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Just once, Renjun thought it would be satisfying to slam a door. When he was little, his mother always admonished him if he closed the front door even the slightest bit too hard, overeager in his haste to run to his room after a difficult day at school. When he was little, his father sometimes got angry enough to make the hinges rattle. Renjun was always queasy when that happened.
Still. Just once, maybe it would be nice. The noisiness, the exteriority, the finality of it all.
During rehearsals for “GO,” in that cramped practice room where he and Donghyuck had their first and last proper fight, the impulse seized him. He made to storm off, the way he’d seen in dramas, and slam the door behind him. But Donghyuck grabbed his arm and jerked him back.
At that, Renjun was too flabbergasted to be angry any longer. He just stared down at Donghyuck’s hand circling his elbow.
“Are you leaving?” Donghyuck demanded, high-pitched and incredulous. As if they hadn’t been screaming at each other for the past ten minutes. As if there were no context for Renjun’s behavior.
“I’m mad at you,” Renjun lied.
“Well, don’t leave until you’ve forgiven me. Just stay here and be mad at me if you have to.”
Renjun looked Donghyuck in the eyes. They were round. A little wet.
“I really want to leave,” he said slowly. “So I’ll forgive you.”
And they made up just like that. Renjun lost his chance to slam a door.
Two years later, when they finally received word that NCT Dream would be a permanent group after all—when the weight of the sky lifted from Renjun’s shoulders, when his crushed lungs flooded, ballooning suddenly with hope and fear and grief for all the time they’d lost—he felt it again. Donghyuck’s hand circling his elbow. When they turned to each other, he found Donghyuck’s eyes round. A little wet.
He realized, then, that he’d been waiting all along for Donghyuck to leave. To slam the door behind him. Renjun had always imagined that when the dust settled, he’d be alone in that cramped practice room with all his love for Donghyuck.
That day wasn’t coming anymore.
He tried to remind himself that it was a good thing.
✒︎
Renjun cried the first time Doyoung scolded him.
There was nothing cruel about it whatsoever. No enraged fathers, no slammed doors. Doyoung’s knock at the dorm’s front door was gentle; when it swung open, the corners of his mouth were tightened just so. He didn’t even look irritated, really, just—pained. Grimly resigned to telling Renjun to lower his voice, a task as unpleasantly necessary as a spoonful of cough syrup. Renjun knew that Doyoung had a voice so pretty that he wanted to curl into himself whenever he caught it leaking through the practice room walls. He knew that Jeno’s eyes curved into crescents at the very mention of Doyoung, that all the kids said he was a good hyung. That was the extent of his knowledge.
So Doyoung’s reprimand was impersonal, benevolent, and over within seconds. Renjun smiled and bowed and apologized for disturbing him. Then he locked himself in the bathroom and cried, because he was fifteen years old in a foreign country and crying was how he managed.
He didn’t know why the incident became such a focal point during their video shooting, five years later. Maybe he simply didn’t have any other prominent memories with Doyoung. Renjun played it off like a joke, which it mostly was, but Doyoung was so princely about it, so concisely and sincerely repentant. Thank you for telling me. I’ll try harder to be kinder. A good hyung, as always.
A week later, they had vocal rehearsals for “From Home,” and Renjun found himself staring during one of their breaks. Doyoung’s profile was sharp as an arrowhead, his gaze honed in on his sheet music as he sang the same eight-count phrase to himself over and over. By his side, Donghyuck was being insufferable as always, singing along a half-beat behind to throw him off. For a while, Doyoung endured it with all the defiant dignity of a martyr at the gallows, and then at last he shoved Donghyuck away with a cry of, “Lee Haechan, really!”
It made Renjun smile.
And it prompted him, somehow, to approach Doyoung after rehearsal, when everyone else had clustered into their little cliques and dispersed. Renjun made some sort of vague excuse to Donghyuck and Chenle, then went to stand timidly over Doyoung, who was sitting on the floor with his back against the practice room mirrors, tapping away at his phone.
