll eat pho by myself for tonight. See you two lovebirds tomorrow!”

“That’s my other best friend,” Chenle says once the house doors swing closed behind Jaemin. “He’s the concertmaster. We met at both of our first shows. I promise he’s not always like that. Don’t believe a word he says, it’s all total bullshit.”

“So,” Donghyuck trails, “I wasn’t the reason you wanted to stay back?”

“Well.” Chenle sniffs. “What would you do if I said no?”

“Share dinner with someone else.”

On cue, Chenle’s stomach growls loud enough for Donghyuck to hear, and all the sass deflates out of Chenle in real time. “Feed me,” he bemoans, making grabby hands for Donghyuck’s bags, “I’m starving.”

“You will starve again,” Donghyuck sings, taking a seat next to him.

This morning was spent digging out the dosirak boxes his mother gifted him from the depths of his kitchen cupboards and putting together the bibimbap for hours. Full day rehearsal meant he couldn’t make all the filling soul foods he knew better than he knew himself without risking the dishes sitting around the muggy dressing room for hours. While assembling, he cursed himself for his perfectionism, almost giving up on presentation entirely and considering mixing the namul without a thought.

The gasp Chenle lets out after he pops off the lid to reveal the intricate display within is worth all the minutes of agony.

“You made this?” Chenle’s grin is as sunny as the fried egg laying on top. “Are you out of your mind?”

“My cooking isn’t as good as yours,” admits Donghyuck, “Lower your expectations.”

Chenle ignores him completely and uses his chopsticks to stab the yolk; gold runs off white and soaks into the bed below, eliciting an appreciative noise out of him. He’s incapable of using the chopsticks to do anything else, so Donghyuck wraps his hand around Chenle’s to guide his fingers over the flat sides until he can pick up rice and meat at the same time.

Donghyuck stops halfway through his box, because watching Chenle shovel heaps into his mouth without a care for choking or etiquette, is more filling than any food Donghyuck could ever cook. 

The show doesn’t wait for Donghyuck to sort out his newfound feelings.

Instead, it brings clarity to him.

It brings clarity to him, in the bottle Chenle holds when he drifts across the stage during their last rehearsal before dress. A spotlight follows his careful steps, and he’s staring at Donghyuck when he sings his bleeding invitation for a drink.

It brings clarity to him, in the form of a kiss Chenle presses against his cheek, a promise for a sweeter time beyond the lines in their librettos, beyond the grief in their story.

It brings clarity to him, because as Chenle pulls back, all Donghyuck can read on his face is an aching, melancholic love. He knows it’s not an act, because Chenle doesn’t know how to act—he knows how not to act.

Chenle looks at him with love, and Donghyuck thinks, with moonlit transparency, Oh.

[11:03 - chenle 🧋]

chenle 🧋
and if you
look right above the coffee machine
there’s
a
a literal hole
mark tried making eggs and
accidentally flung the pan at the wall LOOOOOOOOOL

Mystified, Donghyuck brushes his knuckles across the two-inch wide, three inch long burn, the paint concave and flaky under the pressure. Out of all the hodge-podge in Mark’s tornado of a kitchen, this is by far the most captivating. Donghyuck couldn’t make a dent that size even with a baseball bat on a really bad day.

“Chenle told you about that?”

Donghyuck glances over his shoulder to see Mark shuffle into the kitchen, glasses lopsided on his nose. “It was on his birthday last year.”

“You burned his birthday eggs?” he gasps, “You’re a monster.”

The faint humour in Mark’s eyes fades, replaced by shiny eyes and a small frown. “Man, c’mon. I got him Thai takeout to make up for it!”

“He hates spicy food, Milk! What were you thinking?”

“I don’t even know if I was thinking—ugh.” Mark pokes at the kimbap ingredients Donghyuck set out on the dining room table. “You sound just like him now. You guys talk that much?”

“Something along those lines.”

