Work Text:
Jisung knew that he’d never be where he was today if he hadn’t gotten involved in the industry so young. He got practice being on camera, training with guys who later became his group mates and family, all before he became a teenager. Stories of guys who joined entertainment companies later at the peak of puberty circulated training groups frequently: the paranoid competitive environment breeding fights upon arguments mixed with defiant rebellion. Jisung never really had to experience that for himself. Once he was old enough to feel consumed by the irritability characteristic of adolescence, he'd already debuted. All this time, he'd really been fighting his own fears, not the system or his friends.
But this life also meant there was so much he missed out on. Getting close with a group of classmates who would understand him for life. Going to college. Fucking dates. He didn’t know what a normal childhood was like. To a degree, neither did anyone in his group, but while the others had tested the flexibility of the rules regularly, Jisung hated the mere thought of getting caught doing something wrong.
The first time Donghyuck came over to the dorm and detailed how the hyungs snuck out to a club, and worse, Donghyuck convinced them that he could join and be cool about it (coming straight to the Dream dorm was maybe not so cool in the long run), Jisung felt at least two different organs drop into his stomach. On one hand, he was impressed— daebak , he remembered whispering behind his hand—but mostly, he was terrified on their behalf.
Now, at twenty-two, Jisung could legally drink both at home and abroad. He lived with just one roommate instead of four (or when he was really young, and the older trainees acted akin to babysitters, six). More like artists than debuted robots, the team wrote lyrics and produced songs, all culminating in Jisung feeling more confident in his work life than perhaps ever before.
His personal life? Well, what did that even really constitute, when one had been working all his knowable life?
It all came to a head while filming a stupid TikTok.
The recent trend was for groups to do this-or-that-style balance games, where everyone walked in a line toward the camera and then turned either to the left or right to mark their choice.
Jisung didn’t have to think too hard about the food, drink, and concept questions. However, he suddenly wished TikTok was even shorter-form content once the questions turned toward a fanservice favorite: skinship.
“Holding hands or a kiss on the cheek?” the cue card from the staff read. And because the universe hated him, Jisung was only second in line.
In front of him, Jaemin unsurprisingly turned towards the kiss. Faced with all of their staff and the watchful eye of the camera, Jisung froze. He’d never…how could he know…
Always perceptive, Chenle who knew there would be music playing over the final video, yelled from the back, “you hate when the members kiss you, go left!”
And he was right, and Jisung did turn towards the left, but his cheeks stung with embarrassment twice over: knowing he didn’t have any experience to go off of and knowing even his own best friend could only think of his interactions with hyungs who wanted to dote on the maknae.
In contrast, when Jeno turned toward hand holding, they all knew it was because he wasn’t huge into PDA, even though he hung out with his girlfriend in “public” only around NCT members and close staff. They held hands under the coffee table while they ate dinner at his and Renjun’s dorm, but Jisung never once saw much of anything else.
That night, he couldn’t sleep. After forty-five minutes of tossing and turning, Jisung made his way out to the kitchen, in hopes that a glass of water would help to put him out of his anxious misery.
“Hey, you alright?”
Jisung about jumped out of his skin. He spilled the rest of his glass down his nightshirt, while Renjun simply busted out laughing.
“Jesus, hyung,” he scolded, holding his free hand to his heart. “Why are you out here?”
Renjun moved from the couch to the place where Jisung stood in a puddle of cold water. “I had coffee too late in the day today. Can’t sleep.”
A saint, Renjun grabbed a dish towel and helped to clean up the mess he accidentally caused.
“And you?” he asked, looking up at Jisung. “What are you doing up?”
“Um, me, too. Ha ha. Too much caffeine.”
“You didn’t have any coffee today,” Renjun noted as he tossed the towel over the handle on the oven to dry. Pulling himself up onto the island, he eyed Jisung as close to evenly as they ever got. At this angle, Jisung thought the curve of Renjun’s nose seemed different. Rounder. His gaze felt more piercing, too.
