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lonely hearts club; zhong chenle

(12,685) words - large

summary ➣ Y/N follows this unknown impulse to the gym to find his school's star basketball player, Zhong Chenle, all by himself. These two borderline strangers spend a little more time together than they intended to, and find out that they're a little less alone than they were used to thinking.

genre ➣ angst ( + fluff )

note ➣ This is ending six of seven for the dear dream series. This story takes place right after the dear dream prologue, an ‘alternate’ to endings such as runaways (Jaemin), stars around scars (Mark), and the others.

The prologue is a decent place to start for a little bit of context. However, lonely hearts club is also able to bed read on its own. So, if you just want a little bit of Chenle content, then happy reading ♡

-: ✧ prologue — mark - renjun - jeno - haechan - jaemin - chenle - jisung ✧ :-

.・゜-: ✧ :- .・゜-: ✧ :- -: ✧ :-゜・. -: ✧ :-゜・．

The lights submerging Y/N’s breaths in the memory of how easy they used to be to let out, the dapples of golden sunlight tying in knots on his skin; it was too much for Y/N to take and too difficult for him to focus on anything related to the biology textbook open in front of him. Words and paragraphs seemed to shift and change the moment Y/N looked away for too long, nothing between the lines made sense. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

Y/N was so used to not knowing the answers, but now, these past few weeks, Y/N’s finally been forced to fill in blanks he's not quite ready to yet. He’s still dealing with the blanks being there in the first place.

Letting out one more breath, Y/N swung his bag over his shoulder and tucked in his chair, however, his silent steps out the door were cut off almost instantly.

“Hey!” The whispers of Y/N’s tattered sneakers against the classroom tiles were torn to shreds by a voice whose underlit rasp ran through him like nobody else’s ever could. It was so familiar, like a home he never wanted to go back to - backpack gathered in his hands, always ready to run. But Lee Jeno always caught him, no matter where he ran or how far or in who’s arms he sought the fleeting sweetness of reprieve in next. “Watch it, dipshit!”

Y/N turned around to see Jeno’s already shot out of the seat just behind him. How long was he there? Sitting silently, glaring relentlessly into the back of Y/N’s head until he’d reduce the ends of Y/N’s sweater to ashes? The same sweater that still managed to cling to the warmth of the candlelight he and Renjun sat in back when they were diligent enough to remember their local library had a special room with ‘fire hazards’ galore decorating antique tables.

“Language, Mr. Lee!” The supply teacher sitting said harshly as he peered above the rim of his reading glasses, legs kicked up on the large desk at the head of the classroom. “I’ve been sending you to detention so much, you should get a loyalty card. Don’t make me send you again.”

“Whatever.” Jeno spat, but his voice rose above the subtle golds of the still sunlit sky pouring through the windows for Y/N to hear. “If your dumb ass bag hit me, I would’ve given you a reason to skip these classes.”

“Consider it a parting gift. It could help jump-start a few more brain cells of yours.” Y/N felt the fear, the knots in his throat that made all of his words fall apart the moment he could make them. He felt the butterflies Renjun would always set free in his stomach that Jeno would crush in his tightened fists the moment Y/N turned to meet his eyes. The ashes that scratched the surface of his skin, the morsels of dignity that Jeno would leave him with only to ravage them later. Y/N felt all of its weight and weightlessness, all Jeno’s given to him and all he’s taken; but for once, he didn’t care. He heard the lifeless creaking of the rolling chair their supply shifted in, he watched the flares of anger dance with such a passion in Jeno’s eyes.

But he also watched them slowly begin to flicker the longer Y/N’s frown threatened to become a snarl.

“Are you fucking kidding me…?” Jeno stepped closer, knuckles white from the tension of his balled-up fists. Y/N didn’t move back, didn’t falter, in fact, he began to think that Jeno’s question was almost laughable - or, at least, convinced himself of that. Y/N liked the idea of being amused at the fact that Jeno didn’t know what to say.

The idea was hanging by a thread, though, Y/N could feel his brashness dwindling. He didn’t know what was coming over him, but all he did know was that he wanted all of this to stop, and for him to match the smiles of the people who still made time in their lives to love him.

“No. I’m not.”

“Okay, boys, enough.” The supply teacher set down his glasses and book and began to round the table, ready to split up whatever this was and was going to unravel into becoming.

“You’re really stepping up to me? You think you’re doing something here?” Jeno shone this sinister smile as he didn’t get a response, nothing but the persistence of Y/N’s glare and the fact that he still hasn’t taken a step back from when Jeno stepped up to him. “There’s nobody here to protect you-”

“I don’t need anyone to protect me!” Y/N’s raised voice made the supply teacher flinch before he stood between them, trying to settle both of them down but failing miserably. All Y/N wanted to do was shove past the supply teacher and get in Jeno’s face again, to say anything he could to hurt him…

But he didn’t know how, he didn’t know what could hurt Jeno, if he could get hurt more than he already probably hurts inside.

“I just need you to leave me the fuck alone.” Y/N’s voice painfully quiet and breathless as all the anger Y/N held in his weathered hands and had wandering aimlessly across his bruised heart was just swept away in an instant. He wanted to be angry for longer, he wanted to feel the seething pain in his voice as he spat back whatever Jeno threw at him, pay his debts to the sole person responsible for leaving him broken and socially penniless for half his high school life. But he felt nothing but this emptiness as he let his final words trickle from his loosened frown.

With Jeno’s silence filling whatever space between them their supply teacher and his pitiful choice of sweater vests didn’t already take up, Y/N turned and slipped out the doorway, leaving Jeno and whoever was left to watch them stunned, speechless. The only thing he could feel was the withering fire of Jeno’s gaze on his back until he turned the corner, leaving only the sunlight kicked up from the hallway floors in his wake.

By the time Y/N made his way down the corridor, wearing himself down under the trying sunlight and the weathered, beaten down glow of the overhead lights on his shoulders, he finally realized what he had done. The high of confidence seeped from every fiber of his being, fading and washing away almost as quickly as it came in that classroom; the spark in Jeno’s voice that lit his fire was the exact same thing that put it out.

Y/N thought about everything they said, how close they were, Jeno’s tightened fists that threatened to whip up and pull him even closer by the collar. He felt something winding around his chest, something in between all the fear and relief and anxiety that he felt numb to at that moment, it was beating at him so hard he needed to take a breath at the stairwell door.

Finally finding a gap in his thoughts and all the things he couldn’t bring himself to think of, Y/N flicked out his phone again to see Renjun’s text still flashing on his phone’s lock screen:

‘Hey I’m really sorry we couldn’t hang out. I’m still free tonight to make up for yesterday.’

Y/N found himself at a loss looking over Renjun’s text, trying to find breath between every letter and in every line - even if there was only one line. It left him leaning against the doorframe, stuck in its spaces and fidgeting with whatever was left of the fragile golden sunlight that he didn’t rip apart with his still-shaking hands. There was something that Y/N wasn’t seeing, something that he needed to analyze in this, he knew it… What was Renjun trying to say?

However, as Y/N tried to venture deeper into the thought and memories and images behind Renjun’s words, it only made the text even more of an unintelligible blur. There was no reason, or at least one that Y/N couldn’t see without thinking about how Renjun was always ready to admit to mistakes he never made. A subtle - almost teasingly so - simmer of guilt began to course through Y/N, bubble beneath his skin as he could think about it now - how Renjun’s smile always seemed so close to collapsing, as if his stars had been burning too bright for far too long.

Renjun’s been the only light Y/N’s been able to count on, the only star hung in Y/N’s sky that he can still feel safe to wish on. But maybe all of that, Renjun adhering himself to Y/N’s washed-out skies, is what’s leaving him burnt out and worn with his light fading. All of that, all of those things that Y/N had a vague idea of observing, and he still couldn’t figure out why…? He could not think of what he’s done, or what has happened to one of his only friends that makes the guilt and regret run through him, blooming as thorns in his sides.

Y/N wished he had made it more blatant, how much he appreciates Renjun. Rather than giving all of his attention to the ideas of things long gone that he’s still grieving, as if the loss meant anything to the people who seemed to have such ease in loosening the knots of starlit nights that Y/N thought bound them in more than blood and tears and tiny, handwritten notes slipped into lockers on Valentine’s day. He’s grateful for Renjun, and never wanted Renjun to ever bend and twist himself to the rules of a world that they were supposed to be creating together.

Taking out his phone once more, and looking over Renjun’s text that he still hasn’t answered - he wondered if Renjun was looking back through the screen - Y/N didn’t know why this was so hard to answer or respond to. Even now, thinking about how all the throwaway comments that Y/N never looked back at were some of the only things keeping Renjun afloat on his bad days that Y/N never knew about, the guilt swept him up like their coffee-stained Sunday mornings that they were just building a routine around.

With a loosely gathered breath, Y/N tapped into his phone, throwing out a message to a probably paranoid Renjun that ‘it’s fine’ and that he ‘didn’t need to make up for anything. I’m free tomorrow, though, there’s something I need to make up for’.

Y/N had so much to say, so much to talk about; and all Y/N wants to do is to see Renjun standing in front of him and take him in by the shoulders and tell him how much he appreciates him. But Renjun wasn’t here by the time Y/N finally made his way into the school’s front foyer to escape the confines of the classrooms and hallways that seemed to carry a lot more memories that Y/N ever remembered. They always showed up when Y/N least wanted.

His instincts, the ones that gave Y/N those vague, colourless hints of how Renjun always seemed to feel; they seemed to sense Renjun just passing by, his silhouette lost among the twisting walls of the main level’s hallways.

