Renjun felt like lying down and falling asleep, right there in the hallway. Jeno had promised him some of his mother's home-brewed coffee the night before, so he'd skipped his usual morning cup. He was regretting it. Jeno was all but half an hour late. No, not to class, but he usually got to school an hour before it began, because of his stupid bus. Said stupid bus had obviously gotten stuck in some stupid traffic.
He made small talk with the equally tired girl putting away her books next to him, but soon even her girlfriend arrived and whisked her away. Renjun put on some very loud music and let it make ripples in his mind, but had to turn it off when it began to spark a headache. Oh, good god. Where was Jeno? He shut his eyes and leaned against his locker, making a half-assed promise to himself to head to class in five minutes.
"Injun? Jun? Please, stay with me, we can't have you passing away just yet. You have to help me study." His eyes shot open. A stranger was patting his cheek. A beautiful silver-haired stranger was patting him on the cheek and talking to him. His fight or flight reflexes activated, then deactivated just as fast. His eyes widened and he straightened almost painfully.
"Jeno?"
Renjun offically couldn't focus. He was all over the place.
It had taken all of five minutes for him to completely lose himself. Since that moment at the lockers, with Jeno grinning at him and patting his own hair, asking how it looked, Renjun had been seeing stars. The vague concept of a breakthrough had been throwing ropes around his mind, but he never let it lead him anywhere. And yet, his mind was still stuck on Jeno. Why? That was just weird. Annoyed, he'd had to verbally tell himself to please stop thinking, and had gotten a note from his teacher for disrupting class.
Thankfully, the day was a half-day. He said goodbye to Jeno and Jaemin via text and jogged home. By the time he'd stumbled into his driveway, it was obvious to him he had two choices: either he could expend all his energy silencing what his mind was trying to tell him, or he could do the right thing for his mental health and sit himself down, consider the names floating around his mind.
He entered the empty house, his keys cold in his hands. He could do this. He went up to his room and dropped his bag on the ground, falling into his desk. He could do this. He pulled a blank sheet of paper out of his drawer and cleared his throat, a blue pen in hand.
In loopy writing, he wrote two names.
The very fact that he was confused about two people confused him. It was disorientating.
He decided to take it one step at a time. First, he circled Na Jaemin.
His brows drew together in concentration. He blinked, and his mind was suddenly a collage of kind, mischievious smiles and a thousand shades of violet. Hazel brown eyes and heart-stopping touches. Na Jaemin, he circled again. I like him. Too much. Would declare my love for him a hundred times over. His thoughts fell apart into scribbles. Pretty. Funny. Thoughtful. Generous. Perfect. All the lovely things in the world.
He'd filled half the page. This was half an idea. So here came the difficult part. How did Renjun feel about Jeno? Right away, he circled the name and wrote HOME under it in block capitals. Seeing Jeno always felt like coming home. His mind split itself across the page in blue ink. Playgrounds. Empathy. Chocolate ice-cream Many, many eye-smiles. An arm around his shoulder. The promise of forever.
The pen fell from his hands, leaving a tiny streak on the page. He was afraid to write down what he felt, like there was no going back from the admission. His heart was weighing itself against the guilt in his chest. He didn't want to ruin anything. What he and Jeno had was perfect.
Scratch that — almost perfect. He picked up a red pen, the golden nib hovering above the blank space on the page for a moment. And then, his greatest fear was down in wet red ink.
I love him. There was no other conclusion to be drawn from his feelings, all the sensations that came hand-in-hand with Jeno. It was so sudden that he could hardly grasp it. He hadn't known when their touches had started to mean something else to him. What he had built up for so long as he'd cowered behind familiarity and his chase after Jaemin.
Staring at a piece of paper that laid him bare, Renjun realised something. No matter how beautiful something is, if you saw it often enough you ended up seeing nothing at all. And Renjun had gotten used to Jeno so completely, that he'd missed everything he'd fallen in love with. That was the trouble with best friends. He'd missed how attentive he was, how his dry humour could make anything better, how he was basically a walking teddy bear, his golden personality, his dedication to what mattered. And Renjun knew how nothing bothered him more than his own shortcomings — he was hard on himself, unforgiving, carried guilt because he wasn't perfect. But his flaws were like sprinkles on ice cream. They were what perfected him.
Renjun may be in love with Na Jaemin, but he had been in love with Lee Jeno for longer. He just hadn't realised it.
He looked down at the page, and the gravity of his situation finally settled on his shoulders. Oh. He was in love with two people. And one of them was his best friend. He could feel his chest start to ache from his too-shallow breathing.
The door screeched open out of the blue and Renjun yelled. The house was meant to be empty! He had called out a greeting! His vision blurring in panic, he picked up and pen and lunged towards the door. The person held him by his shoulders and shook him.
"Calm down, Jun! Don't kill me!"
