Work Text:
Yangyang’s playing maknae like an understudy. Chenle realizes it abruptly.
He inhabits the role with a studied perfection, wearing it like a mask. He acts just cute enough to get doted on by the other members, just annoying enough to be scolded twice as often, and much to Chenle’s chagrin, knows how to get under Kun’s skin with a horrifically accurate ability.
He sees them in the hall outside the practice room sometimes, trailing around behind Kun like lost puppies. Chenle fits there somewhere, existent but also not, orbiting the same sun but not quite falling in line to the gravitational pull.
Last-minute lineup changes aside, everything Yangyang does just ticks him off, from the way he’d slid into the role of youngest to the very space he inhabits. It’s rough enough knowing that Yangyang’s stolen his spot. It’s even worse that everyone happens to love him.
It’s more than a little hard to watch Kun pace around the living room in his sweatpants and a cotton t-shirt worn too big around the shoulders. He’s hanging laundry on the balcony rack to dry, busily stepping over Chenle’s long legs to get around the table in the crowded living room. Chenle sprawls across the couch as obnoxiously as possible.
“You can’t be so upset over things that are out of your control,” Kun tries to tell him placatingly. It’s what he’s always saying to Chenle, whose mood changes like the weather. But it’s Yangyang’s crumpled laundry on the floor of the living room that he sidesteps with an annoyed sigh, surveying the room for anything else that may have haphazardly fallen off the rack.
Their dorm is crammed full of Liu Yangyang, from the rows of Nikes framing the doorway to the hoodies scattered over various pieces of furniture throughout the house, like Yangyang can’t even make it to his room to get undressed. His presence lingers in every atom of the space, like a disease infiltrating the air– one that Kun has to breathe in constantly, filling his lungs and chest and gut, in the spaces that should be Chenle’s.
Chenle bares his teeth and snarls, “Watch me.”
Kun gets that no nonsense look on his face and tosses a piece of wet laundry at him.
Chenle sulks the entire rest of the night.
Yangyang and Hendery come home after dinner, giggling and falling all over each other, tracking muddy snow into the foyer.
Yangyang’s wearing the biggest jacket Chenle’s ever seen, but when he pulls his hood down, his cheeks are stained splotchy red from the cold. Hendery laughs, reaching a hand up to brush fresh snow from the crown of Yangyang’s head carelessly onto the entryway floor. Quickly, Chenle makes a hasty excuse to leave before he has to watch Kun nag them.
Before he can make a quick escape, while Kun and Hendery begin bickering harmlessly over the last packet of Oreos from the box on the dining table, Yangyang catches him in the hall struggling to slide swiftly into his jacket.
“Here,” Yangyang says, stepping forward and catching the sleeve Chenle’s trying to grasp, holding it up so he can slide his arm through the hole. “I got it.”
Chenle blinks in surprise. “Thank you,” he says reflexively, stuffing his hand hastily into the sleeve and yanking it out of Yangyang’s grasp.
Yangyang leans a hip on the wall, watching Chenle cram his feet into his sneakers. He looks patient and oddly thoughtful. “You haven’t been coming over much lately,” he comments as Chenle heaves the front door open.
“Yah!” Kun calls as soon as he hears the creak of the door. He abandons his senseless argument with Hendery (and in the process, surrenders claim to the Oreos) to join them. “You’re leaving already? Why are you creeping out like a ghost?”
“I got a text from Jeno,” Chenle lies smoothly. “He wants to shoot hoops at the park by my place.”
Kun blinks, pacified. “Oh. Alright. At least text me when you get home.”
Chenle almost thinks there’s something a little sad in his eyes. Or maybe he hopes there is.
Yangyang’s still watching them, though. Chenle can feel the weight of his curious gaze settle on his shoulder. He sets his jaw stubbornly and turns back towards the door.
“Sure,” he calls breezily, without a single plan to do so, and then leaves.
He walks aimlessly around the neighborhood instead for half an hour before heading home to his big, empty house.
When Chenle realizes that Renjun’s fallen for it too is when things really start going south. Renjun has always been more willing to put up with his whining than Kun by far, and somehow that makes it hurt all the more when Yangyang starts monopolizing his time.