Y/N shook his head, trying his best to avoid the cracks he could already feel forming in his resolve and not fall through. Somehow, it was so much harder to stop the quivering in his hands when Jeno wasn’t there. And Y/N didn’t have anything to distract him from the bitterness that churned in his stomach at the thought of all the things Jeno’s taken from him, at least, until he pushed himself past the flickers of satisfaction upon texting Renjun back and looked up across the foyer.

Practically encased in the copper glow of the sunlight pouring in through the foyer’s skylight, the entrance to the gymnasium stood, painted in the blush of the sunset’s sky. One of the doors was cracked half-open and sounds slowly trickled out, a solitary melody that flittered about in the oddly stark darkness of the gym - echoes of sneakers screeching against the floor, sighs of a basketball slipping through the next almost effortlessly. The faint, but familiar sound of after-hours sports practice brought Y/N closer, dragged him across the tiles. There was something so singular about the sounds as he grew closer, the pounding of a basketball against the scuffed gym floors, how everything Y/N heard weaved in and out of itself so seamlessly, as if it found a rhythm in itself.

Y/N’s school had good basketball players, great even - most of the varsity basketball team was already more than halfway through the doors of some of the best post-secondary sports programs in the state on full scholarship. However, not many assumed a presence like this, as if their intensity was palpable, weighed down the air and peeled back the flourishes of Sunlight leaking in through the half-opened gym door.

And then, a brief shine of red and black flashing through the gap in the open door. All Y/N could think about was that morning: Chenle and the brandish of the morning light against the red and black leather letterman jacket, the warmth of his hands as he helped Y/N up and brushed against his when he neatly tucked Y/N’s books back under his arm.

Chenle’s indifferent, courteous smile that was a shimmer off from friendly; how his eyes lit up in such a subtle way when he made that Joke about Jane Austen; and then the way he brushed it off with a barely noticeable wave as if it never happened - boarding up that window of time where Chenle acted and smiled and chuckled and presented himself in a way that Y/N has never seen.

It all stayed in Y/N’s head the moment they parted ways and swept themselves up into the crowds around them - where Chenle belonged, but where Y/N didn’t.

Y/N didn’t know why, but whatever pulled him closer kept tugging. This unknown impulse he could feel spreading beneath the surface of his skin where his scars and barely healed wounds lay, where the stains of sleepless nights and afternoons of held hands and broken promises he tried to forget settled. It lingered there for a moment with a simmer, a whisper of starlight hidden below the horizon until he finally made his way through the space in the door.

Maybe it was just to say ‘thanks’ for helping Y/N pick up his books and not scramble around in his embarrassment alone, maybe it was something else - that smile that Chenle shone him, it was so different to the ones he saw him put on everywhere else.

He didn’t have time to think about it further, as Y/N rounded the corner to see Chenle dribbling the ball with such precision and speed, burning deliberate, meticulous circles into the gym floor with agile footwork that the whole school was familiar with whenever they crowded on the gym’s built-in bleachers to watch his games, fill them to capacity.

Whether people really knew the person behind that footwork, the heavy breaths that fell to the red and white blur Chenle’s Jordans made as he maneuvered down the court; Y/N didn’t know for sure. Part of him, the pessimist always there in every folded, wrinkled, and torn corner of his thoughts, hopes Chenle didn’t either. He didn’t want Chenle to know the answers to the questions people probably didn’t bother to ask when the game was over.

By the time Y/N blinked in the darkness of the gym - only the faint coral glow of the sunset-lit sky leaking through small, high-placed windows helping Y/N make out Chenle’s outline - Chenle was already weaving in between invisible walls of people and scoring basket after basket until he was but a tangle of red, black, and all the colours of the sky caught up in his hair from his lunch periods spent standing on picnic tables with the people who’ve assigned themselves to him.

They were always loud enough to hear from where Y/N and Renjun would sit, and Y/N would always hear his laughter and think about how it always sounded the same - the faint light of a chuckle, a shriek tearing it apart at its end. It sounded rehearsed, something that he’s practiced almost as much as his half-court shots that he’s been renowned for since he took the basketball team by storm in freshman year.

“Hey-”

Y/N tried to speak up, but Chenle already caught the outline of Y/N’s figure, the momentary stretch of his shadow, from the corner of his eye.

“Did you need something?”

Chenle’s tongue was wring dry, his voice peeled from his breathless chest. He caught his ball as it rebounded off the backboard with his eyes still on Y/N, who was nervously shifting and nearly speechless.

“N- no, I mean…” Y/N stumbled over himself, this felt so different than their interactions just this morning, as if Chenle saw him as someone else. He didn’t know what slight apprehension had been Chenle’s default setting for the last couple weeks - Chenle was waiting for that moment, that indication that he could let down the walls he’s only just now started to build.

He was tired of being the gullible, eager popular guy who’s just looking to be liked, he was tired of being more of a status symbol than a real person, and he was tired of constantly recognizing it just late enough to deal with the way it burned when he was reminded of how lonely he really was.

“I just wanted to say thank you…? For earlier…? Nobody else on the team would be insane enough to practice after hours on a Friday, so I assumed that you were here when I saw the door open.” Scratched at the back of his head, trying to ease his laughter in the space between them, but he was so far that it fell off into the silence Chenle left him in. Chenle was just trying to process what Y/N said, how he said it, the light in his eyes, what was there, what wasn’t there. Everything he taught himself to do, what to look for.

Chenle didn’t want to bother looking at Y/N more than he needed to, but he couldn’t help but hold his gaze on Y/N just a little bit more for good measure. How he was silhouetted by the foyer lights pouring in through the doors Y/N pushed further open, his nervous yet observant eyes, his silence that always seemed to say more than anyone ever has to him.

He found himself remembering the warmth of their interaction from the morning, too. The fragile sparks that ran between their hands as his fingers grazed Y/N’s. That fire, that momentary blooming of light, it was gone the moment he realized it was there.

That’s what that kind of warmth always was to Chenle; transient, fleeting and temporary, always ripped away from him, pulled out from under him the moment he gets used to it, feeling the sunlight’s shine in a way he’s always wanted to. He never could hold the sunset’s golden shine in his hands for long - it always lost its colour whenever he held on for too long.

Chenle figured out the hard way, that the tighter he clung to a flickering flame, desperate to keep it close, the faster it died. Sometimes, he finds himself slipping on the ashes of his dwindled flames every now and then, when he spots the faces of those in the crowds at his games that he shared too much with - stars he flew too close to. They were always there, watching him play; cheering when he scored, yelping when he almost missed, protesting the referee’s calls whenever something would tip just out of Chenle’s favour. But it seemed that they were never there for Chenle by the time the buzzer was beat.

Chenle kept his voice calm and stern as he looked over Y/N and found himself unable to look away, trying his best to remain unforgiving and stern with his response. However, it didn’t stop his words from being any less stupid than how they sounded in his head.

“Really…?”

Chenle’s response left Y/N cocking his head, almost holding back a chuckle until he realized that Chenle was maybe trying to be serious. Was he genuinely surprised…?

“Yeah, really. You kinda saved me from feeling the full force of my embarrassment, so…” Y/N trailed off, he could feel Chenle’s disinterest even from the distance at which he was standing. He started to regret doing the least he could so someone who’s always responded to his existence with something that was always better than nauseating disgust or blatant disregard. Chenle was nice to him, nodding to him in the hallway whenever they sustained awkwardly long eye contact, and even talking Jeno down a couple times whenever things were one misstep away from going too far between him and Y/N. “The least you deserve is for me to say ‘thanks’.”

He wondered why there seemed to be such a sudden turn in Chenle, more importantly, he tried to understand. Chenle wasn’t giving him a lot to work with, though.

Their silence was painful, it almost burned, until Chenle finally spoke into it, fidgeting with the basketball he had between his hands. Now, it was his turn to be uncertain, to look at Y/N and see all the times Chenle wished he could do more for him. Y/N was here to repay Chenle’s ‘kindness’, Chenle knew that, he observed Y/N enough in wayward stares across the cafeteria or in small smiles Chenle would give to Y/N’s back as they would be walking down the hall to completely different classes. Repaying ‘kindness’ was just a transaction that Chenle was never able to get used to for long.

“Uhm…” Chenle felt his guard slowly slipping, and he let it. He’s seen what Y/N’s had to go through, and he rightly assumed that the last thing Y/N would ever want to do was to use Chenle in the ways that he feared. “If you wanna stay and talk, I’m gonna just practice for a few more minutes…”

Y/N tilted his head again, trying to regain his balance from Chenle’s sudden invitation, the shift in the golden tides of sunlight that felt as if they were pulled taut around them. They were loosening, however, and for the first time in the lifetime that passed in the last few weeks, Chenle felt partially okay with that.

Y/N didn’t know what to do, how to handle Chenle’s invitation to spend more time in the gym than Y/N thought. But maybe this was what Y/N needed to take his mind off everything else, wasting a day with someone who wanted to trust him, who wanted to spin sunlight between them.

"I'll wait." Y/N said as he shuffled over to the bleachers, perching himself on its lowest seat with his hands in his lap. By the time Y/N got as comfortable as he could on the bleacher seat’s hard plastic, Chenle already sunk another shot into the net, a rough breath following him as he jogged after the ball. “How’d you make that look so easy? That was amazing!”

“You’re sounding just like everyone else…” Chenle let his words escape him before he could catch onto them and hold them back. Y/N sounded so much like those who’d sing his praises and buy out space to watch his games and parade him around like some sort of vicarious accomplishment, yet still didn’t know his birthday, where he liked to eat to celebrate his wins; sometimes, they knew no more than the last name on his jersey, not even his first.

Maybe the thought of Y/N, the thoughts of Y/N he’s had for a while, were just that. Wishful pleas that gave the benefit of all his doubts.

