Work Text:
Donghyuck first meets Jaemin at a housewarming party in the Upper East Side.
A month ago, Renjun and Mark had finally moved into a new apartment together after five years of dating. And only a day after getting the keys, Renjun had sent out a partiful invite to what must have been his and Mark’s entire social network, since currently Donghyuck could barely see an inch of the front door floor due to the piles of guests’ shoes thrown on top of one another. The front door is already slightly open by the time Donghyuck makes it to the address, sweaty from the ten minute walk he had to take from the closest subway station. So sweaty it’s making Donghyuck mildly self-conscious, so he’s grateful for the blast of air conditioning that greets him when he slips off his own shoes and haphazardly dumps his Nike’s next to a pair of clean loafers.
Inside, the apartment is packed with people and Mark’s speakers are softly playing some New Jeans song (from Renjun’s K-Pop Hot Girl Summer playlist on Apple Music, also RIP New Jeans). Donghyuck sees his friends - Jisung and Jeno are near the kitchen, Chenle is suspiciously fidgeting with Renjun’s TV remote on the couch. Renjun and Mark are near the balcony, backs facing him. They’re talking to some man but Donghyuck can’t really tell who it is. He squeezes through the crowd to get to them and shoves himself between the two, arms outstretched. The large paper bag Donghyuck’s holding in one of his hands smacks against Mark’s side.
“Donghyuck!” Mark beams, turning to him. “Dude, hey, you made it.”
“Jesus. Why are you so sweaty?” Renjun grimaces and pretends to flinch away in disgust, but Donghyuck can feel Renjun’s fingers give his waist a pleased squeeze in recognition.
“Be grateful I even came,” Donghyuck steps back and does a little shimmy. “I don’t know why you had to choose to move to a place so far away from me. Now it feels like we’re all in a long distance relationship. LDR.”
Renjun’s squeeze turns into a quick pinch and Donghyuck shimmies harder away. “Stop inserting yourself in our relationship. Also what’s that.”
“It’s my housewarming gift.” Donghyuck reaches into the bag and pulls out a Lego Orchid set. Brand new, 608 pieces. He had seen it in the store and thought it would look nice somewhere in the apartment. It’s also a plus that Mark couldn’t kill this plant like how he killed Donghyuck’s first and last attempt at being a plant parent back when they were college roommates. Donghyuck is going through a Lego phase in his life right now. “I’m going through a Lego phase in my life right now.”
Mark lets out a “Yo haha this is sick I haven’t done one in forever” while Renjun crinkles his nose and stares intently at Donghyuck. While Mark has been one of Donghyuck’s best friends since freshman year orientation at NYU, Renjun is Donghyuck’s best friend in the sense that it feels like they were both in the same womb together somehow. Like their souls are connected. Donghyuck genuinely thought Renjun had telepathic abilities at one point. You get it, that kind of vibe.
This is all to say that Renjun knows what Donghyuck’s phases mean. Sophomore year of college, Donghyuck had been dumped by his first serious boyfriend a week before his birthday. That had kick-started his slime-making phase. He was churning out so much slime as a means of stress-relief and self-care that for his birthday gift, he asked his friends to just get him more glue, borax, and food coloring.
Senior year, Donghyuck was so stressed about not landing a job before graduation that he went through a blind box phase. The uncertainties that came with the concept of a blind box temporarily gave him peace with the uncertainties of the job market in New York City. It made sense in his head at that time. Anyways, the song’s changed now to ILLIT’s Magnetic so it’s kind of hard to take Renjun seriously.
Just as Donghyuck is about to hand over the gift to Mark’s grubby hands, he hears a cough followed by a slight laugh. He had been so engrossed with Renjun and Mark that he had totally forgotten that his friends had been talking to someone else before. When Donghyuck looks up, he sees a hot man. A genuine hottie. Not the kind of man you casually see on the streets of the city and definitely not the kind of man that Donghyuck gets in his Hinge likes. No, this man is next level. Not that much taller than Donghyuck but definitely wider, broader. Ash brown hair, smooth skin, bright eyes. Dressed cleanly too, with a light polo shirt and slacks. Donghyuck is aware he’s blatantly gawking because the man breaks out into a smile. Donghyuck tracks the amount of teeth he sees from left to right. The man’s smile gets wider if even possible. In the background, he can faintly hear Wonhee sing about wanting someone like it’s magnetic.