In hindsight, he shouldn’t have even cornered Renjun about it, but Chenle’s desire to be nosy grows exponentially when he drops by the dorm. After snooping around Jeno and Jaemin’s things to get updated on what they’ve been up to, he finds Renjun tying his shoes by the door, much too overdressed for a casual run to the convenience store around the corner.
“Where are you off to?” he can’t help but cut in ominously, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Oh!” Renjun must jump a foot in the air, ears reddening guiltily as he turns to face Chenle and hastily stuffs his phone into his pocket. “You know. I was talking about how much I wanted to see that anime Hendery’s been raving about in the group chat. I’m heading over there to watch the first couple episodes.”
“With Hendery?”
Renjun’s mouth thins into a frown. “With Yangyang.”
There it is again. Chenle’s mood sours instantly at the mention of him. “Oh,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant.
Renjun asks with equal feigned casualness, “Why don’t you come with me and see Kun-ge?”
Chenle scowls and immediately throws back, “Why doesn’t Kun-ge come to my house if he wants to see me so bad?”
“He does. You’re the one who never wants to go over anymore.”
Chenle braces for an argument. Before they can escalate, Jisung huffs out a little annoyed noise and interrupts from the living room, “I know you guys are fighting. Speaking in Mandarin doesn’t suddenly make me deaf.”
Renjun shoots him a look. “Yangyang’s really not that bad,” he insists, though it’s much more even-toned. “Like, you guys have way more things in common than you think. He’s into basketball too, and he annoys the daylights out of Kun-ge. There’s actually a lot you could bond over.”
“Why are you letting him brainwash you?” Chenle moans dramatically, clutching his chest and grimacing in an exaggeratedly pained way. “Don’t you see what he’s doing?!”
Renjun doesn’t laugh at the absurdity of his actions or shove him away like Chenle’s expecting. Instead, he stays quiet, which stops Chenle mid-whine.
“Why do you look like that?” He asks after an elongated pause during which Renjun just looks at him contemplatively and Chenle’s dread builds and builds and builds. He waves his fingers in front of Renjun’s face. “Quit it, weirdo.”
Renjun shoves his hand out of the way and asks in a disbelieving voice, “Chenle, are you jealous of Yangyang?”
Then it’s Chenle’s turn to be silent, petulant and pouty-mouthed.
Renjun’s mouth twitches like he’s stifling the urge to smile. There it is—the reason why Chenle never said anything in the first place. He should’ve known Renjun wouldn’t get it.
“There’s nothing to be jealous of, you idiot,” Renjun says gently. “I thought you and Jisung were going out today so I made plans, but you know I’m always here for you.”
He hates the calmness of Renjun’s voice when he wants Chenle to talk about his feelings. Renjun thinks everything can be resolved by meditating and lighting scented candles and sitting around a campfire holding hands.
Chenle knows the reality—that he has to deal with his issues bare-handed and sharp-teethed, that he wants to wrestle Yangyang to the floor with sweat and struggle and come out on top, come out proving something, both to the others and himself—that this place was meant for him and he can earn his keep here.
“I’m not jealous,” Chenle finally settles on saying, because he isn’t. There isn’t anything to be jealous of—Yangyang’s skillset is so distant from his own that it’s not like Yangyang’s presence on the team is an inherent threat to Chenle’s talent. It’s the way he fits into the lives of the people who have always belonged solely to Chenle, taking up space that he doesn’t even know isn’t his to have.
Renjun and Kun are so giving. They’re similar in that way, both always eager to please others and be praised for it. Chenle’s played the slow game. He’s learned how to keep them wrapped around his little finger, but Yangyang tramples over his painstaking efforts easily, taking in a matter of months what Chenle has been working on for over half a decade, and makes him realize it doesn’t matter how hard he fights back, because Yangyang is apparently so effortlessly loveable that Renjun and Kun have fallen under his thrall completely.
Okay, maybe he’s a little jealous.
Renjun just gives him a knowing look and stoops down to keep tying his shoe. “Alright, even if you aren’t jealous. You’re my best friend.”