“Everyone else…?” Y/N tried not to take Chenle’s statement too personally, looking up with still, indifferent eyes that left Chenle feeling worse than if Y/N was hurt by what he said.

“Yes. Everyone else.” Chenle said, feeding into Y/N’s question, rubbing at his temple with his free hand and pinching the bridge of his nose as he made his way closer to where Y/N was sitting.

Y/N watched as Chenle seemed to unravel in his own distress, it was painful to watch. And even more painful not knowing what was causing it. “What d’you mean-”

"So you came in here just to say thanks. You don't want anything...? Nothing at all...?" Chenle didn’t answer the question, all the tension making his ears ring and coiling up in his throat snapping as he just blurted his words out. Voice abrupt and sharp, his breath worn thin in a way he knew Y/N’s never seen.

He didn’t want to blame Y/N for anything, but he couldn’t help but feed into all the speculation he’s conditioned himself into doing the moment someone claims to pay his kindness back, walk up to him with a smile and a compliment.

It was so exhausting, needing to try and see through the eyes of everyone who asks how he’s doing - then again, people weren’t really concerned with how their star basketball player was doing, only how large he made the point difference between their school and anybody else who were looking to dethrone Chenle’s unstoppable force.

“Just to say thanks… Is that such an uncommon thing?” Y/N started to piece things together, and the more he read into Chenle’s crumbling frustrations, the sadder he became. He should’ve known of the pristine veneer that hid all the dents in Chenle’s armour, he should’ve guessed that not everything was like it seemed whenever he could see Chenle’s smile dying before the rest of his team or group or posse or whoever clung to him for social momentum.

“If you only knew…” Chenle said it quietly enough for only the weathered sunlight spilled down his back to hear.

He wanted to know Y/N enough to say it louder, and sometimes, when his subconscious slipped out from under him, he was convinced he did know Y/N. Through Jeno’s rants about this ‘jackass’ talking back to him in a way he knew only Y/N could; the way Y/N’s name was tangled up in conversation whenever he stayed for a little bit too long with the baseball team, and how the person he learned was Y/N’s ex-best-friend, Jisung, would just keep his eyes down before speaking up about a memory he had with Y/N. Jeno would always shut him down, tell him to pick a side before leaving them in a silence that submerged the rest of their lunch period.

Most importantly, it was that one day, freshman year, that made Chenle think the most of Y/N. An evening after last period, the P.E. class they shared, left in the dreadful and awkward silence left to decay in the locker room by Chenle’s basketball teammates. The conversation Y/N and Chenle had to fill in the quiet’s spaces was too cathartic and candid for people who flames to have barely met. It felt like they knew each other beyond stolen glances across morning-lit hallways, and mistranslated stories passed on through middle parties that Chenle would catch onto whenever he took a break from listening to Jeno talk about himself.

However, that was always what happened when Chenle jumped to conclusions, liked people too quickly and dove blindly into waters that were never there for long. He’d convince himself that he had friends, that nobody would want to hurt him - look to cast him away when his shine as a novelty has worn out; he would always recognize it too late no matter how many times it happened. By the time his scars had settled and upon the realziation that there was nobody out there to draw stars and hearts around them, that was when he truly knew how alone he was.

Chenle didn’t know why, but for some reason, Y/N felt different. The way he listened, spoke to him, the way they moved closer to each other on that locker room bench as they spoke, and the way Chenle was welcome to smooth his hands down Y/N’s back as he hung his head under the weight of their words. It was unlike anything Chenle ever experienced, and he found himself wanting something like that ever since. Even now he can feel it, Y/N listening.

As Chenle sat himself down on the bench next to Y/N, water bottle clutched tightly in his hands, he could remember that locker-room conversation as clearly as if a year and a half of social misadventures and placing his trust in the wrong hands countless times didn’t dilute its memory - a held breath in the mundanity of another week.

He remembered YN murmuring about being stuck in a class filled with brain-dead jocks, and Chenle agreeing with a bitter chuckle. He recalled talking about feeling like a sore thumb on that team, and everything he and Y/N tackled about tumbling downhill from there.

Loneliness and Jeno and Jisung, then feeling weak and friendless and Jeno and Jisung and Chenle’s imposter syndrome and people Chenle named but Y/N doesn’t know, then feeling spend and powerless and themselves and the things they never thought they’d let out in the open…

If it wasn’t for Chenle reading Y/N’s shortening responses and shifting gaze - and then their P.E. teacher’s call into the change room: ‘alright lovebirds! Wrap it up in there!’ which made them both sheepishly chuckle - they would’ve kept going and stumbling and falling over all the things they never knew they were struggling so hard with.

They would've kept finding the security in each other's eyes, fed into the unsaid pledges of secrecy that ran between them, moved closer and closer into the obscure sense of comfort that somehow sparked between them. The school's shining star and a mere flicker in the vast expanse of the hallway's sky.

Turns out they were both burnt out, withered lights fooled into thinking they were suns; that they had gravity, light and purpose. But they didn't, they were drifting across the novas of all the others who fed on their glow and their memories and their love and their promises.

“I guess I don’t know.” Y/N said, his voice cutting finely through the silence.

Chenle flinched at Y/N’s response. He didn’t intend for Y/N to hear that, because he knew, to a certain extent, that Y/N did know.

“It feels like I don’t know anything anymore…” Y/N’s voice died down, eyes trained to the notches in the scuffed floorboards and then to the way Chenle’s Jordans swayed idly to the sound of Y/N’s meek whimpers into the sunset-stained air.

“Y/N…” Chenle wanted to find a way to comfort Y/N. His sadness was so palpable, he felt it practically singeing his skin, wherever the sunlight settled.

Y/N caught onto his words a little too late, finding them fluttering remorselessly in the air, out for Chenle to hear. “Oh my God, I’m sorry…” Y/N stammered out, “I didn’t mean to projectile vomit my problems all over you.”

“No, Y/N, it’s okay. Really…” Chenle said, bringing his hand to settle on Y/N’s shoulder. He only realized what he did when Y/N shifted slightly under his touch. “I literally just did, and we’ve done it before. Plus, I think you deserve - at least need - a place to let it out.”

Y/N froze as he began to remember as well. The thick, nauseating haze of body spray dissipating in an instant when Chenle invited him shyly to the space next to him on the bench, the rest being history under their tongues when all of their fractured memories and longing sighs and bitten back words just spilled out of them. He almost forgot how little they spoke, yet how much they knew about each other. They found relief in the most uncommon of places.

“I… Uhm…” Y/N couldn’t find anything to say even when he scavenged for the ones he held back during that unnecessarily deep locker-room talk. “I appreciate it.”

“Of course…” It felt as if Chenle’s response only added to the stillness between them. However, Chenle stayed optimistic - despite everything he needed to do to keep his wounds from flourishing like the torturously persistent weeds that leaked out from the cracks of concrete by the basketball courts just outside the school boundaries. Oddly enough, he felt safe, safer than he’s ever felt in the longest time. He wanted to make Y/N feel the same way, too. “Do you like basketball…?”

“Bitch- what!?” Y/N considered Chenle’s question for a moment, shuddering at the thought of needing to participate in sports. “I haven’t chosen to run since freshman year…”

“Really…?” Chenle’s voice held this sarcastic drawl as a couple more memories from freshman year trickled into his mind like morning sunlight. He recalled lining up with Y/N, Jeno, and a few others that signed up for the freshman league soccer team by hastily arranged wooden benches in the gym that were promptly replaced with the massive plastic bleachers as soon as their new school achieved a sizable budget. The smiles they shone, the ball adorned with their made-up signatures held between Y/N and Jeno - the two best players of the season who seemed to cover and account for each other’s weaknesses so perfectly it was as if they were meant to stand on that front line together.

With the way that makeshift empire came tumbling down sophomore and junior year, though, Chenle wasn’t surprised that Y/N did his best to intercept those hits to his resolve like the punts down the field he would always make his way to before their opponents could. He and Jeno tore apart any defensive line that stood before, almost as meticulously and flawlessly they seemed to do it to each other one summer after.

“What about when you committed literal athletic terrorism on every other school when we were on the soccer team?” Chenle lit his words with a teasing smile that brought a small smirk to Y/N’s face. It wasn’t one of regret or painful hindsight, but one of reminiscence. He and Y/N were on the same team, but with Chenle always a field-length away on the defensive line, they never had much time to talk outside of when they’d accidentally catch each other half-naked, struggling with their cheap jerseys and cleats that were impossible to walk on solid floor with. “I guess a lot’s changed since freshman year.”

That remark that Y/N knew was an earnest attempt at a joke made his emerging smile falter a little bit. Chenle saw it, too, and started to regret the way he said it; his laughter faded almost instantly and he sifted through his thoughts to make Y/N feel better about everything that came rushing at them all of the sudden. It was just like their talk in the locker room, one misplaced step and here they were, tumbling down slippery slopes they’ve spent two and a half years climbing up.

“If you only knew…” Y/N mimicked Chenle’s breathy, laboured words and they both shared chuckles between them.

He just wanted to avoid the recognition of how much really has changed, how a single summer seemed to change their school’s tides as swift as a change in the seasons. The leaves fell and so did Y/N from the grace he was barely assured in the first place, now Y/N but another withered blossom on the sidewalk, trying to slip into the cracks before he crumbles under one too many springtime breezes.

“Hey, I have an idea.” Chenle said, breaching his laughter’s surface for a breath.

Y/N turned to Chenle, his eyes oddly lit up as he was barely able to hold back what he was about to say next.

