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Jisung was used to being babied and having his hyungs cooing whenever he'd do anything, except for Chenle. Chenle, who was only two months and thirteen days older than him, didn't really treat him like a dongsaeng. They both treated each other like they were the same age since they basically were, Jisung just happened to be born in February of a different year. So they didn't really have that hyung-dongsaeng relationship Jisung had with his other hyungs, which includes the cooing and babying. Basically, Chenle doesn't coddle him like all of his other hyungs do.
So when it happens for the first time, Jisung doesn't know how to react. They had just finished performing their last We Young stage and they were on their way back to the dorms, way too tired from their promotions to speak, especially Mark hyung and Donghyuck hyung, who were out cold and cuddled into each other. Renjun hyung and Jeno hyung were also asleep, laying across each other in the back four seats. Jisung and Chenle however, were not asleep yet, but Jisung was obviously very tired. His head kept falling towards the window before he'd pick it back up, his eyes opening a little less each time. Chenle, who was siting right next to him, was staring at him with fond eyes, a sleepy smile on his own face.
"Go to sleep." Said the elder of the two. Jisung turned to him, sleepy eyed, and just allowed himself to fall onto Chenle's shoulder, nuzzling into in slightly. He heard a small giggle from above, followed by a 'cute', and his eyes flew open.
"What." Was all Jisung could manage as he stared at the smiley Chenle.
"You're cute. Now go to sleep." Jisung couldn't let out a peep before Chenle grabbed him from the back of his head and forced him into his shoulder. Surprisingly, Jisung wasn't uncomfortable at all, just like he wasn't sleepy at all. His heart hammered in his chest, and he didn't dare open his mouth just yet, fearing that he might stutter. The moment he felt his heart slow down a little, he spoke up.
"I'm not cute..." He grumbles looking up at Chenle, who had fallen asleep. He pouted, comfortably moving his head back into Chenle's shoulder, the feeling of sleep finally seeping into him. Meanwhile, Chenle cracked an eye open and smiled, his heart swelling up with fondness as he stared at the boy sleeping on him. How cute.
_
The second time he says it, Dream are preparing themselves for a horror movie marathon in order to celebrate Jaemin’s return. None of them really like horror movies, except for Donghyuck and kind of Jisung, but he only likes the gory ones. No one has any idea what got into their heads when they said they’d let Donghyuck choose the movies they’d marathon. Just to annoy the other Dream members, Donghyuck purposely picked horror movies that deal with demons, which he knows that only him and Renjun can handle.
The Dreamies groan as they get out of their rooms, Donghyuck clapping happily as he trots in front of them.
“I’m so excited!” He squeaks. Mark sighs, gripping his boyfriend’s shoulder so that he would stop jumping.
”Of course you are, you love to watch us suffer don’t you?” He turns and blows a kiss before holding onto Mark’s hand.
“It’s okay babe, you can hold me if you get scared.” Mark lets go of the younger’s hand, holding his head in his hands as he shakes it. All Donghyuck did in response to this was giggle, which even a blind man could see was making Mark blush.
The two youngest roll their eyes at the same time, turning away from their hyungs and back to the living room.
“Jisung-ah, you can hold me if you get scared too.” Chenle suddenly says. Jisung almost cracks up laughing as he stares down at the shorter boy.
“Chenle, horror movies scare you more than me.” He clicks his tongue in response, waving at the air before linking their arms.
”Who cares! You’re still our youngest, therefore our smallest, and you need the most protection.” Jisung scoffs, wondering what the hell happened to Chenle, because he never used to baby him like this. It’s kind of cute that he’s calling Jisung a baby when he’s shorter than him.
“Again, Chenle, I’m taller than you.” It’s obvious Jisung was testing Chenle's patience, because the elder poked at the sides of his mouth with his tongue, tapping his foot.
“What does height have to do with any of this!” He exclaimed while unwinding their arms and flailing his own. Jisung laughs before he grips onto Chenle’s hand to calm him down.
“Everything has to do with height, Chenle.” Chenle frowns.
“You’re annoying.” He marks the end of that statement by stomping on Jisung’s foot and leaning in towards him.
Jisung, who was in pain, decided to grit his teeth and lean forward himself.
“Am not.” Chenle leaned in a little more.
”Are too.” Jisung leaned in a little more.
