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“Honestly?” Chenle’s eyes are bright and beautiful and terrible. “I’m surprised you took so long.”
Jeno opens his mouth. Closes it. Chenle's grin inches across his face until he's practically preening. Smirking, really.
“You—" Jeno manages.
“Me,” Chenle echoes, still smiling.
"You’re terrible," Jeno finally settles on informing him. It spills out a half-grumble, half-protest, still far too fond to be anything but an admission of defeat.
Chenle's eyes crinkle.
+
It goes like this:
Chenle kisses him three minutes before the clock strikes midnight.
Jeno’s tripping gracelessly over himself trying to speed walk from the bathroom back to the balcony where Donghyuck is hollering JENO WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU and Renjun is telling him to shut up and Mark keeps accidentally starting the countdown early and—
“Hyung,” Chenle chirps, materializing like a ghost in the middle of the hallway.
Jeno starts. “Chenle?“ Blinks once, twice. “You didn't have to come get me, I'm—"
"I know you're fine," Chenle cuts in, rolling his eyes. “Just slow."
"I'm not slow," Jeno frowns. "I was just going to the bathroom, you know, like a regular human being—”
Chenle’s looking at him. The petulant string of protests dies on his tongue when Jeno catches his expression; far too much time spent together has fine-tuned his senses to the covert twinkle behind Chenle’s eyes, the cat-like curl to his grin. The telltale I’m scheming, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Jeno squints. "What."
"Nothing," Chenle chirps, voice suspiciously syrupy.
And then, without warning, he leans in.
Three and a half minutes before the new year. An obnoxious medley of current top forty hits blaring throughout the block. Drunken laughter, poorly timed preemptive fireworks. Chenle kisses him in the half-lit hallway of Jaemin's apartment without a care in the world.
Three minutes, now.
"Hngh?" Jeno lets out eloquently when Chenle pulls away. Everything is suddenly, terribly, horribly astray; the ceiling light too lurid, Jeno’s heart stuttering sideways into his lungs. A strand of Chenle’s hair has fallen out of place as if begging, begging, to be fixed.
"C'mon," Chenle's just laughing. He takes Jeno's hand and every point of contact sears across Jeno's skin, too-much, too-little. "We're gonna miss the countdown."
They need to talk about this, Jeno thinks foggily. He stares uselessly at the corner of Chenle’s mouth, his brain an incoherent pink-red stain of thought. They need to talk about this.
Chenle’s mouth again. Air hot and wicked against Jeno's ear as he giggles. “You’re thinking too hard.”
Okay. “Okay,” Jeno croaks. And lets himself be dragged back towards the balcony.
Jeno lets. He lets himself be swarmed by the others. Lets Chenle push him towards Donghyuck and Renjun, where the two instantly pounce on him with you almost missed it and did you fall asleep on the toilet or something. Lets Chenle’s hands fall from his arm as they both get swallowed up in laughter, cheer, warmth.
Because that’s just how it is. Letting, and letting, and letting, and getting helplessly swept up into orbit by the whirlwind-hurricane-conundrum that is Zhong Chenle.
“It’s starting,” Jisung says quietly from beside him.
Ten seconds before the new year. Donghyuck's trying to find a victim to kiss. Someone else is yelling. The air crackles with giddy, adolescent excitement and Jeno (stupid, stupid) still seeks out a pair of bright eyes on the other side of the balcony.
Chenle waddles over to him. Cheeks pink, bundled tight in his puffy jacket. He’s infuriatingly adorable, and his mouth is red, and Jeno hates him.
“Happy new year,” Chenle says, bumping his hip with a smile.
An illegal firework goes off with a bang somewhere down the block. Jeno feels it, feels everything. Feels, mostly, like a fool. “Happy new year.”
+
"But really," Chenle's saying. He pops a chip in his mouth, looking far too at ease considering the topic at hand. “I thought you were going to like, hunt me down immediately. But instead it took you four whole days. That’s a long time, you know. Especially for you, hyung.”