Chenle tries not to let his cheeks flush. “Shut up,” he says immediately. “You’re only saying that because you think I’m jealous.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true,” Renjun says simply, straightening. He smiles serenely, and it makes Chenle want to tear his hair out, the way Renjun knows himself so well, can sort through his feelings until they’re all sensical and ordered. The tangled, thorny mess in Chenle’s head doesn’t seem anywhere near as easy to wrangle.
Then Renjun’s gone. Chenle huffily flops down onto the couch next to Jisung.
He gives a huffy sigh. “Why do you think I hate Yangyang?”
Jisung doesn’t look up once from his phone, fingers tapping relentlessly, but he does say, eyes still fixed on the screen, “I don’t know, Chenle. Why do you hate Yangyang?”
“That’s what I’m asking you!” Chenle throws his hands up in frustration, and only then does Jisung finally pause his game. He cocks his head to the side and gives Chenle a once over.
“You’re not a hateful person,” Jisung says simply.
Somehow, that only makes Chenle feel worse.
“Lightweight,” Yizhuo says for the third time in five minutes as she drags him through the door of the little bar they’d scouted out the previous week.
Chenle’s too busy clutching his stomach and wailing about how he’s going to be sick to respond, and she just snickers in amusement before proceeding to ransack his pockets for his phone.
“At least buy me a drink first,” Chenle slurs as Yizhuo manhandles him against the dirty alley wall and finally finds it in his back pocket.
“I did,” she reminds him cheekily. “And shut up, I’m just looking for your phone. I’d take you home but—”
“They’re still on your back,” Chenle finishes when she cuts off, looking apologetic. Chenle remembers how stifling it had been in the first couple years, with ridiculous expectations and rules pushed on them. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”
“Who should I call?” she asks, looking through his phone.
“A taxi,” Chenle says immediately. The last thing he needs is to call someone when he’s falling over himself shitfaced.
“Oh yeah? Not your beloved Kun-ge?” Yizhuo teases, and something in Chenle pangs with longing—Kun would such good care of him, with his gentle, deft hands— but then Yizhuo continues down his phone, her bright, mischievous eyes glancing over him.
“How about Yangyang? Are you still like, obsessed with him?” she snorts, her finger hovering over the contact.
“What? What are you talking about?” he frowns, stretching clumsily for the phone, but Yizhuo holds it out of reach. A spike of panic lances down his spine, cold and sobering. “No, I’m not. Wait no, don’t call!”
Her eyes widen at the sudden rise of his voice. “Okay, relax, weirdo. I cut it before it rang,” she tells him, a knowing smile on her mouth. “Don’t get your panties in a twist.” After a moment, she relinquishes the phone to him. “I got your taxi though. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” Chenle relents, only somewhat sullen. He looks down at Yangyang’s name on his contact list (overly-formal, plain, the characters reading Liu Yangyang (NCT) right back up at him in bold). Then he turns his screen off so he doesn’t have to see it anymore.
On the sidewalk beside him, Yizhuo fishes her own phone from her purse to call her manager. As she speaks quietly into the mic, Chenle crumples down onto the curb, the throbbing in his skull more prominent now without the low bass of music to distract him.
He should’ve known better than to take those last couple shots, leaving him just a little too hazy to function. He’s never been able to outdrink Yizhuo.
He’s too drunk to remember the rest in detail; he gets a fond squeeze goodbye from Yizhuo, the familiar embrace of her perfume enveloping him for a brief moment, and then she’s pushing him into the backseat of the taxi. She gives him a half-wave, heading towards her manager’s car around the corner. Then he watches the blur of streetlights passing, his forehead laid against the cool respite of the window. And then, all too quickly, the familiarity of his neighborhood.
He manages a thank you and staggers out of the car into the lobby. Somehow he makes it up the elevator and down the hall to his apartment, punching in the code wrong twice before he gets the door open and tumbles down into a mess on the foyer floor.
Too lazy to get up, Chenle thanks his stars that he’s home alone this month and he won’t have to hastily explain to his aunt tomorrow morning why he’d passed out in the entrance hall. As the front door swings shut behind him, he stays eagle-spread on the ground, eyes squeezed shut against the waves of nausea roiling through him.
