Chapter Text
“Absolutely not.”
Taeil and Doyoung looked up at the same time, as if they honestly didn’t expect that answer, matching sets of raised eyebrows that would not distract Chenle from his resolve.
“I hate it.”
“I mean, we thought it’d be a great opportunity, given, you know,” Doyoung gestured around them, the aggressive rustling of the script pages only tying Chenle’s stomach into tighter knots.
There was nothing inherently bad about being pitched yet another musically unrelated gig, to be honest — it’s really good PR, they’d always say, think of it as branching out, and personality is what hook people in first these days — and at that point, those made up about 90% of Chenle’s supposed career as a musician anyway. No, the problem wasn’t that he was being casted for some daytime mid-ranked variety show, and no, the problem wasn’t that it once again missed his target audience’s age group by a couple of decades. It had nothing to do with the pitch itself.
No, the problem lied on the script. On the cover page, actually, printed in bold letters and underlined, right above to his own name.
His eyes caught it before his own name, actually. Muscle memory, unable to escape from it no matter where he went, eyes drifting to where it was plastered on ads in every other metro station, in commercial breaks for companies endorsing his favorite streamers. It was one thing to see it around the city, in café events on trendy neighborhoods, in a username iteration on social media. In music charts, and stages of mid-year awards.
But it was also hung right above Doyoung’s office desk in the company. Slapped across fifty different items around his manager’s room, in their wi-fi password, Doyoung’s phone background, and was engraved in random utensils that popped up around the dorm every few months or so. Like the bedside lamp to Chenle’s right — that one was, if he’d learned anything from all the times that particular story was told, a first anniversary special edition too. A collector’s find, actually, that Doyoung hadn’t even entrusted his usual proxy to pick up, meeting up the seller himself instead.
“Yeah, hate sounds a bit dramatic,” Taeil spun on his chair, “especially since we thought you were decently well acquainted with all of them too.”
Decently well acquainted, Taeil said. Fifteen words and one and a half group mission in a now three-year-old survival show was a more fitting description, but Chenle was still too busy sulking to correct him.
“Are we getting camera shy now?”
“Cut it out,” Chenle hissed, only making Doyoung’s smile grow that much larger.
It was a won battle. Doyoung knew it, Taeil knew it. Chenle knew it. He could throw as many baseless tantrums as he wanted, none of it would change the fact that, with such a cast, Chenle was simply being informed of the agency’s decision, not being asked his opinion on participating. There was only so much autonomy he was allowed to have.
Camera shy. He shivered.
“No, I get it,” Taeil sighed. “Don’t know who wouldn’t be sick of this overexposure. God forbid one of them tells you his favorite color and you answer with some ‘I know’ because Doyoung’s gushed about it already.”
“Hey,” Doyoung snapped, but Chenle couldn’t find it in himself to even snort at the thought of his manager’s embarrassment. Probably because knowing that type of irrelevant information about idols sounded more like compliments to a fan like him.
Chenle knew what it meant to be a fan; all from die-hards to casual listeners, even stalkers and antis. He’d been both privileged and unfortunate enough to feel out the differences by himself since his debut. It hadn’t been a one time occasion for him to meet someone who hyperventilated in his presence, who wrote paragraphs about him online as if they were family, spent a month’s minimum wage for a chance to get his autograph. He’d always been well aware of the lengths fan would go to for their idols. And though he never felt that strongly towards any sort of celebrity — not before he became one, and most definitely not after joining those circles — Chenle could understand where Doyoung was coming from. Objectively.
It just sucked, sometimes, to have a manager that was obsessed with singers that weren’t him — particularly when it was a constant reminder of what the trajectory of his career could have been, a glimpse of a place that had almost been his.
He’d long grown out it, but it still was a recurring thought for Chenle. A humorous quip when Doyoung was a bit too stern on him, but also a mildly infuriating one in his current situation. Whose manager are you, anyway? Chenle usually teased, and you’d rather be their manager, wouldn’t you? he’d spit out when there was a clear shift in his mood.
At least, Chenle tended to repeat to himself, it means he’ll always work to keep me on the charts.
Regardless, a variety show like that was a very, very new situation for them, and for all he joked about being some sort of means to an end in his manager’s eyes, Chenle wasn’t sure how to properly take in this sort of development. He wasn’t about to sulk like a kid about things that were out of his hands and probably happened only inside his mind, but the silence that followed was a bit too awkward, Doyoung worrying his bottom lip in Chenle’s blurred peripheral view.