“You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”
While Jisung didn’t ever have to endure the pain of viewing the fellow trainees as enemies, he also never really figured out how to reach the emotional vulnerability that appeared so natural to someone like Renjun. He never wanted to be the burden, when every single person in the company felt the obligation to pay for his meals, ruffle his hair, guide him into adulthood.
And then with someone like Donghyuck, they bickered so much like siblings Jisung would have to be waterboarded into admitting what he was about to admit. Perhaps because Renjun treated Chenle more like a little brother than he ever treated Jisung, it was slightly easier to pour his guts out when they had these late night talks.
“Okay, if I tell you this, I’m swearing you to secrecy, got it?”
Renjun mimed as if he was zipping up his lips and throwing away the key. Jisung took a deep breath and confessed:
“Today, when we were filming, it made me realize that there’s so much stuff I don’t have an opinion on because I’ve never had the chance to, I don’t know, do stuff and figure it out.”
“What kind of stuff?” Renjun asked gently.
Jisung really didn’t want to say it out loud. He replied vaguely, “so many things, hyung. We got to be kids but never really teenagers.”
Renjun let that soak in for a moment, before asking, “Do you remember that story about Jungwoo and I sneaking away to Busan when we were trainees?”
Jisung nodded.
“I, um, I kissed him that night.”
When Jisung only stared, open-mouthed and silent, Renjun went on. “I felt so frustrated and cooped up that I just wanted to do something crazy and sneaking out wasn’t even enough. I really think I lost my mind then.”
“What did—how did Jungwoo hyung react?”
“He smiled at me and patted me on the head.” Renjun sounded sad, kind of. “Treated me like a total kid who had a silly crush. We didn’t talk about it again after that.”
“Wow…I had no idea.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t think he did either.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
Renjun shrugged. “Just wanted you to know that even if it’s not ideal, or in my case like completely humiliating and borderline something I regret, it’s okay to still live your life, in these circumstances. If you wait until you feel secure enough in your career or whatever, I think you might always wonder ‘what-if.’”
“That’s helpful, hyung, thank you.”
Renjun nodded and then reached out his arms. “Here, help me down.”
Knowing full well Renjun was not incapable of doing so himself, he wrapped his arms around Renjun’s middle and hoisted him down to the ground. Only, Renjun didn’t let go of where his hands were clasped behind Jisung’s neck even when his bare feet met the tile of the kitchen floor.
He hugged Jisung, there in the chill of the night.
Jisung realized then that Renjun had a habit of embracing Jisung from behind, usually when he found him to be cute. So rarely had he ever felt Renjun’s breath against his neck.
When he pulled back, Jisung felt goosebumps break out across his chest.
“So how about hugging?” Renjun asked. “Gotta start somewhere. Are you a hugger, Park Jisung?”
“Um, yeah, hugging is good,” he replied, so deeply embarrassed.
Jisung hurried off to bed, then, sleep overtaking him while a smile ghosted his face.
~ ~ ~
Work was busy enough for Jisung to get sufficiently distracted over the following week. They’d get home in time to sleep for a maximum of four hours before having to get up and do it all over again. Renjun leaned his head on Jaemin’s shoulder on breaks between takes, while Jisung played stupid arcade games with Mark and Chenle. And that was normal for them all.
Things shifted again, though, once their schedule slowed down enough for Jisung and Renjun to both find themselves home in the evening, bored. Jisung was used to entertaining himself, usually by gaming with Jeno or studying for his Japanese class, but Renjun, who Jisung suspected was an E if he’d ever take the stupid test, asked him to hang out and start the new season of that reality dating show he liked.
“What about Chenle?” Jisung wanted to know. “Isn’t he the one who watches it, too?”
“He and I don’t do stuff together like that,” Renjun dismissed. Jisung didn’t really know what that meant. Maybe their dynamic was different, since Chenle never lived with them in the dorms, and no one was as close to Chenle as Jisung was.
“Want to order takeout?”
“Yes, duh.”
So they ate salty stir fry around the coffee table, gossiping about the contestants and who looked the most suspicious of having an ex-partner amongst the cast. When the food was finished, they moved up to the couch that Jisung bought for Renjun for his birthday last year.