“Uh.” Donghyuck falters. He retracts his hand and clutches the gift box against his chest. Renjun looks unimpressed. Donghyuck is usually much, much more confident with hot men because he’s also a Hot Man himself and by remembering this, he readjusts smoothly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt anything. Hi.”
“Hello.” The man is still widely smiling. Donghyuck is pretty sure he hasn’t even blinked once during this whole exchange.
Mark reads the room and claps the man in the back. “Oh, yeah, let me introduce you two! Jaemin, this is Donghyuck from college, my bro. Donghyuck, this is Jaemin, one of my old coworkers. He was working out of our west coast office but recently relocated here because of his new job. Thought it’d be awesome to have him here tonight since he’s looking to meet new people in the city.”
“Why does he get all that extra context and I just get ‘Donghyuck from college’?” Donghyuck whines to Mark. He turns back to Jaemin and tests out his name on his tongue. “Jaemin, how are you liking the city so far?”
“It’s great,” Jaemin doesn’t break eye contact once. It’s mildly creepy and weirdly endearing. “I’m still getting used to it though. Going through the different neighborhoods and all. Still need to do touristy stuff, haven’t been able to do much of that yet.”
Donghyuck is from New Jersey but that’s basically equivalent to being a New York native, okay? “No better tour guide than a New Yorker himself. Let me know if you ever want someone to show you around. Have you watched Past Lives ? They take a ferry ride around the Statue of Liberty, which is pretty fun. Wait, where do you live?”
Just as Jaemin is about to reply, the music is suddenly cut off by television noise. Mark peers at the screen and immediately grabs Renjun. “Babe. Chenle turned on Love Island USA.”
🥨
After Renjun and Mark hastily run toward the living room (Renjun: “I knew he would do this the moment he left a comment in the invite to reschedule this party so it doesn’t conflict with tonight’s episode”), Donghyuck is noticed by Johnny and gets separated from Jaemin. They don’t actually see much of each other for the rest of the night because the rest of Donghyuck’s night goes like this. He drinks enough with Johnny and Jaehyun to be tipsy, actually watches a bit of Love Island with Chenle after he reasoned with Renjun, opens the housewarming gift and starts building the orchid on Mark and Renjun’s behalf, and after the party is officially over a handful of them go out to Koreatown for late night overpriced karaoke. Jaemin leaves before the episode is over, stating other plans.
Donghyuck doesn’t really think about Jaemin again until the week after. He’s at his desk at his office, doing fun work stuff like building out a pivot table, when he gets a text from an unknown number.
Hi. Is this Donghyuck’s number? This is Jaemin. From the party. I got your number from Mark.
Donghyuck hums.
who? lol
Donghyuck sees Jaemin type and untype, the three dots coming and going. After thirty seconds, he takes pity on him.
im just kidding LOL hi jaemin!!!!!! whats up
Oh, haha. Okay great. I realized we never really got to finish our conversation last week. I saw that the weather is nice this weekend and was interested in the ferry ride you mentioned. Would you like to join me? I would love to get to know you more.
Donghyuck hums louder, smiling into one hand. Very forward. Donghyuck isn’t used to men like this. Being asked out on a proper date like this. Jaemin seems nice, and he must be likeable enough for Mark to stay friends with even when they weren’t coworkers anymore. He’s also handsome and seemed put together. Very Donghyuck’s type.
This is the most exciting thing that has happened to Donghyuck in a while. He’s slightly giddy, replying back to Jaemin with a “ yeah that sounds fun!” , and then bursts out laughing when Jaemin responds back immediately with a Google Calendar invite and a “ Great, it’s a date .”
🥨
Donghyuck is sort of going through it, has been for at least a year, maybe more. His younger sister had said it’s a quarter life crisis. “But I’m not twenty-five,” Donghyuck had replied. “I’m twenty-seven”. And then he googled it and found out the average age for a quarter life crisis is actually twenty-seven. Oh , he had thought. Maybe it is then .
Honestly, Donghyuck just feels stuck. Overall, his life is good but he thinks it can be better. He just doesn’t know how to achieve it. His job is great, well-paying, stable and secure. But every day when he’s at his desk and looking at his inbox, his Slack app, his work calendar, he can’t help but think he’s wasting his youth away for something he’s not even that passionate about. At the same time, Donghyuck doesn’t even know what he’s passionate about. He spends the work week grinding it out in Excel and Zoom calls and when it’s finally the weekend, he blinks once and it’s already Sunday night and the week resets.