Taeil hesitantly rolled his chair closer, hands on his lap making him look smaller, pretending to not be the bearer of bad news. “The first meeting’s next Thursday. It won’t exactly be a table read, but the crew wants to go over what they have planned so far for all the participants,” he shared a pointed look with Doyoung, “and it’ll give you all a chance to get…”
“Acclimated?”
“Familiarized before recordings begin. If— if you think you really can’t do it by then, we promise to seriously discuss a way to pull you out of it.”
Even with his head down, Chenle could almost see his manager’s angry nose scrunch at Taeil’s words. No, there’d be no way to jump out of this, though it was incredibly considerate of Taeil to say so. A set date for the table read meant that the script had not only been in the hands of their higher-ups, but also that a contract had already been signed, long before either Taeil or Doyoung were even told about it. Throwing a fit over a decent exposure opportunity just because he felt some type of way about his manager being a regular human being with interests other than Chenle’s career would be utterly embarrassing.
Still, the tips of his ears burned. Chenle nodded once.
“Just the meeting?”
Doyoung cleared his throat. “Just the meeting.”
Somehow, it felt more reassuring when Doyoung was the one saying it. Chenle knew how awful it felt to have something he looked forward to get trashed the very last minute, and to know that Doyoung would still put Chenle’s will above it if that was what he really wanted, felt nicer than he’d admit. To be a priority. With an inhale, Chenle nodded again.
♮
Whatever brief feeling of camaraderie he felt towards his manager was never able to last long, anyway.
“I’m Zhong Chenle,” he reasoned, jaw still halfway to the floor at Doyoung’s unconcerned look in front of his laptop screen.
“I keep your passport in my drawer, I’m well aware of that.”
“Then how are you treating me like one of your proxies?”
There was nothing new about Doyoung’s system of conciliating his life as an idol’s manager with his life as a diehard fan of another. Chenle was usually on the road for about half of the year, which meant Doyoung would obviously physically miss a ton of his favorite group’s events. Getting proxies to go around the missed chances of being close to his idols was just the natural course of things.
Except when a proxy was the idol he was managing.
“It’s near the hotel you’ll be staying for the first meeting, anyway,” Doyoung slurped the straw of an already empty coffee cup, “so I just anticipated your check-in date for the day before.”
Chenle wanted to pluck every strand of Doyoung’s hair out with a tweezer. The sound he made at the back of his throat instead didn’t even convey a fifth of the indignation he felt. Accommodating the diverging interests of someone you shared a house with was hard to begin with, but having no say in being dragged along by someone who was essentially his current legal guardian was an entirely new level of aggravating.
“Can’t I just ask for their autographs at the filming site or something? Or better yet, can’t you?”
A long, dramatically drawn out sigh. “The autograph would be addressed to you, and as your manager, I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to approach them directly off camera. It’s invasive.”
Invasive, Chenle half screamed in his head.
“I’m pretty sure that’s gonna become a scandal if they— if anyone recognizes me. Or even finds out I’ve done that.”
Now that got Doyoung to look up for a moment, a half pout as he genuinely considered one of Chenle’s concerns for the first time that week. It lasted about ten seconds, Doyoung quickly turning back to whatever was on his screen.
“You’ve got plenty of those oversized outfits, the ones you use to avoid pictures in public?” Doyoung hummed, sounding extremely serious for such a ridiculous topic. “As long as you don’t talk to them, you’re gonna be fine. I think.”
If Doyoung wasn’t unfortunately one of his closest friends, that would’ve been the final straw that made Chenle put a request for his dismissal. Not even his cousin, in all her obsession with rookies, ever made Chenle attend a fansign with her, much less a fansign in her place. And yet there sat his manager, absolutely unbothered as he ordered a C-list pop singer to attend an hours long event just to fetch a few scribbles on a picture for him. All that barely a day after signing Chenle up to a random gig under the premise that he’d be close to his favorite group.
There was just no winning.
“You’re getting me an extra week of vacation this semester,” Chenle sighed, dragging his feet back to his room in a search for said goddamn outfit.