In the middle of episode two, two surprises hit Jisung at once: Renjun was entangling their fingers, and he’d been too engrossed in the stupid dating show to even notice it was happening.
His heart rate seemed to triple, and Jisung’s first concern was that Renjun would be able to feel sweat on his palm. The thought was mortifying, but he didn’t want to pull his arm away in order to wipe his hand on his sweatpants. He knew for certain that he’d never be as brave as Renjun had just been to re-initiate the contact.
In the moments when he tried desperately to decide if he should say something or just sit there as if nothing had happened, Renjun probably felt his pulse through his fingers.
“This okay?” he checked in, whispering as if their living room wasn’t empty.
Jisung nodded once, a tiny jerk of his head, without looking Renjun in the eye. A lot of things caused Jisung immense embarrassment in his life, so much so that Doyoung told him once that no one would judge him for seeing a therapist for the social anxiety Jisung didn’t even know he had, and he could now add hand holding to the list. Maybe close to the top.
Jisung didn’t hear not a single part of the show for the remaining twenty minutes of the episode. He kept his eyes ahead, but his attention remained on Renjun at his side. Seemingly relaxed, Renjun laughed a few times, and when the episode ended on a cliffhanger, he gasped, squeezing Jisung’s hand.
“Ah,” Jisung let out, surprised at how much grip Renjun’s skinny fingers managed.
“Sorry,” Renjun breathed. He took his hand away from Jisung and used it to cover his mouth. “If he picks someone else for that date, oh my god. Please tell me you’re rooting for them to get back together.”
Renjun looked over, expectant.
“Uh, yeah, totally,” Jisung replied lamely. He brushed his hair out of his face, and tried chasing away the thought that he now had to use his hands after knowing what they felt like resting against someone else’s, as if Jisung didn’t know the shape of his own knuckles before they fit nestled in between Renjun’s knuckles.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Renjun wanted to know. With the tv quiet, Jisung heard distinctly the beating of his heart. Thump, thump, thump. Was he? Okay? “I hope I didn’t go too far…”
“No, no,” Jisung insisted. “I just feel kind of stupid to feel like this for the first time, now.”
“What does it feel like?” Renjun reached for Jisung’s hand once more, and this time Jisung could look and not only feel. Like an out of body experience, he couldn’t rationalize that this was his arm, his palm, his nails.
“New,” was the only way he could describe it. “Didn’t know it could be like this.”
Renjun smiled down at their hands. He used his thumb to smooth over the side of Jisung’s thumb. Thump, thump, thump.
“And this is just us. When it’s with someone you really like, it feels even nicer. Just fingers—“ Renjun pulled his hand back enough to run his fingertips over Jisung’s palm and bare wrist. “—not like we’re naked or something, but it can weirdly be so intimate.”
“Yeah,” Jisung squeaked out. “W-who is it, that you’ve done this with, that you really liked?”
Laughing in a sad kind of way, Renjun moved so his feet were flat on the couch cushion. He hugged his knees close to his chest. “Do you remember a few years ago, a new manager started working with WayV?”
Jisung shook his head.
“He was…tall,” Renjun started. “And it seemed like everytime I went out with Yangyang, he was the one who came with us. I thought he was just nice to me, but Yangyang kept telling me he was flirting.”
Unconsciously, Jisung squeezed his hands into fists. “That’s totally inappropriate, hyung.”
“He wasn’t a weirdo or anything. I was the one who crossed the line,” he explained. “We were drinking, and when he walked me out of the dorm, we were in the elevator, and I don’t know, now that I’m comparing it to the Jungwoo thing, I think I might be a freak…I just…kissed him?”
Jisung’s eyes could have fallen out of his head.
“I know, it was stupid. He got me home and didn’t let it go any further than that. He asked if we could meet up a few days later. That’s when he held my hand, probably to make me feel better. We were holding hands when he told me he quit the company.”
“What the—how did I not know about any of this?”
