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Chenle is in the middle of dinner when the phone rings. He pauses, but he pays it no mind and turns the radio up a little bit louder to drown out the noise. Eventually the phone stops, and Chenle returns to swaying his hips in time with Beyonce singing about a love lost. Or something, maybe. He's still getting a grip on English, but he's trying and that's what matters.
The phone rings again. It cuts off half way through, then restarts. The sound is annoying enough for Chenle to grumble and turn down the heat on his egg fried rice—a struggle meal if he ever knew one—and picks up his phone. He flips it open to see that the caller ID reads Jaemin.
"What?" Chenle demands the very second he presses answer. He cradles the phone between his shoulder and ear and returns back to making dinner. Dinner for two actually—Renjun's supposed to come over for their bimonthly movie dinner date. It started when Chenle had admitted he had yet to see any of the Lord of the Rings films, and spiraled from there. They were on their 2nd rewatch of The Matrix because they both found Keeanu Reeves a little too hot. And he is. Though, Renjun had said something about a movie with Julia Roberts and fashion and Chenle doubted he had a choice even if he thought that fashion was boring. Renjun would have his head. "I'm in the middle of dinner, why are you calling?"
"I need help," Jaemin says lightly, his tone way too airy for someone who blew up Chenle's phone to get him to answer. "Jeno left me to go on a date and now I'm all alone."
This is not Chenle's problem. He will bother Jeno about this aforementioned date the next time he sees him, because why did he not know? But whatever problems Jaemin has are none of his concern. "Not my problem. What is it you say? Talk to the hand?"
Jaemin's laughter could cure cancer, but instead Chenle gets to hear it. Maybe it cures his cancer, if he had any. Chenle is too young to have any, so he really hopes he doesn't. "Sure, but still—you gotta help me. It's totally an emergency." He sounds more serious now, which is weird, because Chenle has only ever seen Jaemin get serious about his studies, or when Jeno takes apart their computer again when Jaemin has a midnight deadline. Something, something computer majors. Jeno will go far, but only if Jaemin doesn't kill him first.
Chenle turns off the stove and doesn't wait before he shoves a spoonful of fried rice into his mouth. Passable, but nothing he could have made back at home in Shanghai. Fucking Americans and their hatred of MSG. "Tell Renjun the movie is moved to yours," Chenle says around another bite of food. It comes out garbled, but he doesn't really care. Jaemin can figure it out. "I don't want him to kill me."
Again, Jaemin's laugh is warm and digitized over the line. Chenle feels his cheeks go red, and he knows it's not from the steam coming off his rice. "Are you scared of Renjun, Lele?"
What the fuck? "What the fuck," Chenle grumbles. He packages up the rice. "Are you not?" He thought most people were afraid of Renjun.
"No." There's a beat of silence. "So are you coming?" Another beat. "Lele, please~"
"Shut up, I said you're calling Renjun." Chenle jingles his keys extra loud and close to the speaker just to prove he's coming. "I'll be there in fifteen. Bye." He doesn't give Jaemin an opening to reply before he snaps his phone shut.
Of all the things Chenle hates about America, having a crush has to be number one.
Eighteen minutes, a traffic jam, and a too long red light later, Chenle is standing on Jaemin's doorstep. He rings the bell once.
Nothing.
He rings it a second time.
Again. Nothing.
Chenle looks at the unit number, though he's been at Jaemin and Jeno's enough times to know. He's correct. This is correct.
There are two choices. Knock, or call. Well, there are actually three choices—
"Lele, please!" Jaemin says the second he yanks the door open. Chenle grins at him and presses the doorbell five more times in quick succession just to be an asshole. "I'm here!"
"Finally." Chenle looks at him, and pauses. "Your hair…is…"
" I know," Jaemin sighs and pulls Chenle inside. Chenle barely gets a chance to put the rice on the counter before Jaemin's fingers wrap back around his wrist and tug him into the bathroom. "Jeno was supposed to help me, but—"
Chenle understands. "Give it like, two business days and Donghyuck will have a brand new album on Facebook about everything they did."