He finds himself thinking unwittingly of what Yizhuo had said. Your beloved Kun-ge.
Kun always makes things better. The furtive thought creeps its way into his mind like a weed unchecked in a garden, filling his head with thoughts of the way Kun’s sweet voice rises in annoyance whenever he scolds Chenle, with a unique kind of familiarity. How Kun doesn’t hold back with him, treating him with love and firmness in the same breath.
Chenle’s limbs all feel distinctly puddle-like, but he starts patting himself down for his phone, struggling out of his coat to search his jeans.
He gets a little lost on the way, dizzy and too drunk to really read his phone-screen, dropping it clumsily on the floor beside himself. He reaches across the dark floor blindly, feeling for it.
He must have dialed without noticing, because his phone is in the middle of a Facetime call when he finds it.
“Oh, shit,” Chenle mumbles, trying to hang up, but only succeeding in switching to the back camera. “Oh shit, oh shit.”
“Chenle?” a tinny voice that is definitely not Kun’s asks over the line. There’s a lot of background noise, like always over in the other dorm. The face that peers down at him is not Kun either. “Are you okay?”
Chenle’s stomach churns dangerously as he finally manages to stab the icon to switch the camera and gives Yangyang a perfect view of the state of him, lying in a crumpled heap on the foyer floor. “No,” Chenle moans miserably at the sight of him. “Not you, not youuu.”
“Um,” Yangyang mumbles, and then he’s looking offscreen, saying something muffled to the soft cadence of Dejun’s voice. Chenle thinks idly about how badly he wants to take a nap.
“Are you… are you drunk?” Yangyang asks after a second, now in a much darker, quieter place.
“Leave me alone,” Chenle says, and glares. He’s holding his phone a little lopsided, fingers not quite cooperating when he tries to make it visible for Yangyang how pissed he is.
“Dude,” Yangyang stifles a laugh. “Why did you call me, then?”
“I called Kun-ge,” Chenle protests, trying to peer at the bright screen—too bright for his overtired eyes. Yangyang’s in his own room. He recognizes the incessant gurgling of the fish tank from every time he’s been over, the sound bleeding through the walls.
“No,” Yangyang tells him patiently. “You actually called me. But I can hear him singing in the shower next door if you need him. Do you want me to tell him to call you back when he comes out?”
Chenle groans and resists the urge to throw his stupid phone with Yangyang’s stupid face on it across the room. It clicks suddenly. Yizhuo’s canceled call.
“Don’t,” he finally decides, because if he’s wasted enough to call the wrong person without realizing, he’s probably wasted enough to piss Kun off more than the allotted amount he so graciously usually allows. “I’m going to kill you if you do.”
“Okay, cool,” Yangyang says, and then huffs out an awkward little laugh. “Can I, like, ask something without being threatened?”
Chenle squints. “Shoot.”
“Are you on the floor right now?”
“None of your business.”
Yangyang makes a scoffing noise in the back of his throat, clearly taken aback. Still, he’s wearing that lazy grin, the corners of his mouth curling slow in amusement. Chenle’s having a hard time looking directly at it.
“Okay. Do you want me to hang up?”
“No,” Chenle immediately cries, affronted. And leave him in the dark alone with his turning belly and dizzied head? “How could you say that?”
Yangyang lets out a chuckle, and it sounds so—so annoyingly endearing, that it makes Chenle frown up at the ceiling. “Stop it. It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” Yangyang argues. “You’re like… you’re surprisingly cute, like this. No offense.”
“None taken,” Chenle says. And just because his head’s swaying just dangerously enough to forget that it’s Yangyang saying it, he lets himself enjoy the compliment. He adds, trying not to preen over it, “I know I am.”
Yangyang actually laughs out loud this time, and the sound is so disarmingly warm that Chenle feels abruptly taken off guard. On the phone screen, his mouth is a pink, pixelated smear.
His cheeks flush warm. “I said it isn’t funny!”
“I’m not—I’m not laughing at you,” Yangyang explains in a low, soothing voice. “You’re just. Hmm. I’m just understanding what everyone else has been saying this whole time.”
“Who is ‘everyone’?” And what have they been saying?” Chenle demands instantly, trying to raise his head much too quickly. It comes out sharp and bleeding suspicion.