”Am not.” Chenle leaned in even more.
”Are too.” Was the last thing Chenle could get out before Donghyuck suddenly appeared before them, pressing their heads into each other and screaming ‘now kiss!’
Obviously, the younger boys pushed back, and almost fell to the floor when Donghyuck let go. Chenle and Jisung stared, dumbfounded.
But all Donghyuck did was click his tongue in disappointment while tapping his foot with his hands on this hips.
“I thought maybe if I tried what Taeil-Hyung did to get Mark and I together it would work. It didn’t. Unfortunate.” Suddenly, a wild Mark appears, gripping his boyfriend and pulling him into the living room.
”Okay! No need to tell the kids how we got together!” He states as he walked away from the confused boys.
”Awwwww, you’re refering to them as our kids now!”
“I never said our, I said the.”
“Our.”
”The.”
”Our.”
“The.”
“Ou-“
“Can we just start the movies now?” Spoke up an impatient Renjun. This gets the other members back on track, and the elders settle on the couch, Mark and Donghyuck huddled up on the right side while Jeno and Jaemin laid on Renjun's lap on the left, poking at each other's cheeks. The youngest two ran into the living room, quickly realizing that there was no space left on the couch. They groaned, slowly beginning to put pillows and softening up an area of floor in front of it, Jaemin petting Chenle’s head in affectionate sorrow when they finally sat down.
Jisung, ever the jealous boy, realizes this, and grips Chenle’s arm. Chenle turns to him, a little bit of surprise on his face, before it softens into an expression of adoration. A little giggle escapes Chenle as he fits himself into Jisung's side, their height difference allowing them to easily cuddle up to each other. Donghyuck lets out a little laugh as the movie starts and Jisung can just feel him nuzzle his nose into Mark's shoulder. He wants to puke. But he shifts his attention back to the movie, the darkness of the screen blending in with the darkness of their living room.
As the jumpscares increase, so does the volume of the Dreamies, especially from Chenle and Jaemin. Jisung has basically gone deaf. But he's also sure that they're gonna have to amputate Chenle's arm because he was gripping onto it like no tomorrow and seriously doubts there's any blood flow. He finally lets go when an especially scary jumpscare appears and his hands fly from Chenle's arm to around Chenle's shoulders, but Chenle doesn't scream. Confused by the lack of reaction from the elder, Jisung turns to look at his best friend, who was, surprisingly, staring right back. His heart begins to hammer in his chest again because wow Chenle looks so pretty when he's focused, but also because Chenle was staring at him. Shockingly, Chenle smiles, his eyes forming crescents as he does.
"You're so cute!" Jisung almost screams. He shoves his head into Chenle's shoulder out of embarrassment, shaking it and squeezing the blond. His heart begins to shake even more.
"I'm not cute!" He actually screams into Chenle's shoulder. The older laughs, turning and grabbing Jisung by the shoulders, prying him off of his own.
"You," He puts his finger on Jisung's chest. "are adorable." Jisung pouts, cheeks puffing up at this. Suddenly, a flash of white appears between them, and then they both realize it was a piece of popcorn. Unsurprisingly, it came from Donghyuck, who spoke up a second later by saying (screaming):
"Hey! You two should kiss!" Jisung almost gets up and leaves at that, but instead opts to drop his head into Chenle's chest, to which he lets out a small 'oof' before holding his best friend.
"Cute." He feels the words rumble in Chenle's chest, which just makes his cheeks flare. He just felt Chenle call him cute.
"I'm not cute." You are. Jisung almost wants to add, but doesn't because a, he didn't know how Chenle would react and b, Donghyuck would tease them like there's no tomorrow.
So he shuts up, and keeps the thought of Chenle being cute to himself. At least he had some self control, unlike somebody else he knew.
_
The third time it happens, Chenle and Jisung are in Chenle’s room, making fun of their hyungs because none of them were currently in the dorm (except for Jeno and Renjun who were asleep), and because they were bored. So they had We Young stages open, laughing at Mark's hair, or Donghyuck's outfits, or Renjun's glasses, and the list goes on. But they never really said anything about each other. Until Chenle went:
"Wooooooow, Jisung Park!" He said in his lightly accented English. "As expected from the true cutie of NCT Dream." Jisung falls back on the bed, groaning into a pillow as he did.