Sometimes, Donghyuck feels too big for this city. He wants to get out, explore more past the tri-state area that he’s stayed in his whole life. He feels trapped, like the location is the sole reason he feels like his potential in life is capped. But most of the time, Donghyuck feels too small. He sees people who truly thrive and succeed in a cutthroat and competitive city like his, and wonders why he can’t seem to keep up. Coworkers around his age who already own houses, college classmates who are higher up in the corporate ladder.
Donghyuck has great friends, though. That’s one thing he doesn’t doubt. His social circle is large by nature of staying in one area his whole life, but his inner closest circle of six is tight. Mark, Renjun, and Chenle he met at college, Jeno and Jisung from childhood. But romance - romance has been hard. Dating in this city sucks the soul out of Donghyuck. Donghyuck wants to find and experience love but he’s not even really sure what he wants in a serious relationship. He craves love like the New York City rom-coms he religiously watches on Netflix. He wants his life to be like Set It Up , where he’s Zoey Deutch and he meets his Glen Powell and they both eat pizza together on the floor of his second floor walkup. And then passionately make out. Instead, he meets guys on Hinge who plan lackluster dates at sketchy bars, send weird voice notes, and then ghost him the day after.
Seven months into being twenty-five and dejected from another round of failed dates, he had wondered, Maybe this part of my life right now is the bit where I just don’t date . If his life was a TV show, maybe this was just that one season where the main character was in her independent era, her finding-myself era. After all, Charlotte York didn’t meet Harry until she was thirty-six. That still gave Donghyuck ten years. Or if his life was a movie, maybe this part of his life was still the beginning of a rom-com. His character was still being introduced, Put Your Records On was still playing as the background music, and he just hadn’t met his male lead yet. There’s still two hours left in the movie screen time, there’s still time.
This all relates back to Donghyuck’s current Lego phase, which is his coping mechanism to the lowkey crippling self-doubts that start to eat him up if he lingers on the r/Adulting subreddit for too long. He’s up to 8 completed sets now (8.5 if you include Mark and Renjun’s orchid he half built at the housewarming). He starts set #9 the night before his date with Jaemin because his mind starts working up again. They’ve been consistently texting since Jaemin first reached out. Mainly superficial conversations like what they ate for lunch or how work is. But Jaemin is endearing. He uses proper punctuation and capitalization in his texts. He has read receipts on. He sends live photos to Donghyuck of random things - like his meals, or the sky, or a dog he saw on his commute home. When Donghyuck holds down on the images, he can sometimes hear Jaemin’s laugh right before he took the photo. Or he can hear the music Jaemin happens to be playing throughout his apartment while cooking. All this makes Donghyuck anxious. But it also makes him giddy, hopeful. Again, this is the most exciting thing that has happened to Donghyuck in a long time and he wonders if something is finally shifting in his stagnant life.
🥨
As planned, Donghyuck and Jaemin take the ferry Saturday morning. Jaemin looks devastatingly handsome on the ferry deck, the morning’s cool summer breeze ruffling his unstyled hair. Donghyuck takes pictures of Jaemin with the Statue of Liberty in the background and cheekily requests different poses - pretend you’re holding her, no, a little up, higher, left! okay now do a jump, high school musical style, okay, ready, 1, 2, 3 - which Jaemin surprisingly takes all in stride. Jaemin likes the pictures enough to send a couple right away to his mom. In return, Jaemin calmly takes pictures of Donghyuck, who has his hip cocked up, one hand posed in a peace sign, and lips in a pout. Donghyuck can’t see too well because the sun is making him squint, but he’s pretty sure Jaemin is smiling.
“Photography is a hobby of mine,” Jaemin explains while Donghyuck scrolls through the photos, impressed. Even in such a silly pose, Donghyuck looks good in the photos. “I’ve been doing it since high school.”
“I can tell. You’re really good.” Donghyuck peers at him. “Full-time UX designer and part-time photographer. You didn’t want to pursue photography as a career?”
“What’s the fun in that?” Jaemin stretches his arms up and wriggles his hands in the air, basking in the sun. Donghyuck pretends to not look at his arms. But he definitely does. “I think if I made photography my main job, I would end up not enjoying it as much over time. The way it is now, I can do it whenever I want, wherever I want.”