“You know,” he gets a little hum in response. “That sometimes it shows through. Like Renjun and Kun-ge always say.”
“When do they—” Chenle breaks off, his head spinning. What shows through? He can barely focus past the nausea that roils inside him.
He tries to blink and recenter himself, but the taste of alcohol burns in the back of his throat. It takes precedent suddenly over the curiosity.
“Yangyang,” he whispers. On the other end, Yangyang hums into the line to show he’s listening. Very quietly, Chenle discloses, “I’m going to throw up.”
“Chenle. Just—” Yangyang makes a huffy, frustrated noise in his throat. “Just stay there. I’m gonna come over.”
“What?” Chenle asks, and the panicked jerk of his head is enough to make another swell of nausea slam into him. “Oh no,” he says miserably.
The last thing he needs is for Yangyang to show up here and see him like this, curled up on the foyer floor like a mess. He’s already well on his way to never being able to look him in the eye again after this whole drunken-call mishap, and now here Yangyang goes, talking about coming over. Chenle groans weakly in protest.
“Shut up,” Yangyang says, though not unkindly. “I was already putting my shoes on anyways. Just give me like twenty minutes and try not to hurl on your doormat.”
Yangyang’s never told him to shut up before. The sheer surprise of it is enough to silence the retort his clumsy brain tries to formulate.
“Okay,” he says instead, stunned into compliance. The line goes dead.
Chenle’s just beginning to resign himself to spending the night getting intimately acquainted with the floortile when the lock on the front door beeps in warning above him. A tentative knock rings around him.
He turns weakly towards the noise and squints up at the red light of the lock flashing, calling the number through the door. The soft chime of the door unlocking makes him finally reluctantly slide himself out of the way.
Pressing his cheek flat to the cold tile, Chenle hides his face from the strip of light that floods in from the hallway. Fruitless, because a second later, Yangyang’s flicking on the light above the entry, washing the entire foyer in yellow light. Chenle squeezes his eyes shut tighter and swallows the urge to moan in pain.
Yangyang’s heavy footsteps stop next to his shoulder. Chenle doesn’t move.
He hears the rustling of Yangyang squatting down. Far softer than he’d expect, Yangyang murmurs, “Chenle? Are you awake?”
Half of him is tempted to keep quiet and pretend to be asleep just to see what Yangyang would do—if he’d panic and call Kun, or skip straight to the manager. But then the thought of actually having to deal with the managers’ lecturing makes him snap out of it. He turns as if stirring from Yangyang’s voice.
“Oh, thank god, you’re not dead,” Yangyang says a little sarcastically under his breath. “How was I going to explain that to manager hyung?”
Snitch. Chenle doesn’t say it out loud, but his silence must convey what he’s thinking, because Yangyang adds a second later, “Kidding, by the way. Are you going to lie there all night?”
The biting reply on his tongue doesn’t make it past the nausea swirling inside him. Instead, he rasps quietly, “I can’t.” He pauses, swallowing hard, hiding his face shamefully somewhere between the tile and his sweat-damp bangs. “I can’t get up.”
Yangyang doesn’t give him shit like he’s half expecting. He just lays a hand on Chenle’s shoulder and says, “c’mon, you need to help me or I won’t be able to lift you.”
He lifts his head reluctantly, immediately fighting back the dizziness that threatens to overtake his vision. In the dim light, Yangyang’s squatting down next to him. Chenle squints at the full curve of his mouth, trying to focus on that to keep him anchored as he tries to drag himself off the floor. Yangyang’s lips are just as pink as they’d been on the screen.
“There you go,” Yangyang says, catching his shoulder properly under the armpit. He lifts carefully. “You’re all good.”
“Oh god,” Chenle moans, trying his hardest not to projectile vomit all over Yangyang’s spotless Nikes. He snakes his arm around Yangyang’s and heaves himself upright, bracing his weight heavily on Yangyang’s. “If Kun-ge ever finds out about this, you’re dead.”
Yangyang winces from the iron strength of his grip but he doesn’t pull away, letting Chenle use him as a crutch. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, hauling Chenle towards the bathroom “Don’t throw up on me.”
