Work Text:
Maybe it was the bravery that came with the tiredness of 3AM or maybe it was the influence of Jaemin’s questionable ideas but regardless - Chenle was doing it. His friends were sprawled across his floor and bed, Mark already nodding off while a very whiny Donghyuck tried to poke him awake again.
“Mark-hyung it's only 3AM you’ll kill the mood if you sleep now.” Donghyuck kept complaining and for the sake of Chenle’s sanity, he hoped Mark would just wake up again to shut him up.
Jeno, Jaemin, Renjun, Mark and Donghyuck were all at his house for their monthly sleepover and according to the rota, it was Chenle’s turn to host. They’d started the cliché ritual as a joke but somewhere along the way, they’d started to genuinely enjoy friendship bracelet making and 2AM horror movie watching and now it was 3AM meaning it was time to order food. He didn't know why, but there was something about dealing with five other boys for hours straight and nearly losing their friendship over Mario-kart competitions that always made them very hungry around this time.
“Chenle-yah,” Jaemin whined, pouting and patting his stomach.
“I’m ordering!” Chenle whined back, pulling out his phone and quickly going to the website of the only pizza place near them that delivered at ass-o-clock in the night (or was it morning now?).
He ordered their usual, finger hovering in hesitation over the small white box that read, “Let us know of any special delivery requests”.
In that brief moment of hesitation, Donghyuck had abandoned a now snoring Mark and made his way over to Chenle. “You can’t back out now. A bet is a bet,” he grinned.
Chenle fought back the urge to remind Donghyuck of how he’d only lost Mario-kart because Donghyuck was too busy cheating but looking up at his friends’ smug expressions he knew there was no way he could get out of this.
“Send your cutest delivery boy” he typed into the box, cringing slightly.
“Add a winky face,” Jaemin laughed, high-fiving a snickering Renjun.
“I am not adding a winky face.”
They all turned to him with sombre expressions on their face (sans Mark who was now cuddling up to Chenle’s Todoroki body pillow).
“Fine! I’ll add a winky face.”
Chenle got a round of cheers for that and he couldn’t help but smile dumbly, forgetting all shame as he pressed ‘ORDER’.
And so at 3:10AM, a small pizza shop at the edge of their neighbourhood got a request for two large pizzas and to send their “cutest delivery boy ;)”. To say Jisung was mortified would be an understatement.
The boys decided to do some late-night karaoke, waking Mark up to join them with the promise of food. Chenle was lucky his parents were away on a business trip because when he said his friends are loud he meant they’re loud. Pair that with fatigue and a couple bottles of soju and you have Renjun hitting notes he didn’t even know could be hit while a very supportive Jeno and Jaemin chanted his name. He felt bad for his neighbours, but before that he felt tired and excited and god this song was his jam. He pushed past a sleepily dancing Mark to take the mic from Renjun.
“Ey yo,” he began, “Simon Says.”
All hell broke loose. Anyone looking at his house from outside would have heard shouting and questionable rapping at 3:30AM while the lights in the windows strobed on and off (courtesy of a very hyped up Jaemin next to the light switch). Maybe that’s why they didn’t hear the doorbell. Or maybe it was because half of them were tipsy as fuck and the other half craved the sweet release of sleep. Chenle thought it was probably both.
He finally heard the faint hum on the third ring of the bell and forfeit his mic to Jeno before skipping down the stairs, leaving the rest of the boys still screaming along to songs. As he was walking towards the front door he could hear the ringing a lot clearer making him grimace at just how loud their music must have been. He made a mental note to turn it down later but first – food.
Chenle’s parents had taught him to not open the door to strangers and to especially not open the door to strangers at an ungodly hour but Chenle had never been the best at listening to rules especially when it came between him and two boxes of hot pizza.
He opened the door, freezing when he saw the cutest boy he had ever seen (and Chenle spent a lot of his time looking at cute boys. Case in point: his Todoroki body pillow). It should have been a crime to look that good. He suddenly felt self-conscious about his bed hair and his Powerpuff Girls pyjama pants.
The boy was in a dark hoodie with the pizza restaurant logo in a corner and the hood pulled up over his blonde hair. He had a pair of rimmed spectacles placed over his nose – the cutest nose that Chenle had ever seen.