“I didn’t tell anybody except Yangyang,” Renjun replied. He sounded exhausted. “I didn’t want it to get back to any of our managers. Was scared they’d think I’d come onto them or something.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jisung decided. Before he had the time to overthink it, Jisung took Renjun’s hand once more. He wasn’t expecting to have his first three hand holding experiences all in one evening. “I’m sorry you went through all of that alone. With Jungwoo hyung, too.”
“Thank you, Jisungie.”
With his cheek resting against his knee, Renjun’s face looked soft and cute. Even though the “pure boy” image was always manufactured, Jisung had always thought of Renjun as his cutest hyung, who talked prettily and nagged them all, even Mark. He didn’t know, couldn’t have known, how the pain of growing up affected him, too.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Renjun said around a yawn. “You’ve heard all of it. That’s the extent of my experiences.”
“Really?”
“Don’t look so shocked, it makes me feel bad.”
Jisung was the one to squeeze his hand this time. An apology. “No, I’m not judging, obviously. I just figured…with how many people you hang out with, there might have been dating happening in the middle of it.”
Shaking one’s head against one’s knee, Jisung then learned, was quite amusing. Squishy.
“All my friends are in the industry. We’re all too terrified of being outed.”
Jisung hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it, but he now wondered in how many other groups were members holding this kind of secret. Knowing your group mate was dating was par for the course. Knowing they were gay, however. Jisung was so young when Renjun told them, he didn’t totally understand the gravity of his courage. Now, Jisung remained in awe of Renjun: his ways of thinking and living and loving.
He felt overwhelmed just then, with the affection he had for his friend. Jisung pulled their hands, still entangled, up to his lips. He pressed against the back of Renjun’s hand softly, lingered for a moment more upon hearing Renjun’s sharp gasp.
“That’s new,” Renjun confirmed, sitting up straight, and Jisung hoped he’d never forget the look on his face.
He wanted to say something cool, but Renjun’s brain was working three times faster than his. Before Jisung knew it, he was feeling Renjun’s lips against his knuckles. His stomach fluttered so unexpectedly, Jisung almost felt sick.
He’d never felt such an honest exchange of affection. There were no cameras, no jokes. Just Huang Renjun wanting him to feel as good as Jisung just made him feel.
Jisung was starting to understand why all of human history was obsessed with romance and sex. Not pleasure, or desire. But giving, showing, caring.
Overwhelmed, Jisung pulled Renjun into a hug. A wordless thank you. He thought he heard Renjun sniff against the collar of his shirt, but before he could ask if he’d done something wrong, Renjun was turning from him.
“I’m, um, I’m going to go to bed.”
Jisung let him. Didn’t know what else to do. After turning off the tv and putting away the leftovers, he dragged himself down the hallway, feeling as if he was to awake a different person than he knew of today.
~ ~ ~
The thing about Jisung was that once he set his mind to something, he was incapable of not giving one hundred percent effort. And what he couldn’t stop thinking about was this: each time Renjun had kissed someone, Renjun was the one to have initiated it, and the result was heartbreaking. Therefore, ergo, as you can SEE, it was now Jisung’s duty to kiss Renjun’s face off. On purpose. Expeditiously.
While he was used to getting fixated on dance practice, beating Jeno in a stupid video game, getting Chenle to take idol life seriously and stop embarrassing himself on camera daily, Jisung was currently in uncharted territory.
Twice now, he’d fumbled an opportunity. The first happened during a fitting. Renjun asked for his help taking off a necklace, and Jisung, the idiot, couldn’t bring himself to press his lips to the back of his neck, regardless of how badly he wanted to. During the second, Renjun brought pocky home and Jisung was so, so close to starting a spontaneous pocky game in their kitchen. He chickened out on both accounts.
He was thinking too much. He wished kissing was like dancing: that it could come naturally to him. That he could feel good at it. But, even that had taken a decade of hard work at this point. Jisung couldn’t really expect to become an expert at skinship overnight.
So he waited for his courage to build up. He imagined himself a sim, with a skill bar over his head. Each time he held Renjun’s hand in the company car on the way home or Renjun hugged him goodnight before they left the living room for their separate rooms, the bar filled up just a tiny bit more.