Chenle snarls halfheartedly, but Yangyang just drags him across the room determinedly.
To Chenle’s distant surprise, Yangyang remembers where his bedroom door is from the few times he’s been here. He pulls Chenle across the threshold and into the ensuite without hesitation.
He’s gone as soon as Chenle’s clutching the toilet.
Chenle’s too nauseous to focus on how he feels a little abandoned.
While he’s hurling his guts out, he feels Yangyang’s fingers curl hesitantly over his clammy, heaving shoulder. “I brought you some water,” he says quietly, as Chenle retches and sobs and retches some more. “It’s right here on the counter.”
He lets his hand drag downwards, drawing a slow, heavy circle over Chenle’s back, the sudden warmth of his palm anchoring against the onslaught of disorientation, then pulls away.
Then he’s gone again, leaving Chenle to miserably throw up.
When Chenle’s emptied the contents of his stomach and then some, he shakily washes his mouth out in the sink and brushes his teeth until he feels sober enough to change into a comfy pair of sweats and an old pullover he’d stolen from Jeno. The smell of Jeno’s cologne has mostly faded from the soft cotton, but Chenle presses it to his face and inhales deep anyways, searching for any remnants of the clean, masculine scent.
Nothing. Against his better rationality, the memory of Yangyang’s hand steady against his back comes to mind instead. He pulls on the sweatshirt violently.
Then he goes to return the empty cup of water.
He finds Yangyang in the kitchen on his phone, but he looks up as soon as he hears Chenle approach.
He doesn’t say thank you. Yangyang doesn’t look like he expects him to anyways.
Yangyang whistles low, rocking back on his heels like—like some sort of dude, awkward and rumpled, standing in the middle of Chenle’s cavernous, dim kitchen.
“You here all alone?” he asks, looking around at the spotless, gleaming appliances, and empty sink.
“Only till the end of the month,” Chenle feels the need to tell him. Like Yangyang’s going to run home and tattle to Kun that he’s not feeding himself enough.
Yangyang just nods, humming like he’s filing the information away somewhere.
“Hey, so like,” he says, and it sounds purposefully obtuse “Tonight, when you went out… Did you go alone?”
“What?” Chenle looks at him suspiciously. “No. Why would I go get wasted alone?”
“I don’t know,” Yangyang shrugs, holding his hands out in front of him as if to absolve himself of guilt. “How should I know how you spend your free time? All I have to go off of is what I hear from the geges and Renjun and, you know, you drunkenly calling me from the floor.”
“You don’t need to hear anything from them,” Chenle scowls. “I’m really tired of you guys acting like I’m some kind of kid. I came home alone, because I’m living here alone right now.”
“Chenle. I’m just trying to make sure if you’re like, okay,” Yangyang starts to protest, but Chenle’s already headachy and short of patience.
“You’re not. You just wanted to see me all—all messed up and stupid. You’re trying to spy on me so you can go and tell the geges.”
“What? No, Chenle—”
“Go ahead,” Chenle laughs, though the sound is choked and trembling. “I don’t care what you do. Go and tell Kun-ge how awful I am, how you had to come and drag me off the floor because I was too fucked up to do it myself. Tell him whatever you want.”
“Chenle,” Yangyang says quietly. “I don’t think you’re getting it.”
He takes Chenle’s wrist suddenly.
The heat of his fingers is startling, and for a second, Chenle doesn’t know how to react except to fall silent and stare at the way Yangyang’s slim, boyish fingers cage his knobby wrist.
He looks up at Yangyang in surprise. His eyes are soft—softer than they have any right to be, after watching Chenle hurl his guts out. Yangyang’s mouth curls a little, and to Chenle’s utter surprise, the sight makes something complicated bloom in his stomach.
He tells Chenle exasperatedly, “I don’t care about what Kun-ge thinks, and I’m certainly not going to tell him anything you don’t want me to. I’m only here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
His fingers slide down, swift and searingly warm, to grapple with Chenle’s, binding them palm-to-palm. “You,” Yangyang emphasizes.