Mark nods, picking up a slice of danmuji and nibbling on it like a fish. He eats as if he doesn’t know if he has permission to eat; though, he does a lot of things as if he doesn’t know if he has permission to do them. For someone so impulsive, Mark’s misplaced caution is one of the strangest yet funniest things about him.

“Chenle’s a lot chiller these days,” he says, “He used to be way up in his head about perfection and stuff, no matter how much I told him it’s all societal bullshit. I’m happy he knows when to take the backseat now.” After two slices, he tacks on, “Totally your doing, by the way.”

Donghyuck almost spills the entire white sesame shaker over the bed of rice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about—”

“I’m serious, dude!” He reaches over to flick Donghyuck’s shoulder. “You never notice your own impact. Like, I don’t think Jun would’ve come on this trip if it wasn’t for you, either.”

Donghyuck furrows his eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t he? You know how important family is to him.”

“It’s—” Mark baulks. “Well, okay, it is my mom’s birthday coming up, but I didn’t forget. It was supposed to be, like, a surprise, but I knew he wouldn’t agree to it if I told him outright, so I lied—”

“You lied?” Donghyuck stage whispers, widening his eyes as large as he can. “Malt, are you a sinner now? What ever happened to thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour?”

There’s nothing more stupid and nothing more Mark than fumbling a surprise vacation, and while he knows Mark feels guilt over breathing in the wrong direction on a given day, Donghyuck can’t resist pulling his strings. No one has ever been more fun to tease than him, and for a second, Donghyuck wonders if he’s overstepping.

Then, Mark throws a slice of danmuji at him and Donghyuck shrieks, ducking out of the way just in time. It soars across the kitchen and lands smack dab in the middle of the birthday egg hole, sticking to the drywall. “You’re so full of shit.” He shakes his head. “He needs a break. Physical intervention was my last option, I swear.”

The line is textbook charming, the exact kind of line Renjun would buckle at the knees if he heard, and Donghyuck finds he doesn’t feel an ounce of anything other than fondness. If there’s one thing Mark can do, it’s make the world’s cringiest sentiments into perfect boyish charms. “You’re a good boyfriend.” Donghyuck finishes slicing the first roll. “You’re a good person.”

“Thanks.” Half the bowl of danmuji is gone. Mark says under his breath, “Low-key thought you hated me.”

It’s completely out of left field, and it hits Donghyuck in one huge, all-consuming tsunami.

They’ve never talked about this—this—outright. Donghyuck buried all his toxicity somewhere out of sight, out of mind for the past five years, and kept up appearances for the sake of their tentative friendship, for the sake of Renjun. There was never a seated, mature discussion, nor was there ever a drunk, teary call in the middle of the night; all there was, was skirting around via awkward laughter and hasty topic changes.

Until now. Now, there’s kind of sort of nothing.

It’s light. It feels good, or at least a hell lot better than what it used to feel like.

“I never have,” Donghyuck replies truthfully. “Never will. Renjun is going to love every minute at the shore with you.”

Mark studies Donghyuck, long and pensive, then reaches over and plucks a piece of kimbap from Donghyuck’s second sliced roll, popping it in his mouth. “I hope so,” he says around his food, “My parents are giving me the house as a wedding gift after I get married.”

Donghyuck slices down so sharply, Mark’s shitty chef knife embeds into the plastic of Mark’s shittier cutting board. “Mark, what the hell?!”

Mark’s smile is half sheepish, half far too entertained. “Too soon?”

“What— you— whoa whoa whoa— I’m so— you fucking—”

Renjun pokes his head into the kitchen before Donghyuck can compose himself, tugging two suitcases behind him. He’s wearing one of Mark’s university sweatshirts, despite their ninety degree destination, and he’s adorable, drowning in the fabric. “How is everything? Mark, are you ready to go?”

“Donghyuck’s kimbap is so gas,” Mark calls back. Donghyuck kicks Mark’s chair. 