When they locked eyes, Y/N attentive and listening like he always seemed to be with Chenle, that’s when Chenle’ continued. “How about we take your mind off all this shit? It’s a Friday night and we don’t need all of our woes keeping us up - we have Monday-through-Thursday to mope.”

He buried a chuckle under his breath when Y/N raised an eyebrow, still listening. He didn’t know if it was in anticipation, interest, or if he were just merely humouring him. But Chenle appreciated Y/N keeping his eyes on him, seeming to lightly trace Chenle’s sunlit figure - his hands as they fiddled with his water bottle, the way his sleeves draped over his shoulders, his earnest smile and passionate eyes.

“Let’s play some basketball! I always head to the courts at the end of the lot whenever I need to blow off some steam.” Chenle turned his head over to the back of the gym, the direction in which the basketball courts were, always waiting, as if he could see through the sunset’s glow coating the walls. He looked back to Y/N, the liveliness behind his eyes dying a little bit as he looked over the cringe that began to rightfully bloom on Y/N’s lips - outlined with a copper glimmer by the pretentious, mocking sunlight. “The view of the sunset’s best there, too…” Chenle kept his voice quieter, as if he wasn’t too sure that information was necessary.

He wanted to know if Y/N was more of a sunrise or sunset kind of guy, which one might be better to watch with Chenle by his side as colours from the horizon spilled and bled out into the skies in faint lilacs or coral-stained peonies or the yellow roses of the morning.

Chenle found himself thinking about which of these colours would’ve looked best as shimmers in Y/N’s eyes, at least, until Y/N’s voice tore him away from his trance.

“Chenle…” Y/N said, scratching at the back of his neck, flashes back to his prowess on the soccer team making him wince in disappointment, and those times in gym class - back when he was athletic ‘for fun’ - where he’d always be first pick on a team of people who liked him as much as they feared him on the field. He and Jeno were always on opposite teams because of that, and now, Y/N thinks of facing off with Jeno on the opposite end of the centre line as nothing but a sour sense of foreshadowing. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I literally can’t do sports. I get winded going up the stairs to my homeroom, so think about what would happen if I had to run while operating a basketball, and looking around, and breathing, and existing, and thinking... All at the same time!”

Bracing himself for what instantly came into his head, Chenle let it out with bated breath, already thinking of Y/N’s response - and his many non-responses. “At least I could say that I took your breath away…?”

“That was vile.” Y/N’s words didn’t match his grin, wide and brilliant as he rolled his eyes. His voice was tinged with the flickers of laughter, heavy with the weight of copper sunlight on his tongue. He haphazardly wondered if he’d be able to smile more like this, see Chenle smile along with him as they eased each other of their burdens with nothing but scraps of nostalgia and soft words, if he managed to catch Chenle practicing earlier.

He wished he did.

“But you sold me, let’s go.”

*

Y/N clung to his sweater as he and Chenle shoved themselves through the side exit of the gymnasium, the careless whispers of the breeze passing by, playing with their hair in heaves and chuckles against their sunlit skin. Their footprints in the field were swept over with each trickle of the breeze that came in through the gaps in the tree-line, carrying with it the coral and copper flush of the setting sun as it rested upon the silhouettes of rooftops and tall pines that jutted beyond backyard fences and lined cobbled paths that Y/N was sure he explored one day - the memories elude him now, and maybe for good reason.

The laughter that tumbled down from Y/N’s smile and probably still blooming in the cracks of the slate and hanging from the canopy of trees that filtered light through the green and yellow and red glass of the leaves that chattered amongst themselves in the wind. Y/N was sure that sooner or later, he would’ve tried to forget what that laughter meant to him, and recognized that he’d never be able to reclaim it.

Shaking his head from his thoughts, Y/N looked over to Chenle, who had his eyes on Y/N the entire time as they were walking over to the courts. Did he say something? Was he supposed to say something? Y/N felt this silent panic overtake him as he couldn’t find anything in Chenle’s eyes to work with, the sunset’s glow that caught itself in his gaze made him look so happy, so carefree, but with the way everything bubbled beneath the surface of the conversation they just had, Y/N didn’t know what to think or if this little session of Chenle tormenting Y/N on the court would take their minds off anything.

It was the thought that counts, at least.

“I promise I’ll go easy on you, if that’s what you're worried about…” Chenle, with one smooth movement that burst out of him like a held breath, he took Y/N in with an arm around the shoulders, bringing him closer. Y/N practically collapsed in Chenle’s comforting touch, barely keeping in mind that they’ve never been this close before. He liked it, though, he felt this warmth surge between them, leak from Chenle’s fingertips as he squeezed Y/N’s shoulder in reassurance with the brilliant smile that was plastered all over the school’s massive screens whenever they’d catch Chenle just after he made a shot in his games.

It was so wide and effortless. He only seemed to shine it in that split second in between then the timer counts down and the buzzer pulls him down from his high, that singular moment of happiness that only lasts for as long as all his senses run dry, his world is only the blurs in the crowds. That smile was there for only a brief moment of happiness and nothing else, and to see it laid out in front of him, Y/N couldn’t help but smile too.

Despite how little they’ve met and how much they seem to know about each other, Chenle felt this sense of freedom around Y/N that he hasn’t felt in the longest time; since the summer freed him from the shackles of his obligations and he was bound to no number on a team, no time to meet up with people who don’t care to know him, no days trying to differentiate between being lonely and alone, if he was both or neither or either or something else entirely. Y/N felt exactly like that, the warmth and weightlessness of the summers where Chenle didn’t feel the need to resist anything.

“Are you kidding? That’s the one thing I’m not worried about.” Y/N crossed his arms, nudging at Chenle’s side with this fake haughtiness in his pressed lips. He could only hold it for so long until Chenle’s scoff brought his smile right back. “Beating you is gonna be the easiest thing I’ll ever do this year.”

“That’s a bold opinion.” Chenle felt his chest swell, not in the ways it did whenever he’d catch onto trash-talk from his opponents across the gym or whenever a ‘joke’ made at his resident picnic table were a bit too pointed for comfort, but with this sweet feeling of pride and content.

He didn’t know if the pride he felt was for himself or in Y/N being unafraid to let a little bit of that sarcasm leak back into his voice, the same sharp melody that traced his rare but golden comebacks that he’d throw back to Jeno in the halls. They would always leave Chenle doubling over laughing until Jeno would finally threaten to shut him up when they reached their history class.

“But it’s okay to be wrong sometimes, I accept that about you.” With a condescending pat to Y/N’s shoulder, his laughter was sent spiralling into the sky when Y/N flashed a pointed glare once more, prodding at his side a little bit harder, but not shying away from where Chenle’s arm still wrapped around Y/N’s shoulders. “I hope you skipped lunch, cause I’m gonna make you eat your words!”

“Again, I don’t know if I should think that was clever or disgusting…” Y/N wanted to humour Chenle, so badly, but seeing his pout as Y/N considered him with nothing but a light eye roll lit sparks under his skin.

“It was fucking great and you know it!” Chenle brought Y/N in closer, arm around his neck, pressing the sides of their heads together as he jabbed his water bottle up into the copper sky, the sunset’s bronze and coral light spilled into the spaces of their breathless laughter, setting alight a glow in their cheeks and smiles. As Chenle looked over to see how delicately the setting sun held all of Y/N’s features, carved them out with such grace, he just couldn’t take his eyes away. “We’ll have the whole night to ourselves for me to work on my already flawless humour.”

All good things come to an end, though, and so did this moment between them when Chenle’s breath was cut short by a rough, bitter snicker from behind them. They both turned around to see Jeno, arms folded over his sweat-laden baseball uniform. Behind him in the distance was a line of his team members, run ragged by the red sands of the diamonds, stains of their hard work caught in their hair down to the auburn scars on their baseball cleats. The team was filing back into the gym and into the changerooms, the mark of the end of their practice.

“I think the only thing ‘funny’ is how you just don’t let up, Y/N.” Jeno titled his head, his teeth already bared in a sneer that seized the sunlight and twisted it. He settled his eyes on Y/N, the weight of his glare already making Y/N waver. But Y/N wasn’t going anywhere, he tightened his fists up in the pockets of his sweatshirt and stood as resolute as he could, trying not to mind the cracks in his confidence he could already feel forming as Jeno’s voice dug in deeper. “I guess you’ll cling to anyone who’ll entertain your bullshit.”

Chenle groaned and shook off Jeno’s gesture with a dismissive eye roll. “Fuck off Jeno, this isn’t necessary.”

“No, I think it is.” Jeno returned Chenle’s contempt, arching his eyebrow and shifting back and forth on his cleats, as if this conversation was nothing but a waste of time for him.

“It’s not, actually.” Y/N stepped closer to Jeno, unwinding his tightened knuckles to fold his arms in front of his chest. His voice was louder now, rougher around its edges, serrated and sharp in a way that both Jeno and Chenle never thought it could become. Even after the altercation in the classroom that still left ashes on Jeno’s skin from the way Y/N’s voice and words clung to him, it wasn’t like this - severe and still growing, the blooming of some monstrous, withered rose. “And maybe you should take your own advice and stop being so desperate.”

“Excuse me?” Jeno matched Y/N’s steps, brushing off how Chenle stepped up to him too, and just focused on finding something to say. He didn’t know why he was here, if he was being honest; his need to reclaim the pride Y/N tore apart in that classroom? Maybe, and Jeno still tried to make sense of it. But he didn’t, he couldn’t, even as he was standing here. That lack of an answer, the senselessness in all of it as he looked into Y/N’s eyes and began to find nothing, it made him even angrier.

He needed something, anything to hurt Y/N. He found himself scrambling, and he knew that Y/N recognized that.

“In case you forgot, I’m not the one who’s still waiting for the best friend I never had.”