"M—Minghao?" Renjun stepped back and slumped against the back of his chair as his elder brother looked on amusedly from the door. Without further ado, he jumped on a beanbag against the wall and bowed, teetering, and held a hand out to his brother.
"'Tis I, indeed." He never could introduce himself normally. Most people predicted he was an art student before he told them so himself.
"Minghao, how are you even here? You're meant to be in Seoul."
"I'm visiting," he drawled. "It was meant to be a surprise. You were all meant to come home at the same time and boom! I'd be there. Didn't hear you come in, by the way, I was watching Netflix."
Renjun nodded slowly, his shock giving way to understanding. However, he realised suddenly that the page was still on the desk. He shot up and stood in front of it. Minghao peered around him, and Renjun already knew the battle was lost. Minghao had two and a half inches on him.
"Renjun..." Minghao tapped the top of Renjun's head, "If curiosity always killed the cat, you might as well shoot me now. What's that on your desk?"
"Math test," Renjun rushed, taking the piece of paper in his hands and scrunching it up. "I have to burn the evidence before mum and dad get home."
Minghao's eyes narrowed. "Junnie, boy," he said, very slowly, "You've never failed a test. It's obvious you're hiding something."
Renjun's eyes only widened, and he shook his head frantically. This was the first time he'd seen Minghao in three months, and this is the way he was being greeted? But the black-haired man must have sensed his wariness, and drew together his playful demeanour. Suddenly the world might not have been ending. "You know you can tell me anything, right? I won't let a couple of miles lose the confidentiality we got, you know?"
Renjun sighed. The relationship between him and his brother was, indeed, tight-knitted. Renjun barely ever saw him these days because after Minghao had graduated high school, he had moved to Seoul with his girlfriend. It was where his fine arts college was, and his part-time job at an art studio. He'd probably be heading back after a week, maybe less. He was busy, but he still put his family first. There was no one Renjun trusted more.
"Minghao, I, uh..."
"Find your words, go on."
"I have a crush."
Minghao blinked, a small sile spreading over his face. Renjun narrowed his eyes — if he laughed, the guy was getting kicked out of his room. But his brother leaned back, waving a hand. "Go on, that's pretty normal."
"On two people."
"You what?"
" I— well, goddammit, don't make me say it again — I have a crush — crushes — even, on two people."
"Right, so you mean you just like two people at the same time." Minghao paused, considering this, but he just shrugged. "And you're confused about that?"
Renjun looked at him strangely, then nodded, "Yeah. Isn't it... not normal?"
"Well," Minghao chuckled, "It happens to everybody at some point. Sometimes, two people just catch your attention, and you pursue both and settle for either."
Renjun frowned, shaking his head. He didn't know how this new feeling was meant to work out, but he wouldn't settle for either. He felt selfish, suddenly, like one guy wasn't enough to make him content.
Minghao looked more serious now, like this was a maths equation. Well, he'd never been good at maths. Perhaps this was how he looked when he tried to draw hands. "Okay. So you want to date both of them? Cool, you're just polyamorous."
"What's polyamorous?" Renjun felt like he had encountered his first midlife-crisis, the strange word bumping around his mouth.
Minghao grinned again, "If you're polyamorous, my dear, then you're open to a relationship with three or more people as long as there's consent from everyone. Think, is that what you want?"
Three or more. Three. Renjun, and Jeno, and Jaemin. And suddenly the perfect number blinked before his eyes.
"I guess it is, then?" Minghao regarded stars bursting behind Renjun's eyes, like he was Newton and the apple had just landed before him, in all its ripe, juicy glory.
Renjun started suddenly, blinking a few times before turning to Minghao. "Uh — what? Sorry, I was thinking, and stuff."
Minghao sighed and examined his painted nails absorbedly, "It's nothing. I just wanna know who the lucky people are. Don't be shy."
Renjun, with a little hesitancy, replied: "Na Jaemin, who is in my year and who I have work with, and Jeno. You know Jeno."
Minghao hummed, nodding. "Yeah, I know —" He paused and blinked twice. "Jeno? Holy shit, you like Jeno?" He stood up abruptly, doing a little twirl right there on the beanbag, nearly falling off. "Good luck with that! Fucking hell, that is one shithole of a situation you're in right there."
Renjun figured he must have his angry face on, because Mingaho just started laughing louder. Why did he have to look cute instead of mad?
Minghao settled down with some difficulty on the bean bag. "Listen, sonny, I'm not saying it's impossible, but he's been your best friend for, like, eight years. Damn, it's time to get your game on. Anyway, I was glad to help —"
"But you hardly—" Renjun began, but Minghao interrupted gleefully,
"I'm gonna go binge-watch Naruto now," he chirped, practically hopping out of the room, closing the door.
"But what if neither of them like me back?" Renjun borderline yelled after him.
"Then you die!"
***
oop he do be dead doe