They share a quick peck and it doesn’t take long for them to double check their tickets and move all their luggage into the hallway. While Mark is waiting for the elevator, Renjun places a keyring in Donghyuck’s hand, closing his fingers around it. “I left care instructions for the plants on index cards taped to all their pots,” Renjun explains, “If you could water every day, dust once a week, and collect our mail, I’ll let you have free range to the fridge except the pork in the freezer, and I’ll treat you to kimchi jjigae for a week.”

“Yessir.” Donghyuck ruffles Renjun’s hair just to see Renjun scrunch his nose and flatten the strands back into place. “Enjoy the beach, Junnie. Make steamy love to Mark while the sun sets into the ocean behind you.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Renjun asks, and Donghyuck knows. 

He knows there’s a second, third, maybe fifth question underneath Renjun’s words, knows Renjun has always been more perceptive than Donghyuck gives him credit for. 

He knows, and he pinches Renjun’s cheeks into the shape of a smile. 

“I never have. I never will.”

(And if he immediately dives for the fridge and pulls out all the eggs, bok choy, and pork he can find, it’s for him and one other person to keep to themselves.)

Splurging at the convenience store is not a good decision, but in Donghyuck’s defence, the first day of dress was rough. Murphy’s Law has always been especially prominent during tech week, and after several costume rips, five failed quick changes, four glasses broken from feedback, three missed lines, two broken spots, and a partridge in a pear tree, Donghyuck can’t think of a better way to cope than to bury his anxiety under six feet of utter junk.

At least, utter junk by his standards.

Chenle’s “utter junk” is Donghyuck’s “nuclear waste”.

“I’m gaining fifteen pounds and several heart diseases just by smelling that,” Donghyuck snipes, eyes watering from the plate of shrimp chips drowned in melted string mozzarella cheese, bonito flakes, and furikake Chenle cradles like a newborn baby. They’ve already sipped each others’ drinks, Donghyuck’s a reasonable ginger-honey-lemon tea and Chenle’s, a blue-flavoured sports drink Donghyuck wishes he could remove from his body.

“It’s good,” Chenle insists, picking up a chip and extending it to him. It looks demonic, especially with the steam and the wiggling bonito.

Donghyuck eats it anyway, careful not to bite the tips of Chenle’s fingers, and in an instant, his mouth explodes into a thousand pieces. “That—” Donghyuck gags. “Tastes like a flavour, for sure.” Grease coats his tongue like an oil spill in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. “How do you eat that junk and keep up your abs?”

“A core machine Jaemin bought me for my birthday last year. And basketball.” Donghyuck rolls his eyes and bursts into laughter when Chenle steps on his shoelace in retaliation. As adorable as Chenle is when he goes on and on about conferences, tall men, shot clocks, and other words Donghyuck doesn’t understand, Donghyuck knows for a fact he can’t admit it out loud. A confident, ego-stoked Chenle is an unstoppable Chenle.

“Maybe I need to get on the ball grind,” Donghyuck muses. He uses his free hand to rub absently at his stomach, at all the soft and squishy bits he’s never been able to change.

“Nah.” Chenle pokes Donghyuck’s cheek and pinches the side of his stomach with a smile Donghyuck can barely see in the night. He sees it nonetheless, and it sends butterflies straight to where Chenle is touching. “You’re welcome to shoot hoops with me anytime, but you’re cute as is.”

Cute as is.

Donghyuck thanks the universe the flush of his cheeks are shadowed by the hour.

Every word Chenle says is offhanded, every action unremarkable, every double take without a different meaning than before, yet all of it, all of Chenle, sends shivers down his spine. Donghyuck’s world moved from slow, steady understanding to supernova after supernova of feelings he’s never adjusted to.

Renjun is—was, was—a slow, steady burn worsening the wounds over time. Chenle was a bone-chilling ice bath that warmed to room temperature the longer Donghyuck stayed in.