Jaemin snorts but he settles into the chair in the too-cramped bathroom. Chenle takes the time to look around and finds the hair dye already mixed, and a CD player precariously perched on the closed toilet lid. The hair color that Jaemin is to be is nowhere in sight, and when Chenle peeks at the trashcan, there's nothing except a few suspicious wads of toilet paper and an empty bag of Doritos. "So what do you want from me?" Chenle asks, though he knows immediately it's a stupid question.
"To dye my hair?" Jaemin turns to look at Chenle over his shoulder and snorts. "Dye? Color? If you give me a moment I can get the Chinese—"
Chenle slams his hands on Jaemin's shoulders and forces him back into the seat. Jaemin falls back down with a soft oof. Chenle lets his hands linger, soaking in the subtle heat of Jaemin's summer skin. He breathes. He really tries not to touch Jaemin, really he would love to be as far away from Jaemin as possible on most days, but he has to take a moment to savor the muscle under his palms. Chenle doesn't know when another moment like this will arise. Not without raising suspicion. Not when a single look from Jaemin can have Chenle's cheeks bright pink.
"I know what dye means," Chenle grumbles. He looks over at the gloves on the countertop and wonders why the hell Jeno would abandon Jaemin. Could they not have scheduled a better time for this? "Why me?"
To this, Jaemin shrugs. "I trust you. I know you wouldn't make it patchy." Jaemin pats Chenle's hand. "Too meticulous, our hardworking Lele."
"Mkay." Chenle pulls his hands away and prays that whatever face he's making is not the face he thinks he's making. He stares at the gloves and wishes they would just. Talk back to him, or something. He does not want to be here! Or rather he does not want to be here alone, where the full force of Jaemin's oddness wars with Chenle's near overflowing desire to just kiss him and ruin everything Chenle's worked so hard at since starting university last year. He does not need to kiss boys who are his friends. He did that! It exploded in his face. He does not want to do it a second time. Chenle has learned his lesson! "So gloves, hair dye, hair cap…then wait?"
"Yeah get started whenever, 's not like my hair's long—oh wait," Jaemin, in a horrible show of dexterity, presses the play button on the CD player with his big toe. NSYNC's Bye Bye Bye blasts in the small space, but Jaemin only makes himself comfortable in the chair. When Chenle takes too long to move, he meets his stare in the mirror. "We aren't getting younger, dude?"
That spurs Chenle into action. Right. Gloves. Hair dye.
Gloves first.
Chenle puts them on and winces a bit when the rubber snaps against his skin. Then, he picks up the brush, dips it into the hair dye, and hovers it over the top of Jaemin's head. "Um—"
"Back's easier," Jaemin says, his smile evident in his voice even though Chenle is simply staring at pale yellow hair and nothing else. He can see the dark pores at Jaemin's scalp, the barely there beginnings of new growth.
Chenle starts at the back. The first few minutes suck, but then NSYNC bleeds into Britney Spears, and Chenle finds himself singing along with Jaemin and Britney, while Chenle carefully applies hair dye to Jaemin's hair. It gets easier, after a while. Jaemin was right, Chenle does enjoy things others might find methodical. Easier still when Jaemin's there to harmonize with him through Kelly Clarkson, and some rap song that Chenle only knows the vocals to. Jeno sings it a lot during their karaoke, but Chenle can't keep up with that speed of English. He's not sure he ever will, but he also did not think he would get into his program in the American West Coast, but here he is.
Renjun arrives just as Chenle hits the halfway point, and he gives appropriate oohs and ahhs where appropriate. He kisses Chenle's cheek simply because Chenle cannot dodge him without risking smearing dye all over the door or counter or Jaemin's skin. Annoying.