In a few weeks’ time, he was feeling good. More confident. Because both of Renjun’s kissing misadventures happened almost spontaneously, or impulsively, Jisung thought it might be a smart idea to plan a proper date. He wanted Renjun to feel wined and dined. In their profession, that wasn’t exactly possible.
Jisung therefore enlisted Donghyuck's help.
"You know how Renjun hyung is always giving us such thoughtful gifts?" he'd framed it. "I want to pay him back."
"By poisoning him?" Donghyuck snarkily replied.
"That's why I'm asking you to come over!" Jisung rubbed at his temples. Asked the universe to give him Donghyuck-specific patience tonight.
Fortunately, they did end up surviving the ordeal unscathed. Donghyuck coached him through making a DIY, at-home hotpot recipe. Getting Renjun’s favorite sauce combo together wasn’t that hard. Donghyuck mostly helped by chopping all the vegetables and putting the slices of meat onto skewers they could add to the large pot they’d set up on an electric burner in the middle of the coffee table. Donghyuck also brought over the extension cord when Jisung forgot to buy one during his marathon shopping trip.
“How come you’ve never offered to make this for me?” Donghyuck whined when the entire dorm smelled of spicy broth. “You’re not even letting me stay for dinner.”
“Look,” Jisung urged, grabbing Donghyuck’s shoulders. “Tonight is important. Please just trust me. Thank you for your help, hyung. I love you.”
Donghyuck couldn’t let Jisung’s affection go. He pulled him into an exaggerated bear hug and told him in his cutesiest voice, three times over, how much he loved his favorite maknae. Jisung was able to push him out the door with some effort, but Renjun came home so soon after Donghyuck left that Jisung’s first thought upon hearing the door knob turn was that they must have passed each other coming up the stairs. His stomach turned with a twinge of disappointment. Not that it was fair to pretend that he’d done all the work himself, but he kind of hoped Renjun would associate the surprise with him and him alone, at least at first.
Renjun’s face implied, however, he had no idea what he was walking into. He’d been out at the gym, an activity Jisung knew Renjun hated, for the most part. But no one would have known he was just subjected to the horrors of exercise when Renjun looked that elated at the mere smell of hotpot.
“Park Jisung, what did you do ?” he demanded.
Jisung found it hard to answer when he was smiling this big.
“It’s not going to be as good as Haidilao,” he warned first and foremost.
Instead of inspecting the food, as Jisung expected, Renjun came straight to where Jisung stood in the kitchen. He put his hands on Jisung’s shoulders.
“Who cares, this is incredible.”
He pushed down on Jisung’s shoulders a bit, using the leverage to lift up on his toes, and he kissed Jisung sweetly on the cheek.
Jisung could feel all of his blood rush to his ears. That was—he was supposed to—what just happened?
“Thank you,” Renjun whispered close to Jisung’s ear. He pulled him into a hug that couldn’t have felt more different from the embrace he’d just endured from Donghyuck. Renjun was warm, and he laughed sweetly into Jisung’s shoulder.
“What’s so funny?” Jisung thought to ask.
Renjun leaned back, arms slung loosely behind Jisung’s neck.
“Happy.”
“Yeah?”
Renjun nodded. Bit his lip. And Jisung kissed him.
It wasn’t the plan. They were supposed to eat. Jisung wanted to ask Renjun to slow dance with him in the living room.
But here they were. Making out for the first time. Exploring together with lips and tongues and hands for so long that the broth reduced by half, by the time they finally sat down to eat. The vegetables were wilted, and Jisung worriedly looked up if the meat could have spoiled in the time he spent lost in the taste of Renjun’s mouth.
So yeah, maybe Renjun was still a little impulsive, but maybe Jisung was too, now that he was twenty-two. And maybe he’d decided, so full from hotpot that he could burst, that it was okay to have waited this long to know what it could feel like to love and be loved. If that meant Renjun was his first, and Jisung could make Renjun this happy, Jisung no longer cared.
~ ~ ~