“Hyung,” he said, when it became apparent that Doyoung had yet to notice his presence. Doyoung’s head snapped up, and the surprise that painted his features vanished within seconds.
“Injun,” he greeted pleasantly. “Propolis?”
“Huh?”
“For your throat.” Doyoung fished around in his knapsack and procured a small medicinal spray bottle. “Your vocal cords are a bit fatigued. Say ah.”
“Ah,” Renjun repeated obediently, and before he could even process what was happening he found himself dropping his jaw like a baby bird waiting to be fed. He bent down slightly; Doyoung lifted an arm and sprayed the back of his throat with something that tasted of honey and antiseptic. It was weirdly intimate.
“I was…” Renjun paused and cringed through the taste, which seemed to sour as it settled. “I was wondering if you wanted to, um, grab dinner. With me. Right now.”
Doyoung’s eyebrows crept up enough to be obvious, but not enough to be rude. They’d exchanged the usual pleasantries after the video shoot, of course, banal promises of getting a meal together sometime, but there had been, presumably, no real expectation of ever following through.
“Sorry, I know this is kinda random—”
“I would love to,” Doyoung interrupted. The smile he gave was so warm, so difficult to disbelieve. No wonder all the kids adored him. “I’ll pay. I can drive, too. Where do you want to go?”
Renjun picked Haidilao, of course.
Doyoung’s car was unpretentious but clearly new, clearly well cared-for, and so scrupulously neat that he muttered Sorry for the mess in reference to a single errant half-empty water bottle. It was impersonal too, like a display at the dealership—nothing cluttering the dashboard, or dangling from the rearview mirror, or stuffed into the side door compartments. Renjun sat in the passenger seat and felt wary of even breathing wrong as they pulled out of the SM parking garage. He hadn’t bothered to wear anything beyond the bare minimum for rehearsal, so he was dressed in sweats and an oversized hoodie. He wished he’d bothered.
“Injun-ah,” Doyoung murmured suddenly. “About back then. When we were trainees, and I told you to quiet down—”
Oh God.
“Hyung, it’s not a big deal. Seriously, it was so long ago, it doesn’t bother me at all. It didn’t even bother me back then.”
“Okay. I was just thinking, because…” Doyoung sighed. Drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Well, it occurred to me that we’ve never discussed it off-camera. You kept saying it was alright, but I wondered if maybe that was only because we were filming.”
“No, of course not,” Renjun insisted, embarrassed. “If anything, I only brought it up in the first place because we were filming. It was just the first thing I thought of, you know? But it’s really, really okay. I promise.”
“Alright. Thank you.” Doyoung shot a quick glance over at Renjun before looking back at the road. “But it was the first thing you thought of for a reason, right? It left a strong impression on you.”
“I guess.”
“Did I scare you?”
“What?”
“I know that I can be—stern. And you were so young, and there was a language barrier, and it must have been nerve-wracking, trying to get along with so many of us…”
“You weren’t scary, hyung,” Renjun said truthfully. “No more than anybody else was, anyway.”
“No more than anybody else.”
“Yeah.” Renjun blushed. Again, he didn’t know why he was sharing all of this. Something about Doyoung was so disarming. “It was nobody’s fault. I was just—shy. Anxious. I had a hard time, because of all those circumstances you mentioned. But no harder than anyone else had, you know?”
“If it were me,” Doyoung said. Softly, contemplatively. “If I had to come all the way to a different country when I got scouted, I don’t think I would have done it.”
Renjun couldn’t suppress a scoff at that one. Even if he didn’t know Doyoung particularly well, the conviction burning at his core was evident from miles away. “Of course you would have.”
It was Doyoung’s turn to blush, then. “Yes,” he admitted, with a meek smile on his face to match the mildly exasperated one on Renjun’s. “Probably I would have.”