"What?" Chenle had the audacity to ask, as if he had done nothing wrong. Jisung flung the pillow off of his face, frowning at Chenle.
"I'm not cute. Stop calling me cute." As if to purposefully play with Jisung's already dancing heart a little more, Chenle grinned, those damn adorable crescents forming again.
"You're so cute when you deny the fact that you're cute." He shoves his face into his hands, hoping that his large palms would hide the growing blush on his cheeks.
"I'm not cute!" He all but screeches. "You are." In contrast to his screeching, this sentence is barely muttered, for Jisung was scared that Chenle would be able to hear him. Fortunately, Chenle didn't. Unfortunately, Chenle's a nosey dick.
"Sorry what was that?" Out of the peepholes Jisung formed with his fingers, he could see Chenle leaning towards him, his hand cupping his ear.
"Nothing." Jisung says before he closes up his peepholes. Chenle sighs.
"Why do you hate it so much when I call you cute?" Jisung removes his hands and shrugs, not knowing how to answer himself.
"I don't know. It just makes me feel weird. Like my heart starts beating really fast and my cheeks get really red. I don't like that feeling." Chenle stares at him, jaw dropped. He shakes his head and puts his hand up before dropping it again.
"Jisung, do you not know what it feels like to be flustered?" Jisung scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, feeling his cheeks heat up again.
"Uh, no?" Was all he offered. Chenle crawled back to his side and laid his head on Jisung’s shoulder.
“Well, that’s basically what you just described. But it doesn’t make any sense, you never get flustered when the other hyungs call you cute? I know I’m not really like a hyung to you and you don’t call me hyung anyways but, why is it just me?” Jisung thinks he has an answer to this, but is in no way prepared to say it. He had barely gotten himself to admit it a week ago, Chenle expects him to say it out loud and in front of Chenle himself??
Jisung shuddered next to Chenle, which earned him a well deserved strange look from his best friend.
“It’s nothing, I think I’m gonna go to sleep now.” Chenle stares at him, a blank expression on his face.
“Are you serious it’s 8pm.” Jisung wanted to start laughing and he almost did, but he held himself back by smacking his mouth with his hands. In doing so, his long fingers accidentally poked Chenle in the eye and Chenle doubled over.
“Oh my god!” He said into Jisung’s chest.
“Wait wait are you okay oh my god I’m sorry.” Was the word vomit Jisung spat out at this. He slouched a little and pushed Chenle up, moving his fingers to examine the elder’s eye.
Chenle didn’t move throughout this whole thing, Jisung isn’t even sure he breathed, instead he just stared at the blond as he slowly removed his fingers from his eye. It’s at this point that Jisung realized that Chenle was fine and that their faces were 0.5 cm’s apart. He was about to jump back before:
“Hey I think we should do that thing Donghyuck told us to do.”
”What thing?”
“Kiss.” And Jisung did not hesitate when he leaned over. It was a light peck, but when he looked at Chenle, the boy looked at him like he’d given him the world. Jisung’s heart swelled and he leaned in to give Chenle another kiss, to which Chenle gave him a kiss back, and they ended up competitively pecking each other while giggling.
“Renjun what’re you-“
“Shh!” The two boys jumped away from each other, just now realizing that they left the door open. Petrified, they turn towards the door that now has a very fond looking Renjun, holding up a phone in Chenle and Jisung’s direction, and Jeno, who seemed tired and throughly confused. There were giggling noises coming from Renjun’s phone and the youngest two put together what just happened.
“Oh my god no, hyung delete it.” Renjun shut his phone, smirking at the two.
“Even if I did delete it, Donghyuck has it saved on his phone now, and you guys know that the only person who can get to that is Mark.” And with that, Renjun leaves, tagging along a very bewildered Jeno who was asking for Jaemin in the midst of this mess.
Chenle and Jisung turn to each other, mouths open and shocked, before Chenle scrambles up to lock the door. The two stare at each other for a minute before Chenle grins again.
“What does this mean?” Is all Jisung says and Chenle’s grin falls.
”Are you serious Jisung Park.” Jisung shrugs, trying to make himself look smaller.
“I’m pretty sure it means we both like each other. But I don’t know you tell me?” Chenle says as he walks towards Jisung, who started grinning himself because wow, he loves annoying his best friend.
“Yeah, I think it means that too.”