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“I think there’s sand in my shoes.”
Renjun throws his head back and lets out a giggle. He doesn’t open his eyes, the barest tickle of his eyelashes sweeping under his eyelids. His hands dig deeper into the ground, grains of sand gathering underneath his nails.
“Oh, really?” Renjun teases. “Almost like we’re at the beach or something.”
“Shut up,” Chenle huffs, although there’s no real anger behind his tone. “Almost like we never planned to come here in the first place or something.”
Another chuckle. Chenle really likes hearing that sound, even if it means he earns a playful shove on the shoulder. Chenle yelps a bit, bracing his hands on the floor as he laughs. “Ge!”
“Okay but you have to admit,” Renjun sighs softly. “This is nice.”
Chenle hums. The wind howling around them isn’t too strong, comforting enough to almost lull Renjun to sleep. There’s the rhythmic sound of waves crashing against the tide, the distant squawking of seagulls somewhere further away from them. The yellow yolk in the sky, mellowing into a nice orange beneath the azure blue - a sunset so pretty that it’s no wonder there are so many people sitting around the beach just to catch a glimpse of the view.
“It is,” Chenle nods slowly. There’s something else tiptoeing at the edge of his tongue, but he pulls it back when he sees Renjun’s lips crawl into a grim smile.
“You don’t get sunsets like this in Seoul.”
“What do you mean? Remember when we saw that really pretty sunset at the Han River years ago? You took so many pictures.”
“But did the sun look like that?” Renjun points a well-manicured finger to the yellow circle above the water.
There’s not much for Chenle to say about that, so he just surrenders with another hum. He leans back, laying back down on the ratty picnic matt Renjun had dug out from the depths of their manager’s storeroom. It’s barely big enough to fit the both of them, so both their legs end up laying on the sand instead. In between Chenle changing the music on his Bluetooth speaker and throwing his sunglasses somewhere behind him, Renjun also slides down beside him.
They’re silent for a while, just the white noise of the ocean wave lap over one another accompanying their quiet.
“Ge?”
“Hm?”
“Why are we here?”
Renjun sighs again. This time, it feels heavy - like it’s a weight pressing onto Chenle’s chest. “Can’t we just enjoy a nice beach?”
“We can,” Chenle turns his head a little to face Renjun. Renjun doesn’t look back. “But did we need to go all the way to Yalong to do it? There’s beaches in Shanghai.”
“You didn’t say no,” Renjun shoots back.
That’s true too.
“I know I didn’t. I’m just wondering if there’s another reason.”
“Well, maybe I like a good getaway.”
“Ge,” Chenle pokes Renjun’s arm gently. “Why are you being so difficult?”
“I’m not!” Renjun laughs, although it sort of falls short at the end. Chenle can sense it, of course he can. It’s been nearly eight years since he’s grown around Renjun, every little habit, every little change in tone, every little stare - it’s somewhere catalogued in the deepest parts of Chenle’s brain. It’s almost like muscle memory, but his instincts are winded around Renjun and his entire being.
Chenle also knows that sometimes, Renjun just needs a little push.
“I’ll let you sit at the window seat on the flight back to Seoul if you tell me what’s wrong.”
“Please,” Renjun snorts. “You were going to let me do it anyway.”
Chenle’s ears flush. “You’re presumptuous.”
“And you’re bribing me into a therapy session. Forcefully, may I add.”
“It’s not forced if you choose to tell me what’s wrong.”
“Is it now?” Renjun chuckles lowly. “It’s forced if you keep begging me to talk about whatever it is you want to hear me rant about.”
“I just don’t think it’s normal for someone to grab their friend by the neck, make them pack for a three day trip back to their home country and get on a three hour flight just to go straight to a beach,” Chenle utters. “Also, you get this look on your face.”
“What look?”
Chenle twists his face so that his expression contorts to one exactly like Renjun’s - lips worried between his teeth and his eyes a little glazed and distant. Renjun smacks Chenle across the chest.
“I regret this now,” Renjun groans. “You’re annoying.”
“Mhmm, now talk.”