Chenle isn’t Renjun. Chenle and Donghyuck don’t have rules, don’t have fallout zones they’d have to protect if they combusted, don’t have visible lines dividing here and there. Chenle isn’t careful, Chenle doesn’t hold himself back, Chenle doesn’t hold Donghyuck back.

Chenle isn’t Renjun, meaning all the years spent learning, dealing, moving on from a certain Renjun Huang are rendered useless right here, right now, eating shitty chips outside of a 7-Eleven, wondering if Chenle’s smile is always there or if Donghyuck is just lucky enough to see it around the clock.

Nothing about this is easy anymore.

“—sip?”

Donghyuck blinks. Chenle is so impossibly handsome in the moonlight, that’s easy to tell. “Sorry?”

“Can I have another sip?” Chenle repeats.

Donghyuck answers, easily, uneasily, with his legs threatening to turn to jelly and his entire heart on the line, “You didn’t even have to ask.”

It doesn’t get easier. 

Tech flies by faster than Donghyuck can catch his breath, and it doesn’t get easier. Mark asks him for breakfast recipes, Renjun sends him photos of rocks and snails he finds, Jeno passes him granola bars during intermission, Jaemin winks at him every solo, and it doesn’t get easier. 

Chenle walks Donghyuck all the way up to his door for the first time, and it is not easy.

“Opening night in twenty-four hours,” Chenle says as Donghyuck unlocks his front door. “How are you holding up?”

“Ready to get it over with,” Donghyuck answers honestly, leaving space for Chenle to step inside as well. Donghyuck kicks his shoes off and switches to his favourite slides. Otherwise, he lingers in the entryway with Chenle, who peers around in curiosity. For how many times they’ve hooked up, for as long as they’ve been friends, Chenle has never come over, and Donghyuck prays he doesn’t take note of the dirty dishes in the sink or the clothes in a pile on one of his dining room chairs.

“Our Apollo.” Chenle grins and draws Donghyuck into a hug, pressing the side of his head against Donghyuck’s shoulder. His hair, damp and smelling of citrus shampoo, tickles Donghyuck’s jaw. “Keep your confidence up. You’re going to set the stage on fire tomorrow.”

“I can’t do that, I need to get paid.”

Chenle shakes in his hold and it leaves Donghyuck dizzy.

He spent so much time during dress rehearsals whittling down what to say, yet with the moment presenting itself now, Donghyuck finds himself at a loss for words. He’s an actor, he reads off scripts written hundreds of drafts over by writers who have dedicated their lives to capturing metaphysical beauty, a skill he himself can’t fathom, much less summon on the fly. How could someone begin to describe the importance of sunrises, high noons, and sunsets beyond physical needs?

Every word, every thought, every emotion stays trapped in him, impossible to force out, and Donghyuck’s knees threaten to crumple when Chenle pulls back with a small smile. “Goodnight, Donghyuck.”

“Goodnight, Chenle.” Even saying that much is a Herculean task.

Chenle lingers for a moment, maybe twenty, all of which slide past Donghyuck’s fingers into a small mound on the floor.

He watches Chenle close the door behind him and strains to hear footsteps fade down the hall.

Renjun followed the exact same steps hundreds of times. Donghyuck would watch him leave for the real world outside of the apartment walls, and he’d never speak up. Every time Donghyuck turned the lock behind him, an inch of his soul fizzled out into midnight.

Chenle isn’t Renjun. Donghyuck is still Donghyuck.

He can’t bring himself to get up and lock the door, instead drifting off to his living room.

On the coffee table is a stack of cookbooks Donghyuck bought on a whim the other day, stories of classic Chinese dishes from as many provinces as he could find compiled into beginner friendly recipes. Next to it is a light brown reusable boba cup, one that could be refilled at orders for a small discount on the final price, won together with a matching blue cup the day he and Chenle went in on the twentieth anniversary of the chain. There’s the stupid Stephonious Curricles pen too, laying on his phone he forgot to bring to rehearsal.