“Deal!” Doyoung chirped from behind him, fingers seeming to fly over the keyboard a bit more enthusiastically.
♮
Chenle was half aware of how he looked.
Clad in black from head to toe, with the only visible slivers of skin being the tip of his fingers, the underside of his jaw, and neck, he looked like he was about to vandalize some rival family restaurant. Or attend a rave.
“You got a five for change?” The cashier lazily typed on the monitor, not sparing Chenle a second look. Maybe that getup was actually rather normal, and he was really feeling just slightly self-conscious.
“Ah, no, sorry,” and Chenle’s muffled answer made the middle aged woman look up for a second, properly taking him in, a mildly horrified pull to the edge of her upper lip. Those were some good two seconds where he thought it was all in his head.
She arched an eyebrow, but said nothing, clicking away on the screen. “These are on sale, by the way. You can take a second one for half the price.”
There was a moment of silence, where neither said anything, until the woman looked up again, a quizzical look.
Glad she wouldn’t be able to see his blush, he stuttered, pointing behind himself. “Y-yeah, sure, I’ll, I’ll find one?”
The refrigerated drinks aisle was about twenty steps away, and Chenle cursed Doyoung’s future descendants for each of them. No one he’s ever spoken to would describe him as anything close to being socially inept, but having the majority of his brain occupied by the thought of going undercover in some silly little mission, made all other functions seemingly deactivate.
“Of course that was a question, and just who else would she be asking that to,” he grumbled to himself, opening the fridge door with a bit more force than necessary, “What? Think that just because you’re all covered at night you’re now invisible too? Get out of here.”
“I’m sorry?”
Chenle let the door handle go, drink perched on the crook of his elbow.
Hand half stretched inside the next door over, Chenle though he might be looking into a mirror, if the guy wasn’t visibly taller than him. Also in black from head to toe, only the guy had a leather jacket underneath his puffed one, and his glasses were not tinted, and probably actually served a real purpose with the way the lens distorted the beauty mark under his eye.
Two things flashed through Chenle’s head as the rubber of the door clicked shut — my life is over if this man’s a celebrity too, but most importantly, fuck, he probably thinks I was telling him to fuck off.
The blush that went down his uncovered neck was impossible to hide.
“Oh, no, no, sorry, I was talking to myself,” he cringed internally, stumbling over words. “I don’t usually go out wearing this, and I- I missed her, I mean, the cashier’s question,” a breath, and he transferred his drink to one hand, knowing he was shaking it too much with all the bumbling gestures. “I was just berating myself about it.”
Now flinching externally too, he was aware of how that sounded, but he really wasn’t about to pick a fight with a stranger past 11pm in a convenience store, only two days away from a rather well paying gig. Or at all for that matter — he’d prefer to have his face intact all other days too.
But it only took a moment before the guy’s eyes disappeared into crescents, a breathy, short laughter behind his mask.
“No worries,” his voice was soft, was soft before the whole spiel too, but Chenle couldn’t help but overthink. He just stood there instead, completely missing his chance to dip while the guy searched for a drink. The stranger hummed, flipping the bottle on his hand. “I think I know how that feels,” he gestured with the bottle between the both of them, and Chenle looked down on himself as if seeing his all black outfit for the first time right then.
The guy gave another breathy laughter at that, and Chenle was glad for the bucket hat covering the burning tip of his ears.
“This one’s on sale,” Chenle pointed with his chin, pulling the hat further down, just to make sure. “You can take another for half the price.”
Leather jacket looked at his own hands, and Chenle shook his own drink slightly. There was nothing else to add to a conversation like that, but Chenle didn’t move. The guy didn’t seem to be in a rush either.
“Yours any good?”
A shrug. “No clue, just getting it for the sale.”
There was a moment, leather jacket casually rapping his fingers against the glass of the door, drink sweating in Chenle’s hands, and he didn’t actually know what the fuck he was still doing there.
Then the guy’s eyes went up in crescents again, opening the door to fetch the same flavor as Chenle.
♮
“It’s good karma,” Doyoung’s voice sounded choppy over the phone.
“I’m not leaving home for a month after this.”
The bubbly crowd around him drowned his voice more than his mask did, but Chenle still made a point to hiss anyway.
“Well, I think it should be the opposite,” Doyoung chirped. “Sounds like you’re in dire need of resocialization.”