"Annoying," Chenle shouts after Renjun in Mandarin, long after Renjun has scurried from the bathroom. He turns back to Jaemin in the mirror and realizes his cheeks are pink, and there's a smeared print of red gloss where Renjun's lips laid. "Oh my god." he groans.
Jaemin is already smiling, though, and he looks so damn pretty even with half his hair a pale piss yellow and the other hair slowly turning orange under Chenle's hands. "You're so cute," Jaemin says.
Chenle smacks the top of his head with the applicator brush, and tries to ignore the cackle Jaemin lets out in response. "Shut up. Let's finish before Renjun eats all my food."
They do finish, and join Renjun in the living room as he pops in a DVD into the player. Jaemin only joins them long enough for his dye to set, and then he vanishes into the bathroom with a cheeky grin. It looked orange as Chenle applied it earlier, but without a proper hair cap, they had used a plastic grocery bag and Chenle cannot see through it. He asked Jaemin, but Jaemin only smiled. And said nothing. Chenle doesn't know why he even bothered.
"So," Renjun says as Julia Roberts enters some fancy clothing store looking like—well. Like someone who simply could not be in a fancy clothing store. Chenle says at much. "Boutique, Lele. Don't change the subject! Jaemin?"
"Jaemin." Chenle does not lose focus on the movie. Or pretends he doesn't. "He called me."
"And you came?"
A shrug. "He said emergency."
From the bathroom, Jaemin hits a near impossible pitch as he sings along to a song Chenle finally doesn't know. The note breaks three seconds in and even from the living room, Chenle can hear the way Jaemin giggles to himself. It's so cute. It's so fucking cute.
There must be something on his face because when Chenle looks back at Renjun, Renjun has a scowl on his face. "Hopeless," Renjun scolds. His face softens into something less severe. "It's kinda cute though."
Cute is not quite the word Chenle would use on himself, but whatever Renjun thinks, Chenle isn't in the mood to argue. Not when Julia Roberts is yelling at some clothing store—boutique—worker about class systems and the shower just cut off.
Jaemin doesn't call for him immediately. That would be weird. But he does call for Chenle, and Chenle goes and—
It reminds him of only hours before when he says, "Your hair—"
But this time, Jaemin grins instead of sighs, and this time Jaemin pulls him into the bathroom instead of through the front door, and this time he lets Chenle touch the damp strands of—
"Pink, yeah," Jaemin smiles at Chenle through the mirror. Chenle rubs a few strands together and his fingers come back wet and a little pink. Jaemin must notice, or Chenle's face is doing something stupid, because Jaemin chuckles. It draws Chenle's attention back to his gaze in the mirror, where Jaemin has his own pink fingers on display. "Careful, it's still bleeding."
Not blood. Clearly. Chenle looks from Jaemin's pink hair to his own dark brown, and wonders. "Can I do that too?"
Jaemin wraps him in a tight hug and squeezes him so much that Chenle yelps and smacks his shoulder. It does nothing but remind Chenle that Jaemin has so much muscle and is so strong and can hold and pick Chenle up so easily and—wow. Jaemin really is kind of perfect. "If you want to do piano concerts with bright pink hair," Jaemin says as he shakes Chenle, his voiced pitched in that annoying tone that Chenle feels his body react to without ever realizing he was being trained to do so. "Be my guest."
Now that Chenle thinks about it, he does not think his professors—any of them—would be too sold on the idea of Chenle with any color hair except his own. It doesn't stop him from wanting, but Chenle is so good at wanting. He's the best at wanting, if anyone were to ask him. He's even better at denying himself what he wants.
Example one: Jaemin.
"Never mind," Chenle sighs. He smacks Jaemin's shoulder one more time and allows himself the moment to run his fingers over shirt-hidden muscle definition. "You look good though."
Finally, Jaemin releases him, his grip gentle on Chenle's biceps when he puts an amount of distance that feels just a little too far away and somehow way too close at the same time. "Well, duh! You helped! You did so well!" Jaemin's grin is so bright, so infectious, and Chenle feels his fingertips go cold, then numb.