Donghyuck jolts, then immediately lunges for his phone, scrambling to swipe over the keypad. He scrolls through his contacts, jams his thumb down on the call button, and grips his phone so tight in his hand he dents the plastic case with his nails.

“—uck? Hyuck? What’s up?”

Leaking through the receiver is the faint sound of an engine, and Donghyuck runs over to the window, where he can see Chenle’s hand on the car door.

“Did I—leave anything in your car?” he stammers, “I think I left something in your car.”

He watches Chenle loop around to check the passenger seat, the backseat, and the trunk, ducking in and out of his view. “Not that I can tell. Did you lose something specific?”

Every part of Donghyuck screams at him to stall, stall, stall, do anything to keep Chenle from leaving the street. “What about gas? Is your gas tank full? There’s a station one block away. You don’t want to run out of gas and break down on the side of the street tomorrow, do you?”

A beat passes. “Yes, Hyuck, my gas is full.”

“What about oil?” he cries, “Tire pressure? Battery? Wiper fluid?”

“Donghyuck, stop. Breathe.” Chenle turns around and looks at him from below through the window, jaw set and eyes shadowed. A singular street lamp illuminates his visage. “What do you really want to ask? Are you nervous? I told you, you’re going to do amazing and—”

“I don’t know why I never told Renjun I was in love with him,” Donghyuck blurts out in one breath. He doesn’t wait for a sign to continue, squeezing his eyes shut and rambling on, “I don’t know why I never told him. I met him when he was single, we were both gay and out, and he joked so many times about how I’d make a good boyfriend. We were best friends, we would’ve patched up any holes we had if Renjun didn’t reciprocate, and even if we dated and broke up, I would’ve at least known that I tried my best.

“I don’t know why I never told him, and I fell out of love with him, and fuck, I might’ve lost the chance of a lifetime to a guy that burns his homemade mixtapes onto CDs.” Donghyuck’s next inhale hits him so hard, he stumbles forward and his head thunks against the glass pane. “I can’t do that again, Chenle. I can’t lose another chance.”

“Donghyuck Lee—”

“I think I’m falling for you.” Donghyuck opens his eyes and Chenle is nowhere to be seen. He doesn’t care, he can’t care, not with every part of his human being fighting to crawl out of his body and lay itself bare on the hardwood floors. It’s well past the point of no return, too far out the horizon to see the sun. “Or, at least, I know I feel something more, and I know I could fall for you. I’m telling you now, I know I could fall in love with you. I know I could be in love with you. I know I could love you.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same. You can love your other person and I’ll be more than happy to be your friend. I just needed to tell you, because I didn’t want to lose to the tide again and have this eating at my heart for another five years.” He slumps on the floor and curls in on himself. The side facing the room is hot, burning up, and the side pressed to the floor is cold, freezing over. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’ll be okay. I’m—”

The front door slams open and closed and in a flash, Donghyuck is yanked to his feet and it’s a wild-eyed Chenle, and Chenle is here, and Chenle has both his hands clutched around Donghyuck’s face and Chenle is kissing him.

Chenle is kissing him.

Chenle is kissing him, and Donghyuck can’t keep himself from melting into his touch.

Pulling apart leaves them both breathless, gasping for air. Chenle presses his forehead to Donghyuck’s, his voice low enough to send a rumble down Donghyuck’s spine.

“I—” he breathes— “I really fucking like you, Donghyuck. I really fucking like you, and I think I’m falling for you too. I fucking will, if you give me more time. A month, two weeks, a week and a half, tomorrow, I’ll be in love with you, all of you.”

“There’s not much to love,” Donghyuck croaks, “I’m terrible at communication. I’ve been eating the same soup at least once a week since I graduated high school. I bought a monthly med sorter so I only had to refill my doses once every few weeks, but I never ended up taking it out of the package.”