That was so easy for Doyoung to say, three cities over on the comfortable auto-heating seat of an SUV. Chenle, number 306 of the approximately five hundred people in that auditorium, in his creaky plastic chair to watch six boys playing like middle schoolers on a stage for two hours to get an autograph that wasn’t even for himself, wasn’t quite as fortunate.
No, it humbled him quite a bit. Perhaps his own fanmeetings going forward should be held in venues the size of a bistro. Where the main even should be food instead of college orientation day ice-breakers, too.
“I’m doing enough of that right now,” and as if on cue, the girl to his right apologized for accidentally hitting his knee with the fanlight dangling from the plastic bracelet on her wrist. Chenle found himself apologizing too for some reason. Maybe Doyoung was right.
“What was that?”
A sigh, “Tell me the name you want on your album.”
“Jeno’s, obviously.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Chenle refrained from sighing again. “Dumbass, the one you want him to write for you.”
There was a moment of silence before some clattering, and Doyoung’s rushed hold on. For all of his frowns and complaints, Chenle was actually glad to be talking to Doyoung right then. It eased off some of the absolute awkwardness of being one of the twenty boys he’d seen in the audience, and the only other one who seemed to be there alone.
“I sent you. If you can’t say it out loud, make sure to write it down somewhere and show him the message. Remember to not take you phone!”
“Now what the hell is this,” Chenle muttered, more to himself, but he could hear someone else’s laughter somewhere in the background. Doyoung’s fancafe username, he learned, jumbled letters and numbers that meant nothing to Chenle, but had probably something to do with the group. Maybe Doyoung expected one of the members to recognize that username after this. Chenle could call him out on his cliché fanboy fantasy, but it was a rather risky thing to do to the person who got him half of his meals. “Got it,” he muttered slightly louder instead.
“Why don’t you think of it as some field study?” Chenle could hear a humming in agreement. He could say something about how clips on YouTube sufficed, how some trending topic article, or green room gossip was more than enough for him to know about how other artists did things, but alas, he was already there. And though the endless stream of complaining felt extremely cathartic, he had to begrudgingly agree that his manager had a point.
He let out a long sigh, already pocketing one of his earphones. “Alright.”
“Remember to text me when you leave, and then again when you get back to the hotel,” Doyoung rushed to add, over the sound of the VCR signaling the start of the event. He had hung up before Chenle could even raise his phone, and so he pocketed the other earphone as the group took the stage to perform their comeback song.
It wasn’t like they were bad. Nowhere near that. They were handsome, and far too popular for their level of vocal control and song quality in his opinion, and though those were some of the characteristics that used to leave a foul taste in Chenle’s mouth, he knew they had no artistic freedom to pick or compose anything more fitting. In the beginning, he reasoned it was jealousy — when the last episode of the survival show was recorded, and the final line up was announced. Said it was because, had the votes not been bought by the trainee’s companies, he’d have been part of it. In the couple of years since, and with every clip of that show that popped up on Chenle’s recommendations, he’d internalized that it all boiled down to the level of exposure they got in each episode. Plain and simple.
It made no sense for the then too quiet and too blunt independent trainee to get the same amount of screen time as the big company ones, cliques with loud mouths and louder personalities, did.
He was doing more than well enough on his own.
And the allure was there, alright. He could see it up and close as staff lined up his row for the album signing. Heavy makeup and flashy clothes, exactly like they used to wear when recording evaluation episodes. Sparkly stickers glued to their cheeks, silly hats and animal ears, fake flowers between their teeth as they made faces to the audience in between batches of signings. They soaked up the attention, and gave it back twofold, winks and kisses and explosive reactions, while Chenle still blushed at shouted ‘i love you’s between his own sets. Maybe that was what Doyoung meant by doing some field study.
What his silly little proxy mission didn’t prepare him for — or maybe, what he didn’t prepare himself for — was the fact that, at some level, he knew all of those guys. And all of those guys, at some level, knew him. Personally. And to think that, in the years since the show, after the thousands of new faces they’d met, perhaps they wouldn’t remember, or at least not recognize Chenle, was simply wishful thinking on his part.
A great plan for the five guys of the group he never interacted or crossed paths with during the survival show, actually. A bit faulty for the sixth one, as an ex-roommate.
Renjun paused for a moment, hand hovering his own photo in the open album with the pen uncapped. Chenle swallowed.