As usual, the waitlist at Haidilao was extensive. After Renjun entered their information into the tablet at the front of the restaurant, they killed time walking aimlessly around the nearby shops. In one of them, a fan asked for their signatures. She was Chinese, a linguistics student completing a semester abroad at Yonsei, and she and Renjun chattered away in Mandarin while Doyoung looked on with a fond expression, unphased by being excluded. Eventually, they ended up in a coffee shop.
Doyoung grabbed a bag of dried sweet potatoes from the snack shelf while they stood in line to order. “For Taeyong,” he muttered, under his breath to the point that it wasn’t clear whether he was addressing Renjun or himself. He paid for the snack and both of their drinks—an iced Americano for Doyoung, a mango tea for Renjun—before Renjun could even reach for his wallet.
Awkward silences washed over them like the tide, swelling and receding and swelling again. They were both amiable but timid. Renjun traced patterns in the pearls of condensation dotting his cup and tried to work through the lump in his throat.
“Hyung,” he said, at one of so many lulls in conversation. They were back in front of Haidilao, their drinks mostly drained. Only one party ahead of them in line now. “To be honest, I invited you out because I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Doyoung’s smile was wry. “I knew it.”
“Hyung, no—” Renjun backpedaled. “It’s not like I wouldn’t hang out with you otherwise, it’s just—I wanted—”
“Relax, Injun-ah. I just meant that I could tell you have something on your mind.”
“Oh.”
“Cute,” Doyoung laughed, shaking his head. “I see why the kids can’t get enough of you.”
Flustered, Renjun shook out his limbs, as if he could dislodge all of the embarrassment that seemed determined to cling to him lately. “That’s not true.”
“Sure it is,” Doyoung said. So simple. So self-assured. “What did you want to talk about?”
The lump in Renjun’s throat reemerged. During the car ride, he’d rehearsed lines in his head, but they all eluded him now. A wave of silence roared between them once again.
“We have the whole evening ahead of us,” Doyoung pointed out gently. “You can tell me when you’re ready, you know? No rush.”
“It’s about Haechan,” Renjun blurted.
It was the first thing he said that seemed to genuinely puncture Doyoung’s composure—a single moment of wide-eyed furtiveness before his face smoothed over again, like a pebble sinking into a still lake. Renjun seized upon it immediately, lurching forward with an urgency that startled him.
“Did he say something to you? About me?”
“Haechan? He…” Doyoung’s lips flattened into a thin line. There was that expression from their trainee days again. Pained. “I’m sorry. It isn’t my place to tell you.”
Renjun deflated. “No, of course. I understand.”
His chest ached with possibilities.
What had Donghyuck said?
Renjun tried to picture him, cross-legged in Doyoung’s bed with a glass of wine, his nose tinged red the way it always was when he drank, the lights low, his voice still lower as he said—
I think Renjun is in love with me. What should I do?
Or maybe:
I think Renjun is in love with me. It’s awful.
Or maybe just:
It’s so obvious.
Or—
“We’re up,” Doyoung said, jolting Renjun from his reverie. He gestured toward the restaurant with a tilt of his head. A table was finally available. “You’ll have to help me out at the sauce bar. Mine never comes out quite right.”
“I’ve got you.”
For a while after they entered, Renjun let his thoughts wander, adrift in the familiarity of the restaurant. There were the plumes of steam billowing above bubbling pots, the assertive hum of the vents drowning out the din of chattering patrons and harried servers. When Renjun lifted a ladle at the sauce bar, he found its handle oily as always, the previous user’s fingerprints preserved faintly on the rubber end.
Renjun went to Haidilao for the first time with Chenle, during that dreadful purgatory when their debut was delayed. They had the day off, but Chenle lied and had his parents drop him off at the SM building anyway. Armed with Sicheng’s card (hard-won through pouting and begging), they’d snuck out with their hearts in their mouths, determined to navigate Seoul’s subway system on their own. Chenle still didn’t speak much Korean, so Renjun managed the bulk of it, his chest puffed with pride. The streets they crossed, the strangers Renjun asked for directions, the careful flourish of his pen as he signed the check—all of it seemed to declare, I can do this, too. I can take care of us, too.
