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Chenle has probably dated before.
That was the first thing that Kun thought, as he watched him talking to Ningning in the corridors of SM, both of them illuminated only by the shitty fluorescent lights. Chenle was wearing an old sweatshirt, hair tousled and hand tucked into his pocket, somehow still managing to look effortlessly handsome. Ningning looked tiny beside him. Of course he’ll have dated before, he’s an adult, he must have girls falling for him every day.
The two iced drinks he was holding were starting to drip with condensation, falling on his jeans. They looked good together.
“Are you guys close?” Kun asked him, when Chenle swiped one of the drinks from his numb fingers.
Chenle shot him a weird look, “What?”
“You and Ningningie,” Kun said, switching from Mandarin to Korean suddenly, as he often did when Chenle threw him off kilter. Which was most of the time.
“Of course,” Chenle laughed, trapping the plastic straw between his teeth, “We trained together. Why?” His eyes flickered over to Kun, gaze piercing. “Are you jealous?”
That was the problem with Chenle. He always knew what Kun was thinking, before he even knew himself.
“No way,” He flicked the lid off his cup. The straw was too flimsy. “Why would I be?”
Chenle levelled him with another searching look. “Okay,” He said, evenly.
They both knew what they were really talking about. And they both knew that he was lying.
“Hey,” Chenle called him at eleven thirty at night, when Kun had been staring at a computer screen so long that his eyes ached. “I’m ordering food. Come over.”
Kun dragged his eyes to the tiny numbers in the corner of the screen. “I’m busy.” He lied, figuring it would work better as an excuse than “ it’s late ”. They’re both too nocturnal for that.
Chenle made a weird tutting sound that distorted the audio of the line briefly. “Have you even eaten yet? You need to eat. I’ll pay.”
He liked saying stuff like that lately, acting like he’s the older one and Kun was the younger: “let me take care of you, ge,” he’d say, but with a weird glint to his eye and an edge to his voice that made something hot twist in Kun’s stomach.
He licked his dry lips. “Where are you?”
“At home.” Chenle replied immediately.
“I want jjajangmyeon,” Kun told him. An attempt to get back some of the control. But Chenle had already won.
“I want chicken, though,” He countered, and hung up the phone before Kun had a chance to reply.
At first, it was all just a joke.
“He’s the most attractive one,” Chenle said, in the middle of a debate about favourite characters in whatever drama they were watching at the moment. Then in response to complaints about him being an old guy, “I like older men,” He looked at Kun when he said it, and Kun kind of wanted to hit him, because he’s in his twenties , damn it.
But he didn’t trust himself to respond without revealing far too much.
Chenle wasn’t a kid anymore, but he was still Chenle , and the cognitive dissonance of it hammered at the inside of Kun’s skull every time he looked at him. He looked at Chenle and he saw him, really saw him, and it made his eyes burn.
“You look nice,” Chenle told him one time, on a grocery run. The compliment was so mundane, but it was the look that went with it. An appreciative drag of his gaze over his body, so shameless. Because when Chenle wants something, he makes it clear.
It was late at night, and Kun had the beginnings of a headache throbbing at his temple, so tired he felt delirious, so maybe that was why he let himself look back. Just for a moment.
There were so many reasons he shouldn’t want Chenle. But when he was in front of him, Kun couldn’t bring himself to think of any of them.
He swallowed, averting his gaze. “We need more rice.”
They ordered both jjajangmyeon and chicken, a compromise. It wasn’t like Chenle to just let him have it like that, usually it took far more bickering, but he just paid the bill wordlessly, watching Kun as he did so as if to gage his reaction. They could barely eat a third of the food in the end, of course.
“You wanna watch a movie?” Kun asked, when they’d finished haphazardly storing the leftovers in the fridge. Chenle shook his head, still just watching him.
“You’re staying the night,” He said. It wasn’t a question, or even an order, like Chenle sometimes favoured.
He didn’t need to do either of those things, because he already knew.
It was probably better to sleep on the couch than in the bed, Kun thought, before they actually ended up on the couch, and he could not will himself to fall asleep. His eyes still hurt, his mouth was still dry, and Chenle’s weight was warm against his side. Sleep was impossible.
“You know you can do it, right?” Chenle told him, later, lips against Kun’s earlobe. “You can just do it.” He swung a leg over Kun’s, straddling him, hands pressed against his shoulders.
Kun just looked at him. It was too difficult to make himself not want .
The look in his eyes must show it all, because any shadow of doubt faded from Chenle’s face. “Kun. Ge. Hyung. Kun- ah -”
“Chenle,” His hands came up to grip his waist.
Chenle’s eyes glittered as he pressed forwards, agonisingly slowly. “I know you want to.” It was barely a whisper. Just the slightest push. That was all he needed, though.
Kun didn’t stop him, didn’t even try, just let himself be taken apart.