“Would you like me to write something specific?”
Shaking his head quickly, he could see Renjun hesitating for another second before autographing the spread. Then he looked up, a slight crease between his eyebrows, and Chenle had never been more glad for his whole bank robber cosplay.
“Have you been to a fansign before? I think I remember you,” a heart racing, breathtaking sentence to any regular fan — one Chenle had used too many times, too — but with Renjun’s half narrowed eyes and set line on his mouth, he was genuinely scouring his brain trying to remember where he’d seen Chenle before. Sirens blared full volume in Chenle’s mind.
Renjun had never been able to properly school his features, and sixty seconds were far too long.
Opting for a swift nod in response, Chenle opened his hands palms up for the album. Renjun looked up one more time, curious, before handing it back. Chenle could feel the weight of a lingering look as he moved to his right, handing the album over to the next member. Turning slightly away, he hoped Renjun would quit staring, before some fansite noticed where he was looking at, and it became a trending topic on Twitter. Chenle had worn that exact jacket and bucket hat for three IG lives in a row, after all.
A gentle hand came up to take the album from Chenle, and he nearly dropped the thing before handing it over, trying to get the damned piece of paper where he jotted down Doyoung’s username from his pocket.
Unlike Renjun, who hesitated a moment before signing his own photo, Jeno didn’t even open the album at all, staring up instead.
Unsure of what to do with that heavy silence, Chenle glanced to the sides, glad for his tinted lenses. Renjun was enraptured in a conversation with a fan, as were all the other four boys, boisterous laughter and cutesy gestures and a whole lot of writing. Maybe the silence was part of his act, and maybe he was assigned the role of mysterious, brooding member, and maybe that was how he—
“Convenience store?” Were the first words that came out of his mouth, so out of left field that Chenle froze on the spot.
“Huh?” he managed to croak out, noticing a moment too late the beauty mark right under crescent moon eyes. The heat that took over his face could probably melt his glasses and mask in one go.
With a head tilt and polite smiling eyes, Jeno reached out for the piece of paper from Chenle’s still frozen hands.
“Where would you like me to sign?”
“On the cover,” Chenle resolutely ignored his voice break in the last syllable, “please.”
A breathy laughter, and Jeno rocked forward on the table, barely looking down to what he was writing. “0 023Tavrvs? Could’ve signed this for you earlier if I knew,” Jeno joked, and Chenle felt positively mortified.
“It’s okay,” was the best answer he could come up with. Okay? What the fuck was that. Jeno’s eyes went up again, neatly finishing his cover autograph with a flare, Chenle’s head spinning.
“That was a good pick, by the way. The drink. I enjoyed it thanks to you,” he said handing back the album, polite smile as if that was the default of his face. “Hope you can come again,” and there was a girl half a step behind Chenle, practically buzzing, the next chair over already free. Chenle nodded, taking his album back, not knowing what to do when Jeno nodded to him once again, a polite smile, when he chanced a look back after reaching the end of the row.
♮
If Chenle could easily forgo a meal because of his mood, he would. As things were, though, he’d been outside for over twelve hours on a supposed day off, doing absolutely nothing for his own sake at any point of that excursion, and there was simply no way he would take that out on his much deserved rest and food.
The ‘no room service’ deal he’d made with Doyoung to keep that little mission clear from the agency’s bank statements turned out to be very quickly not worth the promise of two extra vacation days. Purposefully stopping by a convenience store streets away from the closest one to the hotel, Chenle cursed himself all the way to the checkout, stomping a little louder as he marched pass the drinks aisle, pointedly not taking anything.
His stomach churned thinking about eating dinner by the window tables — a slow, sinking feeling that he wouldn’t be able to linger by any convenience store for a while — and so Chenle left the assorted sandwiches inside the plastic bag, trudging back to the hotel.
He didn’t think often about how his schedules made him feel, but days like that made him slightly more appreciative of the work Doyoung and Taeil did for him, regardless of their occasional faults. Chenle was good with people, good around people, but there was no telling when his social battery would run its natural course, and when it’d be depleted in a heartbeat. He never had many opportunities to figure out which situations caused that difference — having shared a room with five other trainees during high school, then with two roommates for his first and only year of college, seven other guys during the survival show, and now his manager. It had always been a matter of how well he could mask his exhaustion, and he was grateful that the people around him not only picked up on his mood shifts, but also created whole schedules with that in mind.