Since then, Renjun had eaten at Haidilao a thousand times. The waitress beamed and greeted him by name when she came by with their first round of orders, and he responded in kind. Across the table, Doyoung gave an impressed coo.
“I’m in such good hands with Injunnie.”
“Not really.” Renjun blushed again. He didn’t know why he was always doing that lately. It made his scalp prickle. He felt as small as he had back then, pausing at a street corner to find a Naver tutorial on how to swipe a credit card. He felt smaller, even. Less solid. Flimsy and incorporeal where he’d once been sturdy and real.
In a low voice, he walked Doyoung through the meal with an inordinate level of detail. Doyoung didn’t complain, only leaned in and listened diligently as Renjun instructed him on when to raise and lower the heat, the optimal order for adding the ingredients, and how long each one should remain in the broth. Another desperate declaration of his own competence.
“I meant what I said earlier,” Doyoung said while they filled out their orders for the dessert round.
“Huh?”
“That the kids can’t get enough of you. You denied it.” Doyoung poked out his tongue thoughtfully as he scrolled on their table’s tablet. “One order of egg custard and one of red bean? We can split.”
“Okay,” Renjun said faintly.
“Like I said, some things aren’t my place to tell, but it’s no secret that Haechan admires you. Your voice. The intentionality when you sing.”
“Coming from him?”
Doyoung frowned. “You’re humble, but you can’t be that unaware of your own ability. It’s your job to be aware.”
Chastised, Renjun dropped his gaze to the table. Soup-stained spoons, crumpled napkins, scraps of vegetables clinging to the bottoms of empty pots. He was determined not to blush for the thousandth time.
“Of course I’m aware,” Renjun mumbled, head still bowed. “I don’t know when I became the kind of person who—who—”
Denies. Defers. Hides. Absorbs everything indiscriminately, instead of letting the worst of it bounce off of him like it once did.
Renjun took a tremulous breath.
“Hyung, you know that I’m gay, right?”
“…I’d surmised as much, yes.”
“And that I’m in love with Haechan?”
“That too.”
It was mortifying, suddenly, how little there seemed to be to Renjun—how easily he could be peeled back and displayed on the restaurant table among the dirty dishes, Doyoung peering pityingly down at the cross-section of all his writhing parts. The whole predicament was so cliche. Closeted in a gilded cage, loving someone he shouldn’t.
“Well, that’s everything, I guess.” Renjun ran a hand over his nape. When he finally looked up, he found Doyoung looking back with a steadiness that made him squirm. “I thought maybe it would help to talk to someone who knows him, but doesn’t really know me.” Certainly he couldn’t fathom coming to any of the Dream members with this.
“You want advice?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, I almost think…”
He loves me too.
The thought had been rattling around in Renjun’s head for weeks, but it was far too momentous to say aloud. Too vulnerable, too foolish, too desperate. Too many things Renjun had never associated with himself before.
“How did you know?” Doyoung asked. When Renjun just stared blankly at him, he clarified, “That you love him. Someone asked me that recently: how you can tell whether your feelings are romantic. I want to know what you think.”
Renjun’s brow furrowed. “I mean, it’s obvious, I guess? When you eat something, you know whether you like it; when you look at someone, you know whether you love them. Except with Haechan it was like…my taste changed as I got older. I didn’t always feel this way.”
Doyoung smiled. “That’s a cute way to describe it.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Renjun shrugged, bashful. “And kinda anticlimactic. I always thought there would be this—recognition. The way it is in dramas. Like, Oh, it’s you. It’s always been you. But when I realized, it just felt like, Oh, fuck, it’s you? ”
Doyoung actually burst into laughter at that one, head flung back. “It is annoying, isn’t it?”
“The worst! I don’t even recognize myself anymore. All of a sudden, I’m spending all my time thinking about whether he looks at me, texts me, touches me—”
“When he does, it makes your whole day,” Doyoung interjects. “But when he doesn’t, you can hardly sleep.”