“Jeno-” Without skipping a beat in the breeze’s silence, Chenle strode up into Jeno’s face, his face contorted in anger. He took as much pleasure as he could in the way it made Jeno freeze for a slight second. But before he could continue with his arm out and in front of Y/N to protect him from something that could have only twisted the blade in all the scars he knew Y/N was still healing from, Y/N cut him off, pushing past Chenle’s attempt to protect him.

“So, is there a point to this? Or did you just go out of your way to be an asshole, like always?” Y/N’s voice was so subtle, yet so meticulously ravenous, as it tore through the air. It was as if Jeno was speaking.

But Jeno wasn’t speaking, he just stood there with his mouth hung slightly open; and before he could even catch himself out of his stumble of shock, Y/N started once more, stepping closer, giving Jeno no chance to breathe.

“My life isn’t your business.”

“It became my business-”

“When YOU wanted it to!” Y/N’s voice rose, tearing at the seams of the sunset coloured sky, and Chenle flinched as he looked over to see Y/N’s face, a snarl shattering the light of his smiles that rested there just moments ago. There was something that was rising in Y/N, and Chenle didn’t like it. As much as he knew Y/N needed this, as much as he felt like this was something that was worth doing with how long Jeno’s been tormenting him, Chenle hated seeing it.

Y/N’s grimace, the roughness in his voice, the darkness in his eyes as they stared Jeno down, Chenle’s seen all of it before in mirror’s he’s threatened to shatter, he’s felt it in his own balled up fists and the heat that rose in his throat and scorched it. It was like Chenle felt the pain before the others did, the people he wanted to hurt.

Y/N didn’t stop. He jabbed a finger into Jeno’s chest, fearless in the face of Jeno’s furious eyes. “What’s your problem with me, Jeno!? I literally haven’t done anything to you and all you’ve done since I moved here is make my life absolute hell!”

“Well-”

“I don’t give a shit how insecure you are, or what unresolved psychological conflicts you have going on in that non-existent brain of yours. But I’m done being your emotional punching bag and I’m done letting you hurt me!” There was no bumbling supply teacher to put space between them, and Chenle tugging on Y/N’s sleeve could only do so much before he was finally a hair’s breadth from Jeno’s face. Every livid shimmer in Y/N’s eyes matched Jeno’s, and with them, he watched as his words, lit ablaze and enraged, burned into Jeno and all the places that Jeno always tried to never go.

Y/N could feel his chest tightening, a sob threatening to weave between his breath, but he swallowed it. Jeno tried to step up and match him, but he was still held speechless in the grip of Y/N’s words, all his awe and rage failing to sink in fast enough to say anything back.

“I-”

“I’M NOT DONE!” With Y/N’s voice ravaging through the air, anger boiling over, he shoved Jeno back as hard as he could, sending him stumbling to the ground, leaving them all, including Y/N, in a state of shock that rendered them all breathless. Y/N didn’t stop, though, in fact, he was far from done. Chenle surged up to hold Y/N back by his arms, try and calm him down by easing his hands around Y/N’s tightened fists, but before he could realize, Y/N pushed past him and swiped Chenle’s water bottle, its cap already flicked off and sent off into the field. They all knew exactly what Y/N was going to do.

“Y/N, please…” Chenle heard himelf practically whine. He felt powerless even as he was holding Y/N in place.

In that moment, in that field surrounded by the untameable fires of Y/N’s anger and the scattered ashes of what was left of Jeno’s ego, that’s when everything clicked in all the wrong places. Seeing Y/N like this, all Chenle could think about was how it reminded him too much of who he used to be at a time already fallen from the grace of all the lavish praise and claims to friendship and the golds and silvers of promises and success. When he’d lash out at all his fake friends when he found them out too late and cursed everyone including himself, a tangle of cries and fights in the parking lot that never lasted long enough to start; that’s what he was, that was the impression he made in skies he thought were never meant to fit him.

Chenle knew that this wasn’t how Y/N wanted to be, how he wanted to feel or what he wanted to say. The anger between all of them was almost palpable, stung to the touch, but Chenle’s felt it before. The last thing he wanted was for Y/N to feel that same merciless burn in his chest, but here he was, spitting up flames.

It was so hard for Y/N to shove aside Chenle’s pleas to step back. Deep breaths were too hard to take now, and as Y/N said: he wasn’t done.

“I told you to leave me the fuck alone, and obviously you don’t seem to get a fucking hint!”

The way Y/N’s voice warped and rippled across the sky caught the attention of one of Jeno’s teammates, one who lingered at the end of the light just a little bit longer as he saw Jeno split off from them by the door. But he finally gave in to his urges to look over to where Jeno was, his figure and two others cast in shadow as they burned themselves into the treeline and copper sky, someone being suddenly pushed down as something that vaguely resembled Y/N’s voice stretched over a rough, unrecognizable cry.

All of his thoughts and one-sided conversations about Y/N that would always slip out from under him whenever it got too quiet, Jisung felt them seep into his bones, an instinct taking him over. He needed to protect Y/N, something was wrong, and if Jeno had anything to do with how Y/N’s voice twisted up in the sunlight, then something was going to go wrong very fast. He ran over to where the blurs in the distance were, but as he got closer, he was too late in recognizing who needed protecting.

It wasn’t Y/N.

Regardless, Jisung found himself automatically bringing his hands to Y/N’s shoulders, his touch gentle yet desperate on him.

“Y/N! Are you okay-”

“Don’t touch me!” Y/N’s voice was hoarse and merciless and forced Jisung off of him. Only then did Jisung finally turn around, blind to his urges to keep Y/N out of harm, to see Jeno on the ground, utterly speechless, eyes weight down by the way Y/N tore into him with his words. Y/N couldn’t care about Jisung, he didn’t want to. All he cared about was Jeno, giving him what he thought Jeno deserved - his grip on Chenle’s opened water bottle tightening, nearly shattering its plastic pieces in his grip.

Chenle’s tugs and pulls and whimpers of protest were all in vain, Y/N still pulled himself closer to Jeno.

“It’s finally time for me to teach you a lesson for once.”

Y/N, with a jerk of his shoulder, poured all the water over Jeno’s head, soaking every inch of his head and shoulders. The moments in between Jeno’s sputters as he staggered backward from where he was on the ground were just silence. Silence of pure shock, the sky waiting with its breath peeled from the horizon.

Only when Jeno did nothing but stay on the ground, dripping wet, Chenle’s water running down his face like tears, his uniform’s top sticking to his skin, his hair pressed to his head and dangling limply over the withered fires in his eyes. That’s when Y/N finally realized what he did.

Y/N dropped Chenle’s water bottle and finally gave in to Chenle’s pulls backward. He stumbled into Chenle’s arms as they held him not in restraint, but some form of comfort that the sheer force of regret that left Y/N near breathless couldn’t let him feel. All the fire Y/N felt boiling over in his throat dissipated in an instant. All the light in Y/N’s eyes stifled and words tried to bubble up, but nothing came out, a tangle’s-worth of a stutter lodged in his throat, choking him.

“I…” Y/N scrambled for something as Jeno stayed on the ground for what felt like painfully long.

Jeno was still dealing with the shock that ran through him, ruthless and bitter and cold, the breeze shattering on his shoulders, his breath in shudders.

“I’m sorry- I… I don’t know what-”

“Shut up.” Jeno cut Y/N off, leaving yet another dreadful fissure of silence to rip the ground up beneath them. He pulled at his soaking wet collar before standing up, his voice was hoarse, breathless, all his words half-composed as if he was still grappling with the reality of the situation itself. Jeno couldn’t find anything else to say, he couldn’t find the space in his heart - hollowed out by the flames of his anger, surprise and the slightest spark of fear and sadness - to find anything else to feel.

And maybe that was for the best.

“Just… Shut up…”

Jeno’s voice was swept up by the wind as it trickled in between him and Y/N and Chenle and Jisung who just watched him stand. With one last look into Y/N’s fearful eyes, he just turned around and walked away, his sunlit figure - dripping wet and dejected, anything that made him ‘Jeno’ laid out crumbling behind him and the dragging of his steps - disappearing into the distance and behind the gym’s door.

A stifling type of quiet consumed the remaining three who stood above the remains of Y/N’s cries and Jeno’s speechless shock and where all of Chenle’s pleas for Y/N to hold himself back fell in a heap at their feet. Their air around them felt so delicate, as if they tore through the sky as if it were skin, the sunlight bleeding and losing its colour - nobody wanted to stride through the silence. Y/N was trembling in Chenle’s arms, Chenle was doing his best to comfort Y/N despite still processing what just happened, his eyes on Jeno, and Jisung had his eyes on Y/N and all the dissipated anger and fear and sadness and confusion that was in his eyes.

“Are you okay…?” Jisung finally said, his voice cautious and hesitant, then dying down as he saw Y/N flinch at the sound of his voice - one he probably hasn’t heard up close in the year and a half Y/N spent trying to think nothing of all the days together that used to mean so much. It took Y/N a while to feel Jisung’s words settle in, even with the faint hints of feeling that sparked at his fingertips as Chenle was still holding his hand.

Jisung fidgeted in the painful silence he sort of knew he deserved to hear, and looked up to meet not Y/N’s eyes, but Chenle’s as their stares met over Y/N’s shoulders. Chenle’s gaze took on this knowing, unkindly shine as he looked over Jisung and all the regret he could practically feel running through Jisung’s body. He had no sympathy, though, for how Jisung was holding his breath and the suffocating silence, waiting restlessly for Y/N to answer him.