“I don’t care,” he replies, quieting to match Donghyuck’s volume. Chenle is never this quiet, and it scares Donghyuck as much as it leaves him breathless. “I don’t care how much you have, how much you think you have, I’ll love it all. I’ll text you everyday, I’ll make you new soups, I’ll sort your meds, I’ll do whatever the hell it takes for you to love yourself as much as I will. As much as I do.” In his eyes is the reflection of the nighttime sky, stars in their multitudes shining so bright, Donghyuck can’t look away. “Give us more time, and we can love each other.”

None of Donghyuck’s words can match the earnestness spilling from Chenle’s heart, so he opts to close his eyes and tilt his head up, drawing Chenle in again, pouring every ounce of his being into Chenle’s parted mouth until they’re both overflowing to the brim, an ocean in Donghyuck’s living room pulling them into the furthest depths. 

Shoes come off first, then socks, jackets, belts, everything pulled and thrown somewhere Donghyuck doesn’t care to remember. They stumble into his bedroom and Chenle pushes him onto the bed, never separating for more than a second. It’s as fast a scramble as all their other backstage tangles, except with an undercurrent of unfiltered need stronger than he’s ever felt before.

“How do you want it?” Chenle asks, pulling his shirt over his head to reveal miles of lean muscle under smooth, pale skin. He’s so fucking beautiful, and Donghyuck wishes light came from more than the cityscape so he could see Chenle’s beauty as a whole.

“In me,” Donghyuck gasps, raking his hands up Chenle’s flowers to rest on his chest, “In me, I want you in me.” He wants Chenle as close to him as he can get, as close to planetary collision as their two bodies will let them. All the blood rushing south and all the racing thoughts clouding his head ache for all of Chenle at once and nothing less, Donghyuck more than willing to fulfil. 

“Tomorrow’s opening night,” Chenle protests, “I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Don’t make me beg.” Chenle stills and Donghyuck’s plea comes out wobbly. “Chenle, please. Please, I want this, I want you.” The desperation would be more embarrassing if Donghyuck could think about anything other than Chenle over him, Chenle touching him, Chenle.

“Okay.” He presses feather-light kisses on three spots on Donghyuck’s cheek, a fourth further down. “Okay, sunshine, you can have me.”

“Bottom drawer,” Donghyuck says as Chenle reaches over to rummage around his bedside cabinet. His face burns watching Chenle raise his eyebrows as he sets aside several of his dildos and vibrators to reach for the very back. When he digs around the box of condoms, Donghyuck tugs Chenle’s arm.

“What?”

Donghyuck swallows around a mouthful of cotton, heart thudding and heat pooling in his groin. “We don’t need them. I want to feel you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chenle hisses, "You’re going to be the death of me.”

“You can’t die. We have a show to put on tomorrow.” He reaches out blindly and laces his right hand with Chenle’s left, kissing the inside of his wrist over his pulse. “You have to love me tomorrow.”

His breath hitches when Chenle’s finger ghosts over his hole, cold and wet. “Relax for me,” Chenle mutters, easing in a finger in time with Donghyuck’s exhale. “Good boy.” Donghyuck whimpers at the pet name and Chenle presses deeper, harder, nibbling the top of his ear. Two, three fingers later, he withdraws his hand entirely and lines himself up. With his lubed hand, he reaches for Donghyuck’s cock and strokes, smearing his precome together with the lube and making the slide incredible. “Are you ready?”

When Donghyuck nods, Chenle pushes in, and they both groan in sync. 

Even before Chenle bottoms out, Donghyuck feels so full, inhales ragged and tremors shaking through his body. Once Chenle is fully sheathed, it’s like Donghyuck is whole, the wetness and the heat intensified without anything separating them. From his fingers to his toes, sparks fly up and down, Donghyuck unable to think past a static haze of pure pleasure. 

“Fuck,” Chenle grunts, “You’re so tight.”

“You can move faster,” he sighs, “It feels good. I won’t break.”