Maybe that was why he still had some trouble figuring out those thresholds by himself, feeling like seeing people would calm him down, but not wanting to be around them at the same time. Either way, his empty hotel room sounded as bad an idea as the glimpse he caught of the hotel lobby.
It was a bit of a hassle to get in through the garage on foot, but he’d rather deal with those minor inconveniences than have any of the people swimming in merch items on the ground floor mistake him and his head to toe cover up for one of the group members. Of course the hotel was brimming with fans, he reasoned, being the closest thing in the financial area to the fansign venue. Chenle kind of expected the group to also be there, less because of the amount of non-guest fans hovering around, and more because it was only a block away from the variety show’s broadcasting company. So when he had to go through security checking room cards, even though the only way to activate the elevators was with one, on a godforsaken Tuesday, in a three star hotel, Chenle should’ve known he was right.
Alas, that didn’t make seeing Jeno for the third time in less than twenty-four hours any less surprising.
Out of the fansign outfit but still with the complicated gelled up hair, not a single strand moved when Jeno whipped his head around to look back at the elevators.
Chenle had the approximate five seconds of momentary blindness the lights from the corridor seemed to give Jeno to think of something appropriate to say. Truth was, there weren’t many ways to go around the feeling of barging in on someone’s private, alone time, much less when he definitely shouldn’t be seeing Jeno again so soon. Particularly not when, out of an entire hotel, it was a blissful moment of there not being another soul in that rooftop terrace, all lights off except for the blinking fairy strings on the rails, and the motion sensitive one right above Chenle. He’d never felt more like an intruder in a completely public space.
The plastic bag crinkled in his hands.
Jeno’s eyebrows shot up for a moment, immediately dropping into a confused frown. “Convenience store?” he said with a head tilt, genuine surprise in his voice, and it felt like deja vu.
Immediately bringing a hand to his chin to check whether his mask was still in place, he pressed the elevator button twice. “ Not a stalker I swear,” Chenle rushed out, sandwich wrappers rustling inside the bag as he kept on pressing the button. “Sorry for interrupting.”
“I don’t mind,” sounded rushed out too, but loud and clear enough to stop Chenle in his tracks before he headed back inside the elevator. Jeno had an arm thrown around the back of the bench, torso fully turned to the light, and a few thoughts flashed through Chenle’s mind as Jeno’s placating, polite smile followed. So he settled for the inconspicuous one of wondering what could have possibly made him want to get away as soon as he was out of the fansign clothes, without even stopping to wash his hair or even take the makeup off first. Hotel swarming with fans or not, it would be hard not to spot Jeno as the idol he was, regardless of his ugly blue tracksuit.
So much for a moment of privacy.
“Dinner?” Jeno pointed with his chin to the plastic bag. Chenle looked down for a moment, completely forgetting that he was even carrying anything, another overwhelming sense of deja vu. Nodding once, Chenle only stood there, frozen by the threshold for long enough for the overhead light to click off. “Well, don’t let me keep you hungry,” Jeno gestured around, still fully turned towards Chenle. It was hard to make out his features in the dim light of the city background, face only framed by the tiny sparkles from the glittery gel on Jeno’s hair. The plastic crinkled on Chenle’s hands again.
There were five benches in that section of the rooftop, but Chenle couldn’t decide whether it would be rude to join Jeno, or if it’d be ruder to sit the farthest away from him possible.
“What’chu got?” Jeno piped up again, one foot lazily swinging, and Chenle settled on marching forward.
There were many things Chenle felt like he had to process about that entire interaction before he could participate like a proper human being, but Jeno really wasn’t giving him any time at all for that. Hadn’t given him in an entire day.
Shouldn’t you be more reserved, or do you have no sense of self preservation, what if I was actually a stalker, and does your company even allow you to go around talking to supposed fans like that? we’re a couple of the things Chenle wanted to ask. He unwrapped his sandwich instead, and it was only when it was carefully perched between his knees as he opened a ketchup packet, that he was faced with a rather small miscalculation on his part.
He’d have to take the mask off in order to eat.
Chenle would rather somersault from the rooftop rails than be found out and have a creepy fanboy title follow him into the industry.