He gets two seconds of thought, of maybe I shouldn't, before desire wins over discipline. Chenle is only human, and maybe he isn't the best at denying himself what he wants. It's been months, since he looked at Jaemin and felt want, and maybe for Chenle's mind, that is months too many.
The kiss lasts seconds, if that. It's barely a brush of Chenle's lips over the corner of Jaemin's mouth. If it were not for the fact that they were several inches apart, if it weren't for the fact that Chenle had to lean in to put his lips against Jaemin's skin, then maybe Chenle could argue it was an accident.
But he knows. It was not an accident. And judging by the look at Jaemin's face, his soft smile caught in the corners of his lips, his stare warm despite the ice that tries to crawl up Chenle's arms, Jaemin also knows it was not an accident.
"Cutie," Jaemin starts to say.
Chenle shakes his head and takes one slow breath in. "Don't—fuck I—" English fails him somewhere between his next inhale and exhale, so Chenle shuts his mouth and stares. Anything he says will be a lie, and anything he wants to say is embarrassing. Chenle does not like to be embarrassed. It happens rarely enough he's not accustom to it.
Jaemin it seems, is less accustom to it. It's him who leans forward this time, his grip maneuvering them around the bathroom until Chenle feels the bite of the countertop in his lower back. Jaemin leans forward until their lips are all but brushing against each other. Yet Jaemin keeps his gaze steady. "Okay?" he asks, a whisper just for the two of them.
And what is Chenle going to do? Say no? Absolutely not. "Yeah," Chenle says around an inhale.
And then Jaemin is kissing him. Slow. Gentle. His lips are warm, and he smells like soap and conditioner and a little bit of that stink of hair dye that lingers at his hairline. Chenle kisses him back, clumsy since the last kiss he shared was a drunken one with Yizhou two nights before Chenle hopped on a plane to America. He still talks to her, she's his best friend, but still. It's been a year and some months and Chenle cannot figure out—
But it doesn't matter, nothing but Jaemin's lips on his matter. And when he drags his hand from Chenle's arm to cup the side of Chenle's face to tilt his head to deepen the kiss and lick into his mouth, Chenle debates if his last thoughts are going to be pink and Jaemin and maybe also shit Renjun is in the other room.
Jaemin taste like coffee and the bit of fried rice he stole from Chenle's bowl after claiming he wasn't all that hungry and would eat later. It's a horrible combination, but Chenle doesn't care because his tongue is in Jaemin's mouth. What a concept. He did not wake up this morning and expect that not even twelve hours later he would be pressed against the bathroom sink while Jaemin attempted to map the crevices on the roof of Chenle's mouth, and did not expect that Jaemin's other hand would slide from Chenle's arm down to his waist, to his stomach, under his—oh.
"Ah," Chenle gasps at the cold touch of fingers against his abdomen, then whines when Jaemin starts to laugh in his face. "Cold."
Jaemin kisses him again, a quick peck. Just once, just enough to have Chenle ache for more. "Cute," Jaemin says. He kisses Chenle again, a little longer, a little wetter. "You're so fucking cute." Another kiss, deeper this time. Chenle finds his hand move on their own until he has one hand tangled in Jaemin's wet hair and the other looped over his shoulder.
When they part this time, saliva connects them and Chenle chases it with his tongue. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Renjun shouts from the living room. "Kiss later—movie night now."
Jaemin smiles against Chenle's cheek, and then kisses his forehead. "Later, baby," he says as Chenle whines and tries to pull him closer.
Fuck Renjun, fuck the movies,fuck Julia Roberts and that sexy older man that Chenle does not think about because that would be opening a box he does not want to do right now. But Jaemin is smiling at him, and Renjun is shouting now in Mandarin, and Chenle should probably answer him before Renjun gets up and finds them in the bathroom like this and really makes fun of them.
"Later," Chenle agrees. It's a promise.
He can wait.
Maybe.