Chenle does as told, building up from a steady rhythm to a fast and rough pound, all while jerking Donghyuck off at the same pace. Kissing stops being kissing and becomes the two of them panting in each others’ mouths, and the room fills with their noises and the sound of skin on skin. With Chenle on top of him, in him, over him and all encompassing, Donghyuck lets himself go, lets his body receive while his conscience reaches for somewhere holy, somewhere heavenly. All other words they share—praises, pleads, promises—are spoken directly into their ears, for them and for them only, kept in the orbit of their system. 

Donghyuck spills into Chenle’s hand at the same time Chenle shudders, releasing hot and wet deep into him, their mouths against each other as each of their strings unravel to tangle with the sheets. Nothing about it is graceful or elegant, but it’s the second closest Donghyuck’s ever come to nirvana on Earth. 

(First, being in Chenle’s arms after they’ve both cleaned up, on their way to leaving the limbo between consciousness and sleep, warm and close and all the things Donghyuck forgot he dreamt of.)

The lobby is packed full to the brim with the audience mingling with the ensemble, a tight mass of suits, dresses, and folded Playbills. He recognises a few people, returning viewers, family of the cast, and familiar industry faces, everyone else blurring into the crowd. People turn around to congratulate him and pull him into side conversations, Donghyuck making sure to keep everything short so he can seek out one specific person in the crowd.

It doesn’t take much longer, and the first thing Renjun does after he notices Donghyuck is break out into a sprint across the lobby, launching himself at Donghyuck full force.

“Hyuck!” he cries as they stumble and spin in place in an embrace, “You were so good, oh my God!”

“I’d hope so.” Donghyuck holds Renjun by the waist to steady them, and eventually they separate, Renjun grinning ear to ear. “It’s my job to be good.”

Renjun rolls his eyes. “Don’t be obnoxious. You were shining up there.”

“My loyal pre-debut fan,” he chuckles. “Are those for me?”

Renjun holds a massive bouquet, a custom one with a florist card tucked into one of the blooming lilies. “No, they’re for Éponine,” he grumbles, shoving them into Donghyuck’s arms. His sarcasm is funny in a painfully unfunny way. “I would’ve brought more if they let it past security.”

“This is plenty,” Donghyuck promises. “Thank you, Junnie, I mean it.”

Renjun hugs him again, quick yet tight, and gives Donghyuck shining eyes. “I’m so proud of you.”

“I’m proud of myself too.”

The first time Renjun came to one of Donghyuck’s shows, Donghyuck played an unnamed ensemble role with more non-lyrical harmonies than actual singing parts. Renjun treated it like a principal role regardless, congratulating him with supermarket flowers and a lot of kind words undeserving for Donghyuck at the time. It was one of the innocuous moments that made Donghyuck realise he was in love with Renjun; reflecting on it now, all he can recall from the memory is a fond warmth for what he and Renjun have always had as friends.

“So,” he starts anyway, “Enjolras was your favourite character, right? Total dreamboat, exactly your type.” Renjun slaps him with a groan. “Seriously, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“How do you feel?” Renjun prods, “Now that it’s over.”

He shrugs, fiddling with the paper wrapping. “It hasn’t hit me yet, I don’t think. A few agents gave me their information, so it’ll be auditions in a week. The grind never stops, you know how it is.” He got an offer for drunk, queer A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he asked for two cards, knowing exactly who he wanted to be the Demetrius to his Helena.

“You should take a break one of these days,” nags Renjun, “You keep drowning yourself in work and it’s making your skin all blotchy. Trust me, breaks work. Have you been taking your antidepressants?”

“Yes, mom.” Donghyuck rubs his neck and continues honestly, “I don’t even know what I’d do with a break. Sitting around and playing video games isn’t any better for my health.”

“Visit family, get out of the city, spend time with friends,” he lists, “Spend time with Chenle.”

“And do what? Play basketball? More sitting around to play video games?”

“No, you useless twink.” Renjun slaps him again. “Go out to a nice restaurant, go to an amusement park, bring him to your favourite comedy shows, date him. What have you been doing all this time?”