“Oh,” Chenle says dumbly. He remembers abruptly the way Yangyang had helped him into his jacket in the foyer of the dorm, then the water and the hand he’d pressed in comfort to Chenle’s back. And then, all at once, he understands the gentleness brimming in Yangyang’s eyes. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says. He looks a little sheepishly down at their intertwined fingers, then through his lashes back up at Chenle. “Is that okay?”
Chenle still feels stunned, but he nods dumbly.
“Good,” Yangyang murmurs, and then he huffs out a tiny laugh. “Because I’m really tired of Renjun laughing at me for thinking you’re cute.”
That snaps him out of whatever stupor the soft, cooing tone of Yangyang’s voice has lulled him into. “Renjun knows?!” Chenle squawks.
“It’s not my fault he’s crazy intuitive,” Yangyang says placatingly. “He guessed last year.”
“Last year,” Chenle repeats. Twelve entire months of his life that Yangyang has spent wanting Chenle while he’d thought it was the exact opposite. And Yangyang’s still holding his hand. His hand, which feels like it may melt. Chenle’s not sure if he minds. “You’ve liked me since last year.”
“I’ve liked you for ages,” Yangyang laughs. Chenle feels dizzy again—and not from the alcohol.
The hopeless look must be visible on his face, because Yangyang releases his wrist (Chenle tries not to notice how much he misses the heat) and says gently, “I know this is probably a lot right now. Why don’t you go to bed and sleep off your hangover? We can talk about it in the morning.”
Chenle swallows hard. “Okay,” he says. Then, taking a deep, shaky breath, he lets out a nearly hysterical giggle. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“Give me five minutes to look for a car.” Yangyang brandishes his phone.
“Can you… I mean, you’re already here,” Chenle points out. He’s never felt this inarticulate in his life. “You may as well stay.”
God. Can Yangyang tell he feels like an idiot?
“Here?” Yangyang asks, and his eyes flit immediately over to Chenle’s bedroom door.
“In the guest room,” he adds hastily. “Where Kun-ge and everyone else stay when they come over.”
Yangyang’s smile doesn’t dim in the slightest. “Cool.”
Chenle doesn’t think he’s getting any sleep tonight.
Like with many other things, Chenle is wrong. He sleeps for eight hours straight, then wakes up fifteen minutes short of noon. The sunlight slipping through the cracks in the closed blinds doesn’t tell him much except that he should invest in blackout curtains. His throbbing head and dry, sour mouth are an insistent given, but the memory of Yangyang’s hand holding his comes back slowly, filtering in with surprising clarity. He flexes his fingers—knobby and pale and long, still the same but somehow different.
It's that realization that finally kickstarts him into leaving the bed.
He spends all of three seconds contemplating in the hall before he lets impatience take hold and pushes open the door to the guestroom. The bed inside is neatly made and empty.
A cold wash of disappointment floods unwittingly through him. Why had he even thought—
“What are you up to?”
Chenle whirls around so fast he nearly gets whiplash, just in time to see Yangyang standing in the hall, dressed in his hoodie from the night before and holding two paper cups.
“Oh,” he says, which isn’t exactly helping his track record of saying intelligent things to Liu Yangyang. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Yangyang says, smiling faintly. “I went out earlier and brought you a coffee. Figured you’d need it. Were you looking for me?”
“No,” Chenle lies, grabbing for the cup. He amends when Yangyang maneuvers it out of reach, “okay, maybe. Yes! Yes, you asshole. I was looking for you. Give it to me.”
Yangyang relinquishes the cup to him, amusement written all over his face.
Chenle takes a sip and almost throws up again. Much too sweet. He frowns, looking at the label on the cup. “Four pumps of sweetener in a medium coffee?” he makes a face.
“I don’t know!” Yangyang says exasperatedly, but the smile on his mouth is easy and loose. “We never get coffee together.”
“Then learn,” Chenle insists, only half teasing. “And maybe we can start.”
Yangyang grins so wide and sunny that it’s almost as bad as the light for his hangover. “I’m happy to,” he says, and Chenle realizes that he actually is. That maybe Yangyang is as sweet as everyone has been has been saying all along.
Tips of his ears warming in embarrassment, Chenle takes another sip of the terrible coffee and forces himself to swallow.
Maybe he can learn too.