Work Text:
Renjun is tired.
Exhausted, really. It’s a sluggishness that tugs at him even as he walks, dragging his feet, into the room that’s not his but might as well be, and shrugs his backpack from his shoulders. It lands on the floor with a soft thunk, heavy with the weight of far too many notebooks and textbooks, battered copies of poetry anthologies and Moby Dick and things he doesn’t even want to think about right now.
So he doesn’t. Melville can wait, and the poetry will be around tomorrow, because everything, really, feels dim and dull and grey and slow, like he’s not quite awake, not quite present. He hasn’t been all day.
The shades are pulled down. It’s dark, in a bluish, mid-afternoon way that only makes his head foggier, his eyelids heavier, makes everything in the room— the papers spread out on the desk in the corner, the TI-84 teetering in precarious balance off of the edge, the half-filled collection of cups and mugs— look soft, cool-toned, surreal.
One, two steps, and his knees bump into the foot of the bed. He gladly collapses onto it, sinking into the tousled mess of sheets and blankets, left untidy, he’s sure, from leaving the house in a rush in the morning, and feels himself begin to unwind almost immediately.
With the same immediacy, an arm wraps lazily around his waist, gentle as he feels the tension seep slowly, hesitantly out of him. Jeno blends in well with the bed, virtually invisible thanks to the mused state of the covers and the sweatshirt pulled over his head.
He makes some unintelligible noise of acknowledgement, in a similar, if not worse state, than Renjun (he’d told Jeno that doubling up on AP science courses would be a bad idea, but did he listen?).
“Hi,” Renjun says softly. A thin sliver of light sneaks beneath the shade over the window, and drapes itself daintily over what bits of Jeno’s face he can see, a trickle of silver that runs over the bridge of his nose and touches the corner of his mouth.
“Hi,” says Jeno, voice a sort of rumbling raw that betrays his exhaustion. He half-opens an eye to meet Renjun’s, and wordlessly, decides that they are not close enough. Gently, he pulls Renjun closer, until he can hook his head over his shoulder and nuzzle into the crook of his neck.
Back-to-chest, blissfully warm, legs tangled, Renjun’s already half asleep. There’s a brush of lips against his neck, but he can’t even tell if it’s intentional or not, as Jeno nestles in closer, managing to wrap himself, in every possible way, around Renjun.
“Did,” Renjun mumbles, allowing his eyes to close, “did you have a, a good day, at least?” They don’t even see each other at school that often—there’s just too much work to do, too many places to be.
“Shh,” Jeno mumbles, “s’naptime. Thursdays are for. . .” he yawns.” Napping.” A moment’s pause. “But, yeah.”
Renjun hums. “Good.”
“Mhm.”
Not more than two minutes later, Jeno falls asleep, curled tightly around Renjun, snorting softly into the space between his neck and his shoulder. And though Jeno’s hair is tickling the underside of his chin, though there’s physics to study, white whales to dissect and analyze, derivatives to take, Renjun does none of it.
Instead, he sleeps, dreamlessly and deeply, unimaginably warm in Jeno’s arms.
After all, Thursdays are for napping.