Chenle’s been through the exact same thing, giving everything to someone, only for them to pay it back in silence and unread texts, and leaving them empty-handed with nothing left for themselves. Part of Chenle wanted Y/N not to answer at all; Jisung still hasn’t reached out, he hasn’t answered to Y/N’s sadness, someone who was supposed to be his best friend at one point. He knew, from how Jisung would sigh wistfully as he’d look anywhere but at the group during their lunch, that Jisung wanted to do something but he was scared, holding himself back in fear that it was too late.

But none of that mattered, Jisung’s meaningless intentions lost their gravity the moment he sought a place in Jeno’s entourage over what he candidly shared as a place at the side of ‘the best person he’s ever known’.

The moment Chenle’s eyes ignited into a glare and made Jisung flinch and shift around even more, Y/N finally spoke up.

“I’d give you an answer, but I don’t know if you’d care what it was.” Y/N looked into Jisung’s eyes and knew that Jisung already knew the answer to that. The last year and a half was more than enough of one to begin with.

“Y/N-”

“Not right now…” Y/N immediately batted away Jisung’s attempt to say something, tensing up as Jisung tried to shuffle closer and lay a hand on his shoulder. As Jisung stepped back, sadness rich and dark in his eyes, Y/N felt something tangle in his throat, it laced his voice with something that made it barely audible - a bitter mixture of guilt and regret and anger and agony, something that hurt too much to bite back the longer he looked into Jisung’s eyes. The longer he stared, the more lights in Jisung’s eyes he could see stayed the exact same - it pained Y/N to see that Jisung still managed to remind him of all the things they went through. He couldn’t scrub those memories away now, they stained him like the misgivings of a bad conscience.

Jisung left him with the scattered pieces of all the words they’ve said to each other in the violet hush of the night, all the mornings wrapped around each other on Y/N’s roof, overlooking the first bloom of colour in the sky. Now Y/N’s had to deal with the cuts he’s borne with trying to pick those pieces back up.

“But Y/N…” Jisung stopped while he was ahead. He had no reason, at least no reason that could explain all of his silence. And all of that, the emptiness in his rationale, is what made the pain in his chest burn even more as he looked at Y/N.

“I just need my space.”

And with that, Y/N turned around, Chenle following suit. All Jisung could do was watch as they turned their backs on him and made their way to the basketball courts, only slivers of the setting sun squeezing in between spaces in the house’s silhouettes. Everything Jisung wanted to say taunted him under the darkening sky, his thoughts seeming to echo in the breeze and drown themselves out in the grass beneath his feet. When Y/N and Chenle turned the corner of the school, that was when he never felt more alone.

He finally felt what Y/N did, emptiness and desperation and longing clawed mercilessly at him. He made Y/N feel these things, he forced him to deal with holes in his stories, and tears in his memories. He was too late to mend them and stitch them back together.

Now, here he is, looking over Y/N’s scars, knowing that he turned his back on the best thing he had ever known.

*

“Hey… Y/N…?” Chenle strode through the silence that the darkening sky and the slightest peek of ivory moonlight beyond the horizon built between them. They were at the basketball courts now, sitting on one of the cement benches bolted to the ground on the court’s edge. The moonlight, as it trickled in from the blacks and violets that began to bleed into the sky, spilled over the concrete, the worn yellow paint that marked halfway lines and boundaries that were more of a suggestion than something anybody who lingered to play on the courts actually followed.

Chenle and Y/N were seated beside each other, overlooking the court and the dandelions that bloomed in the cracks of the pavement and toward the rusted cage of half-deflated basketballs. It seemed as if they were still struggling to process what happened between Y/N and Chenle and Jeno and Jisung, tension that was pulled taut between them now torn, and only sadness was left to take over where all of Y/N’s cries out into the air could still be seen at a distance.

“I don’t know if I liked that side of you…” Despite what Chenle said, he couldn’t look Y/N in the eyes when he turned and followed Chenle’s shrivelled whimper of a voice. He took sudden interest in grinding his shoes against the worn butt of a cigarette, but the way it soundlessly crumpled under his heel brought him back to where Y/N was staring sadly, regretfully at him. Chenle didn’t know if he wanted to continue; the last thing he wanted to do was to make Y/N feel worse. He was supposed to be there to make Y/N feel better, to support him. However, he couldn’t help but think about how conflicted Y/N’s actions left him, and how it hurt so much more to see himself where Y/N stood. “I know you’ve been through so much with Jeno and Jisung-”

Chenle stopped himself as he watched Y/N practically curl in on himself, wedging his teeth into his lip and holding back the sob that would’ve rolled off his tongue like the tears that caressed his cheeks with a shimmer as they fell. Seeing them fall and not knowing if he should wipe them away, it broke Chenle’s heart to see.

“I- I’m sorry…”

“No… It’s okay. The shit I went through isn’t really an excuse.” Y/N shuffled closer to the warmth Chenle’s hesitant words seem to radiate and rested a hand on Chenle’s thigh - welcomed by Chenle’s hand smoothing over his own. There was this hope in Y/N that his touch, the withered sparks under his fingers that could still feel the water he poured over Jeno stain them like crystal clear blood, could somehow remedy what he did, what he said. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me…”

Even with all the anger Y/N held, all the resentment and fear that built up in him and burrowed under his surface with every time Jeno would pick him apart, Y/N never wanted it to boil over like this - for him to become a product of all the things that hurt him. It made him no better than those who caused him all that pain.

“It was only a matter of time, I know, they put you through hell.” Chenle focused on kneading circles into Y/N’s knuckles with his hands. “It was just kinda scary, that’s all. It’s like you became someone else.”

“I should’ve listened to you, I should’ve stopped.” Y/N tried to bring his hands up to cover his eyes, hide himself in the shame of his balled up firsts and all the marks he made in his palms whenever his nails would have dug into them, but he realized that Chenle was holding one of them. He watched as Chenle turned his hand over, tracing, delicately and cautiously, the indents Y/N left in his palms. Listening to the way Y/N’s voice twisted up in agony, stumbled over itself as Y/N tried to swallow it all behind quivering lips, Chenle felt this unbearable pain stir in his stomach and a heaviness in his throat. “I could’ve stood up for myself another way, I could’ve-”

“It’s okay, Y/N… It happened…” Meeting Y/N’s eyes, reluctantly following his tears and the drops of moonlight they carried, Chenle slid closer, holding Y/N’s hand firmly now in his own. He felt this bitterness swell up behind his words, a sob threatening to tangle up his breath, hold it captive. “Standing up for yourself doesn’t make you a terrible person, you know. I just… I was in that exact position, and I felt the things that you felt and the pain that you had to endure just saying all of those things… It was horrible seeing you go through that much pain too, that’s all…”

“I’m sorry…” Y/N said again into the night-stained air, and drew in a sharp breath that made his lungs burn with the night’s silence. All the guilt that wound up in his chest, though, began to unwind just a little as Y/N looked back at Chenle’s comforting smile - so warm and bright even after all that’s happened to him that could’ve diminished it. Arching an eyebrow with a small smile, Y/N rested back on his hands and looked over Chenle - the moonlight gracefully dancing on his skin, resting in ivory shimmers on his jacket.

Everything from their locker-room talk was coming back to him. How close they were, the hushed sincerity of their voices, how they seemed to connect so quickly it was as if they were always so unconsciously tethered to each other.

“You know a lot more about me than you let on, Chenle…”

Chenle met Y/N’s smile with the brightening of his own, letting out a breathy chuckle as if an agonized whimper wasn’t just stuck between his teeth. “Well, I have to be observant so I don’t place my trust in the wrong people. I can’t worry about fake smiles and broken promises if I steer clear of them…” Heaving out a sigh, Chenle felt his voice begin to crumble once more, feeling a sour, eerie laugh as he opened his hand to Y/N’s feeling their fingers weave together. “The lengths I go to in order to not get hurt, and it still happens.”

Looking back on all those plastic smiles, weightless words, vapid screams of praise and worthless promises that never lasted more than a day before fleeing for the sunset; Chenle wondered how he was able to take it all, how naive he could’ve been to just wait for all of it to come around, expecting the best of them. To the crowds in hallways and clusters of self-proclaimed friends on the bleachers at his games, he was nothing but a symbol of status and affiliation, someone who was an idea, a concept rather than a person.

“And it sucks…” Chenle could feel the tears begin to trip and trickle over his lashes, carving rivers into his cheeks, lingering by his chin before dropping onto Y/N’s hand as it held his. He scrambled to wipe them away as they trembled on Y/N’s skin, but with one, soft yet firm squeeze from Y/N to Chenle’s fingers, he stopped, gathering his breath. Y/N was here, and he wasn’t leaving him, not like everyone else. “It fucking sucks that you know exactly what that feels like… I just stood there and watched all these things happen to you, I felt everything you did. And all I could do was help you with your books and make a stupid fucking Jane Austen joke…”

“Chenle…” Y/N shook his head and brought his hands up to Chenle’s shoulders. “Just because we’re going through the same shit or feeling the same things doesn’t mean you need to take that on some sort of responsibility… You don’t deserve that…”

“But I want to be here for you, just like you’re here for me.” Before Chenle attempted to hide his tear-stained face in his hands, he could see some sort of thought behind Y/N’s eyes. It wasn’t like the reflection and contemplation that shone behind them this whole time, it assumed this brighter shine, one Chenle thought seized to exist when Jeno initially ripped them away from what was supposed to be their breath of relief.

“Then that’s fine, but you don’t owe me anything for just being a friend.” Y/N brought his delicate touch down from Chenle’s shoulders and tipped his chin up to keep their stare bound in one another’s. Y/N felt this sting in his chest as he thought about how much Chenle has given, how much he’s thrown away and how little he’s received back. It might be late for Y/N to help heal wounds, they’ve already faded below Chenle’s surface, but at least he could draw hearts around where Chenle’s needed to stitch them back up all by himself. They could be each other’s gravity, finally help each other stand upright in a world that’s knocked them down and left them confused and disoriented and heartbroken.