He was going to murder Doyoung.
“No double drink deal tonight?” Jeno asked once Chenle froze again. A head tilt at the lack of answer, and, “You know, I thought you were a man of more words when we first met.”
“Kinda hard to casually eat in front of the idol I just went to a fansign for,” Chenle shot back, hoping his voice was muffled just enough to sound different.
“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” Jeno hummed. Half unwrapped and still intact sandwich in Chenle’s hands, a comfortably seated Jeno leaning against the bench’s backrest like they were two old friends in his living room. They had never even sat that close to each other in the half year they lived together for the survival show. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”
“Huh?” came out of Chenle’s mouth before he could stop himself, in the truly ugly tone he brought from the back of his throat, usually when playing online games. Or whenever Taeil had any new announcements.
Jeno blinked once at that, then twice, and the snort he tried to conceal made the tip of Chenle’s ears go warm. “ Just guessed you’d be more… okay? With it. You were straightforward with a stranger at the convenience store, so I thought you weren’t easily fazed. And I mean, it’s not that easy seeing a fanboy for a group like mine, actually.”
Chenle mentally raised an eyebrow. Yeah, tell me about it. “ Hm,” was all he had to offer, eyes trained on the wrapping paper. So you know, and are still willing to openly interact with a fan like this, no regulations, limitations or consequences.
As if on command, an alarm lit up the phone on Jeno’s lap at that, seconds before a call took up the screen, one line of emojis instead of a contact name. Jeno shut it off, but stood up anyway, two pats to wipe the front of his pants instead of the back. He was clearly feeling just as out of place, but was putting in triple the effort to conceal it. Chenle hurled in his mind at the thought of it being almost endearing. “ Hope I didn’t cross a line. It’d be nice to have you come to another event,” he said as the screen lit up with a call once again, and with the motion lights by the elevator blinding Chenle momentarily, he couldn’t see Jeno’s expression as he said, “0023Taurus.”
Sitting in silence until Jeno’s voice was gone, until the elevator doors shut, and until the light clicked off again, Chenle audibly let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
Huh.
Pulling his mask down, he took a bite off the sandwich, picking the plastic bag from the floor to put it where Jeno had seated.
♮
There were hair dye boxes in the new convenience store Chenle went to stock up the mini fridge, and he genuinely thought he should be awarded for not taking any. Or for not chopping off half of his hair out of stress immediately after his encounter with Jeno on the rooftop.
An entire day had passed since the disastrous fanmeeting, and by the second morning he had Taeil driving forty minutes just to deliver him a new set of clothes. What’s wrong with the coat you took, and I’m not your manager were some of the fifteen text messages Chenle did not reply to, but the knock on his room came before he was even done with breakfast anyway.
“Where’s Doyoung?” Taeil marched inside, the long dust covers of the hangers in his hands floating behind him.
“Good morning to you too,” Chenle closed the door, shrugging to Taeil’s back. “Beats me.”
“What time’s the table read?”
“Pretty sure it’s at 11,” a glance at his wrist, watch-less, “though Doyoung told me to be there by 10:40. Ish.”
“And what the hell do you need new clothes for? It’s just the first meeting, not the first episode recording.”
For all of Taeil’s complaining, he was still fussing around, hanging the clothes on the wardrobe, and scavenging Chenle’s carry-on for a shirt. A sigh as Taeil moved the bucket hat Chenle had been wearing the past couple of days out of the way.
On one hand, Taeil was one of Doyoung’s closest real life friends, and would positively feast on the opportunity to pick on him if Chenle were to tell the real reason. On the other, Taeil was technically his manager’s boss, and Doyoung could quite possibly get in actual life altering trouble for sending Chenle off on his merry way in public the way he did. Technically, I’m his boss too. Look at where that landed me, was Chenle’s final reasoning.
“Just gotta tie up Doyoung’s loose ends,” he said with a dramatic single eyebrow raise. Either his tone or the warm styrofoam coffee cup he put on Taeil’s hands caught his attention.
“Pray tell,” Taeil muttered around it, and Chenle pointedly ignored the messages still lighting up his phone. He was pretty sure Doyoung had some sort of sixth sense.
“What’s the worst that could happen,” Chenle plopped down on the bed, “if an idol thought the person he was about to film a reality show with, was his diehard fan?”