It’s quiet again. Chenle can feel Renjun thinking, just from his fingers picking at his own nails. The echo of children running around and playing about in the sand breaks their silence a bit, but it’s not uncomfortable.
“Isn’t it tiring?”
Chenle’s head turns so fast he nearly gets whiplash. “What is?”
“Being. Living.” Renjun shrugs. “Existing? Don’t you just want to pack it all up and go somewhere else?”
“Hm,” Chenle hauls himself up so that he’s leaning up on one bent elbow, his entire body facing Renjun. “Where else would you want to go?”
Renjun shrugs again. “I don’t know. Anywhere else but Earth. Maybe Mars?”
Chenle gasps, way too dramatically for it to be real, but just light-hearted enough. “Mars? What’s there to do in Mars?”
“Nothing, that’s the whole point,” Renjun answers. “Don’t you just kind of not want to do anything sometimes?”
“I’m not sure if I’d like that,” Chenle says honestly. “I think I’d die if I didn’t have something to do at least.”
“Ah. That’s where we’re different, I suppose.”
Chenle reaches a hand over to brush some of Renjun’s blonde bangs away from his eyes. He could tell it was starting to bother him from the way Renjun’s eyes kept screwing shut and open again only for a few brief seconds. He tucks them gently behind Renjun’s ear and pretends to not notice Renjun leaning into his touch.
It makes the bile in his throat rise. His fingers don’t leave Renjun’s forehead for a beat too long, before he’s retracting his hand and ignoring Renjun’s piercing gaze. He chooses to focus on the zagged patterns below him.
“Also, you’d have to pay like - a trillion dollars or something to get there in the first place and you’d have to give that money to Elon Musk.”
“Oh, ew,” Renjun frowns. “Is there nobody else that can take us to space?”
Chenle whistles lowly. “Who said I’m coming with you?”
“Who else would I take with me?”
“Uh, anyone else?” Chenle muses. “Jisung is literally a space nerd. Plus, we’d probably want to kill each other by the end of it.”
“No, I’d have to take care of Jisung on another planet and that seems like too much work.”
“Okay, what about Mark?”
Renjun laughs through his nose. “Mark? The guy who has to close his eyes when we ride the Viking?”
Chenle cackles, clapping his hands loudly together. “Yeah, fair. Sorry, that was a dumb decision.”
“Jeno would not want to step foot into a spaceship and Jaemin wouldn’t either purely out of self-preservation. Donghyuck would probably land us on the Moon instead. So that just leaves you.”
“You won’t have to take care of me?”
“No. Because we’d take care of each other,” Renjun states simply. “You can cook. I’ll do the other malewife stuff or whatever it is we need to do on a foreign planet. Maybe I’ll plant the potatoes.”
Another giggle. “You do know that the Martian isn’t scientifically 100% accurate, right?”
“Doesn’t matter. If Matt Damon could do it, so can we.”
“Mm. Okay, ge.”
Chenle looks back up at the sky. The sun is nearly gone by now, the sky bleeding into a dark blue instead. The wind starts to blow heavier, so it gets way chillier now. The bundled up jacket Chenle had been using as a pillow gets thrown over Renjun’s smaller frame. Renjun just smiles up at him gratefully, tugging the jacket closer to his body.
“You wouldn’t survive a day in Mars weather,” Chenle chastises lightly. “Why don’t we pick somewhere smaller? Maybe somewhere on Earth?”
Renjun snuggles closer to the picnic blanket, his body lightly pressed against Chenle. He leans his head so that it rests against Chenle’s shoulder - suddenly, Chenle feels lightheaded. Renjun’s blonde hair tickles the side of his neck, but he would rather die than complain right now.
“Somewhere warm? With a lot of beaches, perhaps mountains and stuff so you can hike?”
Renjun nods, a small smile on his face. “As long as we go there together.”
Chenle swallows the lump in his throat. Something swells in his heart; it feels a lot like hope.
“Yeah, together,” Chenle agrees softly.
There’s a hundred places Chenle can think of, but nowhere else is better than a Yalong beach, on top of a worn out picnic matt and underneath Chenle’s way too oversized jacket.