“Exactly!” Renjun cried, then paused, frowning. Doyoung’s voice was a touch too knowing, his smile a shade too rueful. “Wait, hyung—you—”
“And you overthink every minuscule thing he does,” Doyoung continued. “Down to the way he says hello. Comparing it to the way he treats others, wondering if you’re different.”
His gaze was still steady. Unflinching. Understanding.
“Yeah.” Renjun felt hollowed out. His eyes stung; pressure built at his temples.
“It’s destabilizing,” Doyoung said softly. “And frightening. To have your emotional state depend so deeply on another person.”
“Yeah,” Renjun said again, choked. He took a long sip of water. Hot when it was first served, it had long since gone lukewarm. “Logically, I know that you have to rely on other people. My entire career relies on countless other people. But…” He laughed mirthlessly. “I’m angry. I worked so hard. I left home, and Mark left us, and everything—everything was so difficult for so long, but now, when there’s finally ground beneath our feet, it’s like—I just went flying off on my own again.”
“Oh, Renjun…”
“Whatever.”
The waitress arrived then with their dessert. Two orders of steamed buns, one egg custard and one red bean, like freshly fluffed pillows nestled in their bamboo beds. And Renjun, to his unending horror, was crying.
A series of fragmented moments clumped together then, mirroring the tears caught in Renjun’s eyelashes. There was the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back, the apologetic lilt of Doyoung’s voice as he spoke to the waitress a few steps away. Pardon me, but could we actually get these to go? Then came the clean scent of Doyoung’s perfume, like lilies and linen, as he leaned in to press tea-dampened napkins against Renjun’s swollen eyes. Somehow, their bill was paid; somehow, they left the restaurant. Renjun didn’t process any of it until he was back in the refuge of Doyoung’s car, staring glumly at his crumpled reflection in the vanity mirror.
He was in love, and it was laying waste to the fragile calculus of his life.
“This is so embarrassing,” Renjun groaned.
“It’s normal to cry.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not embarrassing.”
They were still parked. Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts; Doyoung hadn’t even bothered turning on the engine. He just sat and regarded Renjun.
“I get it now,” Doyoung said. “You and Haechan. You’re really alike.”
“We’re both scary. You said that before, on VLIVE.”
“Well, yes. But not just that.” Doyoung hummed, as if seeking out the starting pitch for what he was about to say. “Haechan is more timid than he looks; you know that. He’s as scared as you are. Doesn’t like change or instability, either, even though he’s surrounded by them all the time.”
“I know that now.” Renjun swallowed thickly, determined not to let tears well up again. The lump in his throat had just become a manageable size. “I didn’t, before. Early on, I kind of resented him. I thought—I figured he had you guys, the 127 hyungs. His future was clearer. He didn’t need us. But when I started to see him, really see him…”
“You fell in love with him.”
It seemed impossible not to. Renjun didn’t know how Donghyuck went anywhere without leaving a smeared trail of blood and viscera behind him, stringing along all the hearts he stole. Inexplicable, but also a strange source of pride. Like Renjun’s lonely love put him above anyone who was foolish enough not to love Donghyuck just as much.
“I know you said you weren’t sure if you wanted advice,” Doyoung said. “And I know it’s easier said than done, but I think you can just—lean into it. Change along with the world. Do what you fear.”
“Even now,” Renjun said softly. “Even now, I really want to see him.”
“You can. Come back to our dorm with me.”
They put on their seatbelts. Doyoung started the engine. As they merged onto the highway, Renjun pulled out his phone and sent a single text.
we need to talk
✒︎
Anyway, wasn’t it Renjun who left first?
Before he met Donghyuck, or Doyoung, or any of them. It was Renjun and his starry eyes and narrow shoulders on a plane, face heating as he struggled to lift his suitcase into the overhead compartment, until at last another passenger—an older man, with weathered skin like a walnut shell and clothes that smelled of cigarette smoke—took pity and did it for him. It was Renjun who’d hugged his parents goodbye that morning, Renjun staring out the plane window as cities shrank into specks. If he ever felt like his life was doomed to be a long line of departures, it was only because he’d tipped over the first domino.