He rubbed his eyes, not fully sure if his sleep-deprived brain was imagining the most beautiful being to exist but even after blinking multiple times and lightly slapping himself, the boy in front of him didn’t fade away. But now the boy looked slightly confused and scared.
“Um,” the boy began, nervously shifting from foot to foot and eyeing the upstairs of Chenle’s house from where there was a loud shriek followed by a bang. Chenle didn’t even want to know what they were up to up there.
“Your special delivery request…” the boy spoke, bringing his gaze back down to meet Chenle’s.
Shit. Chenle had totally forgotten about that.
He laughed in embarrassment, heat rising up to his cheeks as he had an internal debate on whether to explain that he’d only asked for that because he’d lost a bet. Before he could say anything though, the blonde boy spoke again.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t fulfil it. I’m the only one delivering tonight.” The boy looked down awkwardly and Chenle thought he’d never seen anyone look so beautiful.
It was a random hour of the night, he was tired and hungry, his friends probably broke something in his room judging from the sound of the crash followed by muffled shouting, and Chenle thought fuck it.
“They still got my request right though,” he blurted out.
The boy's eyes snapped up to meet Chenle’s, his face turning a deep shade of crimson as he opened and closed his mouth repeatedly like a fish.
Chenle thought maybe he fucked up when the boy remained standing there, frozen.
He noticed then that the music had stopped and the house was quiet. Assholes. He knew his friends well enough to know that they were definitely watching this entire encounter from wherever they were hiding and Chenle would never hear the end of how he scared away a cute boy by flirting with him.
“Jisung,” the boy finally spoke in a voice so soft that Chenle would have missed it if he hadn’t been hyperaware of everything that the boy did and said then.
“I’m sorry?”
“My name’s Jisung.” The boy looked down again, cheeks still that pretty shade of pink that Chenle thought made him look kind of like a fairy. God, he really needed to sleep.
“I’m Chenle,” He replied, unable to keep the smile out of his voice.
An awkward silence stretched out between them as they both just stood there grinning. You could literally hear crickets chirping in his front yard.
“Okay, well, it was nice to meet you, Jisung,” Chenle smiled shyly, all the confidence from before having seemingly drained away.
“Yeah,” the boy before him chuckled awkwardly, blushing as they made eye contact again.
Chenle moved to awkwardly shut the door, not knowing what else he was supposed to say or do when he saw the boy before him panic and slip his foot forward to stop it from closing.
“Wait! Your pizza,” he laughed sheepishly, gesturing towards the two boxes still in his arms.
“Oh!” Chenle’s eyes widened. He could feel the blood rush to his face. Great, now he’d embarrassed himself in front of the love of his life. “Thanks,” he mumbled, leaning forward to take the food, jolting a little when his fingers brushed over the boys’ which were cold from the bitter night air.
The boy gave him the most blinding smile Chenle had ever seen and he had to remind himself to breathe again. This time, he closed the door with one arm balancing two boxes of pizza.
He turned around to meet Donghyuck’s smirking face pop out from behind the couch. “They still got my request right though?” he parroted Chenle’s earlier words in a sing-song voice. He was immediately joined by the rest of them, all slowly scrambling up from where they'd been crouching, all mocking Chenle and they were so loud that there was no way the boy outside had not heard them. Looking out of the window, Chenle saw Jisung turn back to face his house with wide eyes, that pretty blush still bright against his fair skin.
Chenle was going to kill his friends one day.
He glared at them. "Don't think I didn't hear you break my plant pot." That immediately shut them up, guilty expressions flashing across their faces.
"How did you know?" Jeno mumbled.
"I didn't. But now I do."
After four slices of pizza and a lot of wailing from Mark about how he was growing up too fast, he checked the notification on his phone, wondering just who in their right mind would email him at 4AM.
Opening the email he saw it was from the pizza restaurant. He blushed, remembering the boy from earlier.
“How did we do? Rate our service” read the email. Chenle was about to bin it when he noticed extra writing right at the bottom.
“Hey… this is the 'cute delivery boy' you asked for. I don’t really know if I should do this and my boss will probably chew me out for it but… my number is xxx-xxx-xxxx –Jisung”
Jeno threw him a concerned look when Chenle squealed loud enough to wake the neighbours and their cats.