He grabs another chip. Jeno feels, vaguely, as if the universe has unknowingly thrust him into some terrible college sitcom for everyone else’s entertainment but his own. There’s a raucous laugh track playing on loop that sounds terrifyingly like Donghyuck.
“Are we,” Jeno pauses. “Are we talking about the same thing?”
“I don’t know,” Chenle shoots back immediately, smiling. “What are we talking about?”
Jeno kind of wants to throttle him. And then kiss him. Maybe. God.
He’s still half wrestling his annoyance, half mustering up the courage to just ask Chenle when the younger glances at him and promptly bursts out laughing, the sound scattering like sunlight across the dining table where they’re seated.
“Okay, okay,” Chenle’s wheezing. “I’ll stop. Sorry. You’re just really cute.”
Jeno’s brain turns elegantly to static. “...Is that why you kissed me?”
A wide grin splits across Chenle’s face.
They sit in silence for a short, dewy moment; time stretches and spindles between them, delicate, and Jeno—thinks.
Four days is an objectively decent amount of time to process getting kissed, out of the blue, at a New Year’s eve party by a boy who you’ve kind of always maybe had a soft spot for. Who is loud, and brutally honest, and has been a warm, unchanging constant in Jeno’s life ever since Jisung brought him into their eclectic little group of friends sometime last year.
Who is currently still grinning at him like an absolute demon from across the dining table.
Jeno clears his throat, ignoring the way his ears are starting to turn traitorously red. “I asked you a question.”
“You looked sad,” Chenle says finally, shrugging.
Jeno stares at him. Lets the quiet settle over them for a beat, two, before he repeats, tentatively, “You kissed me because I looked sad?”
Chenle bursts out laughing. “Hyung,” he smiles. “You’re kinda dumb.”
“I think you’re having too much fun with this,” Jeno grumbles.
Chenle ignores him, opting instead to let out a drawn-out, overexaggerated sigh as he presses his face to the table. “You’re reeeally gonna make me say it?”
He looks terribly childish, with one cheek smushed against the surface and his lips puckered into a pout. Jeno, against his better judgment, kind of wants to pinch him.
So he does. Reaches his hand out and pinches Chenle’s other cheek, pulling the skin while Chenle pulls a face at him, and then another, and then another.
It feels startlingly normal. As if they’re just trading typical meaningless jabs after Chenle drops by one of Jisung and Jeno’s dance practices. As if it’s just another Sunday morning, and they aren’t teetering precariously on the cusp of whatever the fuck this is.
Jeno lets his hand drop. “Chenle.”
Chenle sighs. He peels himself off the dining table with a dramatic flourish, and when their eyes finally, finally meet, something soft and dangerous lurches in Jeno’s stomach.
“I really like you, hyung,” Chenle says, plain and simple. “I’ve liked you since, like, forever.”
His voice stays steady, but the way his fingers drum restlessly on the table belie the seemingly nonchalant tone, and Jeno is so hopelessly, helplessly endeared.
“And ,” Chenle interjects suddenly, jabbing a finger squarely in his face. “I know you like me too. You’re not very subtle, you know.”
Maybe Jeno should be more embarrassed. But his heart is tripping all over itself; caught on the sweet, honeyed edge of I really like you, stuck on the stupid, captivating fire behind Chenle’s eyes. “I don’t think this is how confessions are supposed to go,” Jeno says, raising a brow as he fights the smile threatening his lips.
“Who said this is a confession?” Chenle sniffs.
His eyes are twinkling.
It goes like this:
Chenle’s face scrunches into a ridiculous, pinched configuration, his brows bunching together violently as a deep frown mars his expression.
Jeno blinks. "What are you doing?"
"Hyung," Chenle repeats, exaggerating his frown to a comical degree. "I'm so sad. Don't I look sad?"
There's an obvious twitch to his lips. There’s a lightness in the air. There’s something thrumming in the room, alive—singing, now now now now.
Now. "You’re terrible," Jeno tells him.
But he bites back his own smile, and leans in anyway.