Y/N did his best to shake off all the weight of their sadness - he can’t let their guilt and regret eat away at them for as long as it already has these painful last couple years. This feeling, the one that stands hopelessly on the intersection between dreadful realization and immeasurable pain, they’ve grown too accustomed to weaving it in their sunlight in attempts to just deal with it. They can’t let anything stand between them and the sky anymore, what the sky used to mean - what used to mean didn’t matter; what ‘used to’ can’t be what they continue to become anymore.

A look of awe broke through Chenle’s heavy frown as he began to see the beginning of a smirk bloom on his lips. He followed Y/N’s coy gesture to the cracked concrete, and flinched at the way Y/N seemed to leap off the bench with this air of jovial glee. It was such a departure from how they both knew they were feeling, but Chenle felt himself leaving the heaviness in his heart behind as well.

“But what you do owe me is the one-on-one you promised.” Y/N said, and smiled when Chenle’s mouth hung agape. “Unless you’re afraid that I’ll completely destroy you.”

“You…? One-on-one me…?” Chenle stood in awe of Y/N’s assured tone and cocky smile and the way he pranced over to the rusted cage of basketballs and sifted through them to find one that was slightly more above-average than the others. Even as he came back, fumbling with it as he dribbled, he carried with him that made Chenle hesitate on his words with a giggle. “Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t believe I stuttered, Zhong Chenle, now let’s get this over with so we can have more time to salvage your ego.” There was a sweetness at the end of Y/N’s words as he shuffled up to Chenle - an open-mouthed smirk still lingering with his genuine surprise - and cocked his head, twisting the blade of his sarcasm into where a faint flush crept up on Chenle’s neck. “C’mon, number five, let’s go.” Y/N lifted his eyebrow, a fake sneer on his lips, and with it, Chenle’s smile only grew wider, brighter.

Chenle craned his neck to crack it, a breath trickling from his tensed jaw and crooked smile as he shrugged off his jacket, and in one, frustratingly smooth movement, he wrapped it around Y/N’s shoulders and pulled him in closer. The way the cocky glint in Y/N’s challenging smile instantly faded away, settled beneath the night and just left his widened eyes and eager grin, it made Chenle want to bring him closer, make the space between them that much more negligible for the moonlight to fit in between them. Chenle’s voice was low and quiet, and he raised a hand to run it through Y/N’s hair with a teasing smile. “You have no idea what you’re getting into, do you…?”

“No, sir, I do not.” Y/N bounced on his heels to adjust the jacket Chenle slung over his shoulders, shoving his arms through its sleeves and already flaunting it as if it were his. He was too focused on dribbling the ball and not looking stupid in his fit of boldness to see how Chenle’s eyes lingered over him and how his jacket managed to fit Y/N so perfectly, drape down from his shoulders, catch the moonlight in the wear and shine of its leather. Y/N’s voice brought Chenle out of his trance, but only briefly, as when Y/N turned around with Chenle’s last name and jersey number on his back, Chenle found himself falling right back into it. “Now let’s get going so I can score a goal or whatever.”

“You mean a ‘basket’?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Y/N brushed off and shooed away Chenle’s laughter. “Get ready, ‘cause imma make the biggest play of your career-”

Y/N could barely get a feel of the basketball beginning to already deflate in his hands as Chenle surged up and stole the ball right out of his grip. He charged the net and flung his arms up, the ball carving an arc, settling in the sky only briefly as a dim, auburn moon, and sinking into the net. The ball fell right back into Chenle’s hands as he stood, proud and the perfect amount of conceited, under the net’s torn fringes - the ball seemed to be pulled into his effortless gravity, the same one that Y/N felt himself being drawn to as he made his way closer to take the ball back.

But Chenle wasn’t going to make it that easy.

“I’m still waiting for the play, Y/N.” Chenle kept the ball out of Y/N’s reach when he stretched himself out to reach it. And, almost comically, Chenle held Y/N at a distance with a hand to his chest, watching with glee as the most beautiful pout made its way onto Y/N’s face as he stopped his efforts and gave in to Chenle’s touch.

“Do I at least get an assist for that one?” Y/N cocked his head with an annoyed huff, smiling again when Chenle brought him closer and placed the basketball between their hands. Their hands overlapped briefly, Chenle’s touch settling in the grooves of Y/N’s knuckles as if they were always meant to fall into place. They kept each other there for what felt like a brief moment, enjoying the silence between them and how the sparks between their fingertips, running under Chenle’s hands as he slowly and tenderly traced over Y/N’s.

He let go for Y/N to take the ball, and as Y/N reluctantly drew his hands back but didn’t move back from him any farther in fear of losing this feeling that’s running between them, setting alight the sparks in their eyes and the brilliance in their sheepish smiles; they couldn’t help but feel the shadows of their touch dancing with them.

“Of course you do…”

*

No matter how little they got done, or their misshapen attempts at getting Y/N to actually play the game, they’ve already worn the night thin with their laughter, voices nearly crumbling beneath them, hanging off the tips of their tongues as moonlight settled on their backs. The indigo glare of the sky leaking into the air they breathed, silver starlight pouring from weathered seams on the horizon and pooling in the cracks of concrete that Y/N’s stumbled over - and Chenle’s caught him from; it was all just a backdrop. An elaborate set propped up around them to give colour and feeling to emotions they thought were too good to feel for this long.

Their chests burned with their laughter as they ended up playing with each other rather than against each other, tearing out rules and writing in new ones as they went to the point where Chenle didn’t even know if they were playing basketball anymore. Y/N still had Chenle’s jacket on, and Chenle was teaching him how to finally shoot the ball without needed to run out into the moon-stained fields in order to get it back - despite Chenle’s favourite feeling being when they left the field with an ivory shimmer caught on their skin whenever they would end up threatening and play-fighting with each other rather than getting the ball that sat nearly forgotten.

Chenle had his arms wrapped around Y/N as he guided his arms and the ball in his hands, and made sure to be extra patronizing just so he could see Y/N’s beautiful, moonlit pout.

“So, do you wanna try actually playing the game now?” Chenle patted Y/N’s sides before reaching out to catch the rebounding ball. He stepped back to toss it between his hands, and looked up with a grin as he saw Y/N’s face, twisted slightly in awe and mock offense of Chenle’s pestering. Y/N couldn’t stay annoyed at Chenle for long, though, with the way Chenle’s teasing smirk shone just right.

“Bitch-” Y/N pressed an accusatory finger toward Chenle, taking the ball from his hands before making his way out to the center of the court. He dribbled the ball cautiously, but still held with him this look of confidence and brashness that only made the laughter Chenle attempted to hold in wind up tighter in his chest. “Now that I know how to dribble the ball, you better fucking watch out.”

Without warning, Y/N charged up to the net to try and score, but Chenle instantly met him halfway with a smile, blocking his angles. When Y/N attempts to pivot away from Chenle’s reach, he stumbles over himself, and Chenle was too close to catch them and keep their balance. Y/N curled his arms around Chenle’s head to protect him as they fell, but they barely impact of his arms and Chenle’s back and hips and legs against the concrete as Y/N landed on top of him. They were too focused on how close they were to one another, the hair’s breadth of space that that kept their embarrassed smiles apart, Y/N’s hands on either side of Chenle, legs seizing his waist, the stillness of the moonlight as it seemed to gasp in its places above and between and around them.

That moment where they stayed frozen crumbled beneath them when Y/N flinched back, frightened at himself and helpless as a deep flush overtook the colour in his cheeks - tortuously bright and vibrant, sunset-stained roses showing Y/N’s embarrassment even through the lilacs of the night that bloomed around them. He finally unwound his arms from where they were wrapped protectively around Chenle’s head, and he finally leaned up enough to watch the grin that spread across Chenle’s lips. The way it shone so relentlessly, it only made Y/N want to bury his flushed, burning hot face in his hands.

“I guess I really did need to watch out, huh…?” Chenle stopped Y/N before he could do that, though, taking Y/N’s hands in his own, bringing them back down to the concrete, Y/N’s palms pushing up against his, the warmth that flourished between them faded away into the night-stained coolness of the concrete. He watched the glimmers of panic rise in Y/N’s eyes, one by one, and Chenle couldn’t help but drown in them with a snicker as Y/N did nothing to move himself away. They were just laying there on the jagged, scarred surface of the asphalt, the only thing between Y/N and a concussion being Chenle and his irritatingly bright smile and teasing gaze and sarcastic voice.

Y/N wedged his teeth into his lip before he could stammer out an apology, and Chenle just looked at him silently, a smirk on his face as he untied their hands and let them amble about in the still small space between them.

“Oh my God- Chenle, I’m so sorry! I- uhm… I don’t-”

Y/N’s panic was too much for Chenle to bear, he needed to find something, anything to filter it all out - the quivering in Y/N’s hands, the fading of his words. The way Y/N’s flush ignited under the starlight, though, it just brought Chenle closer and closer as if it had its own gravity. He couldn’t help but be pulled in the only direction he’d ever want to be - closer to Y/N.

“Hey!” Chenle reached out in an effort to bring an end to Y/N’s painfully incoherent murmuring, and held Y/N by his cheeks, bringing him closer, ever closer. “You can stop now, or I’ll give you something to be sorry about.” He didn’t realize what he said until the shock in Y/N’s eyes, the way his blush burned to Chenle’s touch in the most blissful way possible, gave way to bright, coy shimmers and a smirk that made Chenle pause and read the words he left hanging in the thinning air between them.