Donghyuck mulls over the mornings this past show season. Chenle woke up earlier between the two of them, always ready with homemade breakfast or something from down the street once Donghyuck felt alive. Donghyuck taught Chenle how to do makeup, and he actually listened, building up a real skincare routine and lounging around his apartment in Donghyuck’s bear-eared headband with sheet masks over his face. They stretched, got in cardio around the block, attempted to play Horse once, and ran lines on the drive to the theatre. For days without matinee, they fucked, watched an obscene amount of Friends, or went out with Jaemin or Jeno for meals.

Things were easy with Chenle. Things are always easy with Chenle.

“Taking things slow,” Donghyuck summarises, “Enjoying the scenery. Morning sex.”

“Gross.” Renjun’s smile betrays his words. “Does he make you laugh?”

The question catches Donghyuck off guard, and in glancing up to consider, he notices Chenle standing beside Mark, waving at him with a massive beam. Donghyuck winks and blows a kiss, Chenle catching out of the air and tossing it in the nearby trash.

And, well, Donghyuck laughs. “Yeah. Honestly, he makes me laugh way more than his shitty jokes deserve.”

With a twinkle in his eye, Renjun nods and responds, “That’s how you know he’s the right one for you.” 

The air of the venue—one of the rich actors’ townhouses—crackles with the unhinged energy all theatre companies carry in spades, bringing the indoor temperature up at least a few degrees. Bass-heavy music thumps through the walls, shaking the entire building and the throngs of loosely dressed people packed inside. It already smells heavily of poorly mixed cocktails, weed, and sweat, a stench Donghyuck didn’t miss.

Shuffling past everyone to the haphazard kitchen-turned-bar area took shoving, pushing, and a whole lot of cursing, Donghyuck barely making it out to the other side.

The huge tubs of jungle juice laid out on the counter make Donghyuck’s guts churn. A minute of digging around the fridge and Donghyuck finds a saviour unopened can of Diet Coke. Popping it open and chugging it all in one go might be more satisfying than his final applause hours ago.

“I said I’m not interested,” a familiar voice floats into the kitchen. “Lay off.”

Donghyuck turns to see Chenle come in, one of the costume crew plastered and hanging off his arm. “I just wanted to congratulate you,” he whines, “You stole the whole show, I know you can steal something else.”

“Hey,” Donghyuck cuts in sharply, pulling Chenle towards him. “If you’re gonna flirt with him, don’t do it in front of his boyfriend. Where’s the class, asshole? Also, that was a terrible line. Five out of ten.”

It does the trick well enough and he takes the hint despite his sneer. When they’re properly alone, Donghyuck pokes Chenle’s cheek and asks, “Has this been all night for you?”

“A little.” Chenle brushes Donghyuck’s hair out of his eyes. “Cast parties are always a load of shit.”

They used to be fun for Donghyuck, full of poor networking, bad decisions, and way too many hookups than could ever be safe. With everything he had now, the shiny appeal was rubbed away to expose a bland, boring interior. “You can say that again.”

“Cast parties are always a load of shit.” They trade grins and Chenle leans over to rest his head on Donghyuck’s shoulder. His voice gets muffled in the fabric of Donghyuck’s shirt. “What do you think about breakfast? There’s a new round-the-clock pancake place near Jaemin’s apartment, and they give you a discount if you can finish fifteen in one go.”

“It’s midnight, I’m gonna fucking die tomorrow.”

“You’ll be fine.” Donghyuck yelps as Chenle slips his hand under Donghyuck’s shirt to squeeze his belly, rubbing a few circles. “I’ll make my mom’s chicken soup tomorrow.”

Outside, the moon is full and combines together with the stars to shine through the window. Venus is in retrograde. His shoes are laced at the perfect tightness. The promise of chicken soup tomorrow fills him head to toe with warmth.

The new stage is brighter now, their roles bigger, the show grander with no finale in sight.

Maybe that’s why Donghyuck can raise his fist, and maybe that’s why his mouth is loose enough to declare, “Loser pays.”