Donghyuck hums in agreement. He can already imagine the collection of cameras and lenses Jaemin must have in his bougie apartment. The amount of travel memories he must have stored in his drives. He wonders what gets himself this passionate but he draws a blank. As if reading his mind, Jaemin lowers his arms and brushes against Donghyuck. His skin feels slightly sticky from sweat but it's warm. He asks, “What are your hobbies?”
A common thing to ask on a date. Donghyuck has gone through this question hundreds of times but every time, he doesn’t really remember what he previously answered. What are his hobbies? He’s not sure he’s done anything as impressive as Jaemin’s photography. He did have a Tumblr blog dedicated to f(x) and SHINee years ago, and it had reached 52k followers at its peak. That’s kinda impressive.
He rambles, “Thrifting, finding new places to eat. I like playing League of Legends, but I enjoy watching esports more. I like watching movies and reviewing them on Letterboxd.” Donghyuck isn’t sure if these can even be considered hobbies, so he wraps it up anticlimactically. “I like hanging out with my friends.”
Donghyuck is internally cringing. The date was going so well until just now. He’s usually not like this but Jaemin makes him nervous.
“What are your favorite movies?”
He lights up as the conversation shifts into smoother territory. “I love Julie & Julia . Past Lives , of course. Mamma Mia . And La La Land . And lowkey, Crazy Rich Asian s.”
“I’ve never watched Mamma Mia. ”
Donghyuck gapes. “You’re kidding me.”
Jaemin looks amused. “I’m not really into musical movies like that. So I also haven’t watched La La Land yet.”
Donghyuck dramatically covers his mouth with one hand. “You’re kidding….”
Laughing, Jaemin gestures around him. “But I did my homework and watched Past Lives earlier this week just for today.” He stands up and reaches out his hand for Donghyuck to take as the ferry reaches the dock. A sudden lurch in the boat causes Donghyuck to topple ungracefully into Jaemin’s chest. Jaemin’s arms catch him around his waist. When Donghyuck looks up at him, the sun is blinding and Jaemin’s expression is soft before he gives a slightly sleazy wink and flirts, “In-yeon, you know? Eight thousand layers of in-yeon over eight thousand lifetimes.”
Something loosens in Donghyuck’s chest at that, and he bursts out laughing. His self-induced awkwardness from earlier is forgotten as Jaemin pours out lines after lines of more movie quotes in an attempt to charm him. Jaemin keeps one arm around him the rest of the day. In-yeon , Donghyuck wonders.
The following week, Jaemin is out on a work trip in Seattle but they text everyday. Donghyuck sends Jaemin an average of six Tik Toks a day and laughs every time Jaemin replies with “I don’t understand”. Jaemin sends Donghyuck photos of the hot pot he has for dinner with his co-workers (“You would like it here”). They FaceTime when they’re both free - Jaemin does his skincare routine in the tiny hotel bathroom before going to bed and Donghyuck loads up another League of Legends game. And as the lobby loads and Donghyuck hears Jaemin hum along to the game music he's become more familiar with, he comes to the realization that it’s just so easy with Jaemin.
And the weekend after, Donghyuck takes Jaemin to a baseball game at the Yankee stadium. They buy overpriced hats and even more overpriced hot dogs. Donghyuck finds out Jaemin likes to raw-dog a hotdog with zero condiments and he still likes him regardless. It’s fun and when the kiss cam turns on, Donghyuck secretly hopes that the camera will find them while he chants “Kiss, kiss, kiss” with the audience. The kiss cam never finds them but it doesn’t matter because later that night when Jaemin drops him off at the front entrance of his apartment, he leans in and gives Donghyuck a kiss so romantic and toe-circling that his knees buckle. Fuck the kiss cam, no one deserved to see their makeout session for free anyways.
Later that night, they find themselves on the floor in Donghyuck’s living room, squeezed between the coffee table and couch. Set It Up is playing on the TV and Lego set #9 (the Wicked Welcome to Emerald City set because Donghyuck splurged a little) is scattered across the table. They have a smooth system set up - Donghyuck builds the individual parts and passes it over to Jaemin to assemble into the larger, main pieces. Their legs are outstretched, toes touching. The movie has only just started playing and the main characters are being introduced. And when Donghyuck sees Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell meet for the first time on the screen (and Jaemin’s laughter as he watches as intently as he can while building out Lego Emerald City), he knows.