✒︎
They were in the middle of filming the “Ridin’” music video when the inconceivable happened. A hand came down and stopped the dominoes in their tracks.
Later, much later, as the shoot dragged on and the sky outside lightened, when the shock of the news had worn off but the world was still fuzzy at the edges, all its sharp corners sanded off by their joy, Renjun and Donghyuck dozed off on the sofa in the dressing room. They were spooning. Renjun was on the outer edge, precariously balanced; Donghyuck was on the inside, his face practically smushed against the sofa’s back. He liked that. Liked being smothered. But one of his arms stretched backward to curl protectively over Renjun’s torso, as if to keep him from falling.
At some point, Chenle snapped a photo of them and sent it to the group chat. He accompanied it with a comparison photo of two cats cuddling, along with a drawn out aigooo and a couple of vomiting emojis. It didn’t matter. Renjun stared at that photo and felt his chest constrict as he recalled the moment of waking—when Donghyuck twisted around to face him and Renjun looked back at him and thought for the thousandth time, Oh God, it’s still you. And for a split second, he imagined that he saw the same sentiment echoed in Donghyuck’s eyes. Recognition. Resignation.
When the shoot was over, he caught Donghyuck saving the photo to his camera roll.
✒︎
Taeyong’s hands were as beautiful as the rest of him. They were less delicate than his face, charmingly idiosyncratic—pale, with prominent veins and perpetually pinkish knuckles. Doyoung caught him fussing over them sometimes, moisturizing his palms and filing his nails and rearranging his rings. Taeyong was fussy in general when it came to his appearance, sometimes out of indulgence and sometimes out of insecurity. Doyoung could usually tell at a glance which one it was on any given day.
Today was an indulgent day. Today, Taeyong’s hand was clasped in Doyoung’s.
They hadn’t yet put a name to the nascent thing between them. Sometimes, Doyoung felt like he was wading into the sea, pebbles and sand beneath his bare feet. There was always that moment, just out of sight, when the ocean floor dropped abruptly away and the waves surged up to swallow him whole. But step after step, that moment never came. For now, it was only Doyoung holding the entire world in his hand, quietly certain that he would float when it came down to it.
Doyoung and Taeyong were on their way to the kitchen for a midnight snack when the front door swung open, bathing the dorm in light from the hallway. It was Haechan and Renjun—side by side, arm in arm, completely flush with one another, fused like neighboring cookies in a too-small baking sheet.
This, too, was a recent development. A month had passed since Doyoung took Renjun home with him from Haidilao, since Renjun proceeded to Haechan’s room and the conversation between them unspooled into the wee hours of the night while Doyoung watched dramas with noise-canceling headphones on, resisting the urge to eavesdrop.
“Renjun,” Taeyong said, pleased. Renjun and Haechan both jolted in surprise at the sound of his voice, but they didn’t look embarrassed, didn’t pull apart. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Hi, hyungs.” Renjun dipped his head in greeting. “I know it’s late. Don’t worry, we’ll be quiet.” There was a joke in that last sentence, a quirk at the corner of his mouth as his gaze flicked over to Doyoung.
Doyoung rolled his eyes lightly, just to show that he’d caught the comment. “Are you staying the night?”
Immediately, Haechan turned to look at Renjun’s face, nakedly hopeful. He practically glowed when Renjun nodded.
“Stay for breakfast, then,” Taeyong said. “I’ll cook. We can all eat together.”
“That sounds nice. Thank you, hyung.” Renjun’s gaze drifted down to Doyoung and Taeyong’s joined hands, then back up to meet Doyoung’s eyes. Understanding.
Then he and Haechan were kicking off their shoes, hanging their coats, and disappearing into Haechan’s room, still attached at the hip, ensconced in a private world of their own making.
“Ah, young love,” Taeyong sighed.
Doyoung hummed in agreement. When he squeezed Taeyong’s hand, Taeyong squeezed right back.