Y/N’s hands made their way up Chenle’s chest to his shoulders and settled in the curves of his neck, and everything hung still once more - the moonlight midway through its shine, indigo petals falling from the sky, twines of silver starlight tangling up between them; bringing them closer, closer and even closer.

“Alright, then make me.”

Everything around them turned to blurs and flashes as the shine on their smirks were caught between their teeth by the entwining of their lips. Chenle’s hands wound up in Y/N’s hair as he took the back of Y/N’s head and tugged at the collar of his jacket.

They were expecting it, they wanted it, but everything that followed happened so suddenly. The feeling of sparks dripping from the corners of their lips and down their chins faded and quickly as they noticed their burns. When they pulled back and looked silently at each other, though, everything came rushing back to them with this numbing sweetness and stifled their senses, tying their gazes together before pulling them in to dive into each other’s waters once more.

It was as if they couldn’t keep away, they were constantly swept over by the way they reduced moonlight to ashes and how they wore starlight thin and painted their jaws and necks and cheeks with it.

That flash of warmth between their lips - like the breaking of dawn, the brief shine pearls in the sunlit sky - felt and tasted of horizons they had yet to see. It burned, stung and scorched them as they bit it back when Y/N pulled back once more and held his breath over Chenle’s still parted lips. They could feel something bursting through their veins, running through them with the spark of golden sunlight, soaking his skin in what felt like an endless summer that ran beneath their surface, already carved their initials into June’s skies before they slipped out from under them, dying fields they’ll dance in the colours of the intoxicating flush running under Chenle’s touch as he held Y/N’s face in their beautiful silence, inches from his lips - breath still, mouths unmoving.

Y/N was the sweetness of the wildflowers that carried on the breezes Chenle would ride on his walks by the coastline, his eyes like starlit skies and crystal waters and the pearls of morning dew or that brief moment of silence between the changes in the horizon’s colour. He was everything that reminded him of how big the world was and how much he’d need to grow if he’d ever want to accomplish those far-fetched childhood dreams and finally conquer it.

Chenle couldn’t help but melt under the light of Y/N’s bright smile, feeling its radiance between his teeth when Y/N leaned in and pressed a brilliant, gentle kiss to his lips once more. If Y/N looked this beautiful when he was happy, then Chenle wanted to make him the happiest man all the time.

“I guess you did make me…” Y/N murmured into Chenle’s parted lips, nearly collapsing into the giggle that stained the corner of his mouth. When the numbness of his senses finally burned away with the feeling of Chenle’s hands kneading into the back of his neck, every sensation before the stars between their teeth aligned came flooding back in pools of the moonlight they left in shreds around them.

Y/N didn’t notice the roughness of the concrete beneath his knees, and Chenle couldn’t feel its jagged, marred surface prodding at his back until he shifted under the weight of Y/N’s hips on his - what left him blissfully numb for this long.

“Oh crap- we literally kissed on concrete… How romantic…”

“Nothing says ‘romance’ quite like pebbles down my shirt, and your hands up my shirt at the same time.” Chenle pinched at Y/N’s reddening cheeks before taking Y/N’s hands as he clambered off of Chenle’s waist. He uttered an animated groan as Y/N helped him up. “It’s okay, Y/N,” he could see the embarrassment on Y/N’s face and tried to comfort him. Maybe he could if he held Y/N’s face again and see what follows this time… “I could barely feel it anyways.”

“Still, I’m sorry-” Y/N was cut off as Chenle grabbed him by the collar of the jacket slung around his shoulders and pulled him close. Chenle smiled as Y/N held his breath, and took all the air they kept trapped under their tongues between their lips once more. “Maybe I should say sorry more often.” The sweetness of Y/N’s eager smile as he pulled back with it plastered on his face, it was almost too much for Chenle to bear.

“Maybe… But I want us to stop being sorry for shit. We spent too long feeling sorry for the things people did to us.” Chenle playfully jostled Y/N around by his grip on Y/N’s collar, but Y/N could see this seriousness behind Chenle’s eyes.

“You’re right.” Y/N said, looking down to where the tips of their shoes touched, Y/N’s tattered sneakers creasing the front of Chenle’s pristine Jordans.

He tried to think about the truth in Chenle’s words, but the moment he settled the weight of his thoughts onto them, Chenle nudged Y/N’s chin up again and fixed their stares together. Chenle couldn’t stand one more of Y/N’s downcast gazes.

“You know what?” Y/N raised his head, scrunching his nose at Chenle’s giggle as they took a moment to soak themselves in this feeling of weightlessness - one they’ve spent so long searching for, longing for. “Something I’m not sorry for is how good I look in your jacket.”

“I’m not sorry for how amazing you look, either…”

Chenle cupped Y/N’s face again, leaning in to tie their tongues together. His endless fall into the gravity of Y/N’s smile has only just begun, but he already knows that he’ll never want to escape the clutches of Y/N’s soft touch and loving eyes and bright laughter. It stained him with all the sunsets they’ve missed looking blindly for the ones taken away from them, standing here before Y/N - Y/N standing here with Chenle - it was a promise of something new; the golden slates of evening skies wiped clean of all the times they’ve tried to fold them over, rip and tear at them, erase them and leave nothing but midday coloured smudges on their consciences.

They were finally ready to take a leap, fall from grace together and find their own wherever they landed.

It was hard for Y/N to build his words up with the way his radiant grin stretched them out and wore them down - each and every one of their kisses left him more breathless than the last. “Let’s head to my place? It’s not far of a walk…”

Y/N didn’t even need an answer, as Chenle instantly turned around after fixing his jacket over Y/N’s shoulders, and followed in the moonlight’s footsteps - already letting them be led by nothing but blind faith and dimly lit intersections.

“That sounds great…” Chenle said before just crossing the threshold between the court and the sidewalk that wrapped around the school’s border; there was some unfinished business, and it involved finally watching that ball sink into the net one last time. A victory lap with Y/N there to cheer for him. “One last shot though!”

From now on, looking into the bleachers, wondering if he could find a single shine of legitimacy among those faceless colours in the audience, were nothing but a scattered, faded memory. Y/N was here now, he was going to be front and center at every single one, he’d look into the bleachers, find the brilliant shine of his smile - letterman jacket around his shoulders - and feel the world turn in his orbit. Everything would feel right for once, the pieces that would never fit together now falling into place like the way Y/N’s laughter fell on his ears, or the way he fell so deeply for all of the things he always wanted to know about Y/N.

“THIS ONE’S FOR YOU!” Chenle screamed into the night sky, tearing it in two as he dribbled the ball a couple times, felt its rough surface under his fingers. He thought about how he’d shout that every time he’d find himself at half-court, ready to beat that timer again and again, right to where Y/N would be sitting. Swinging himself back, Chenle leapt up and lobbed the ball into the air, it’s perfect arc stilling the world on its axis like it did in those split seconds Chenle felt were made for him.

They both watched, Y/N in slight amusement, and Chenle in complete and utter horror as the ball completely missed the net. It sailed into silence, and with a blunt, echoing bounce against the concrete that was almost too painful to pay attention to, the ball rolled off into a patch of grass to lay lifelessly. It practically deflated in its own disappointment, and it left Y/N and Chenle in this shattering silence that left the stars snickering between each other with its merciless glow against the emptiness of the net, the dull shine of the ball as it laid just out of the shadows and right for Chenle to keep staring at.

“Wow…” Chenle’s voice was wrung dry of its sound. It was swiftly overtaken by Y/N’s cackling; and Chenle wasn’t even mad at it, its melody was somewhat comforting. He didn’t need to share this embarrassment alone with only the moonlight to pay witness to it. The ways Chenle is probably going to be teased for this will be endless - he won’t hear the end of it until he does something else monumentally humiliating.

“For me…?” Y/N heaved out, his squeak-like laughter and wheezes at the way Chenle’s embarrassed pout seemed to deepen only leaving his words even thinner. He curled over, rested his hands on his knees and took a sharp, rough breath in. “You shouldn’t have!”

“I’m so embarrassed…”

“I’m embarrassed for you.” Y/N struggled to control his chuckles, even as Chenle jogged up and assumed his rightful place next to Y/N and continued their walk away from the court - now with more reason than ever; to escape this hell-hole of embarrassment that Chenle graciously blessed Y/N with. “Fuck, I should’ve recorded that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Chenle rolled his eyes and slipped his hand in the rear pocket of Y/N’s jeans. He hoped that he could get Y/N to stop laughing for even a moment as they made their way down the sidewalk and away from where that ball was - and will probably lay for whoever came to play in the morning to look at and probably double over in their own second hand embarrassment.

“I can see why you’re not on the baseball team…” Y/N’s words were left to hang in silence until he reached back and patted at Chenle’s hand, the one still wedged in Y/N’s back pocket. “You really like to skip those bases…”

Y/N snickered at the way Chenle shook his head in this mocking approval, only to tighten his grip on what he could hold from Y/N’s pocket. Chenle just pulled him closer, burying a kiss and a chuckle in Y/N’s hair.

They both looked up to the sky, and somehow, the pinpoints of ivory stars that looked as if they were weaving swathes of the night’s blue velvet together seemed to look so much brighter. They barely needed the streetlights to guide their way home, just the solace they could finally find in silence, a silence they’ve been trying to run away from. But they’ve spent so much time wasting away, wishing they had more to realize that they were just waiting for the right person to make the quiet feel like peace, and not like loneliness.

It’s been a while since Y/N could be lonely together with someone, since he could sign his name in the byline of his skies without flinching at the space that the horizon had left to fill. However, with Chenle’s hand in his, he’s finally sure that he could take his time in writing in the rest - there was a name next to his, now, that was never going to leave.

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