extraordinary things ; chenji

roll credits

jisung

Jisung is buried in a heap of DVDs when he hears the front door open and shut.

"Hello?" Chenle calls in.

"Here!"

Jisung hears a pair of shoes kick off, and then socks scuff on the living room floor. "You haven't found it yet?"

Jisung pulls another stack of DVDs out of the drawer and flips through them. "Oh oh! This is it" — he shoves the case into Chenle's hands — "this is the movie."

Chenle laughs at the cover, a leather-clad lady busting out of a coffin on a cloud of bats. "Sweet. Looks dumb as hell. How long have you been looking?"

"Not long." All afternoon. Instead of sitting around and waiting for Chenle to come over. Or thinking about prom and Chenle and Seo Hana.

Nope. Not thinking about that.

"Does your computer even take DVDs?" Chenle asks.

"Oh. Right." He looks behind the TV stand at the crazy snake pit of wires on the floor. "Think we can figure that out?"

"And come out of it not hating each other?" Chenle shrugs and takes off his coat. "Let's give it a shot."

After lugging the TV and DVD player upstairs to Jisung's room, a deep dive into Jisung's parents' battery bucket — and several attempts to strangle each other with an extension cord — the makeshift theatre is ready. The machine takes the DVD and the screen lights up a blinding shade of blue. They settle in on Jisung's bed, each with a bag of candy that Chenle picked up on his way over.

The opening credits play. After a while, Chenle says, mouth full of gummy worms, "You said this was a vampire movie."

"Dude, it is."

"But this vampire is cool and you're not."

"I'm just as cool as her."

He snorts and scoffs at the same time. "Sure. Never seen you single-handedly take down a supernatural crime ring. Or use a corpse as a baseball bat."

"Haven't gotten the chance. Too busy. High school."

"Yeah yeah."

The sun has set and the room is dark except for the TV. Jisung shimmies down, head propped up on Chenle's arm. Chenle gives a halfhearted shove and lets Jisung lean on him. He smells like sweet candy and clean laundry. His blood smells like heaven. Whatever heaven smells like.

Jisung has been zoning out for a while when he hears a gasp. Onscreen, the vampire heroine is toying with her human lover, circling her like a predator. When she finally takes the woman into her arms, the camera zeros in on the slow, attentive movement of her lips as they part against her lover's skin.

It's all so... intimate. Weird to watch. With Chenle. For reasons, and for other reasons too. Chenle has gone still. Jisung is suddenly very aware of every point of contact. He spends the next minutes strategizing how to remove his head from Chenle's arm without being awkward about it, as if he were disarming a bomb.

Then Chenle says, "You've never bitten me on a chaise lounge."

"What?"

"It's, like, the quintessential biting furniture."

"I don't have one?"

Chenle laughs, jostling Jisung's head with his arm. "I know that, dummy, I'm joking."

Jisung laughs weirdly and clears his throat. The characters are still going at it onscreen. On a chaise lounge. A great big funky couch, all gold and velvet. Jisung thinks about Chenle leaning back against it...

Nope. None of that.

The credits roll. There's just enough light to see. It must be past midnight. The bed creaks a little when Chenle shifts to face him.

"Watching the vampire feed," he says. "Did it make you, like, vicariously hungry? Like a mukbang?"

Jisung cringes. "I hate everything about what you just said." Because it might be accurate. Just not in a vampire way.

"I never realized my neck might be appetizing to you."

"Uh."

He leans his head back, tugging his collar away. "Do I look delicious right now?"

"Okay, you're making fun of me." But he does and that's not fair.

"Only a little. If you want to do the feeding thing, I can stay over." He shrugs like he doesn't really care either way. "I have nothing else going on."

"Do you...? I mean, did it...?" Jisung only realizes he's asking an illegal question after it's halfway out of his mouth. Do you want to? Really want to? Did the movie make you hungry as well? "It's a weeknight, so."

Chenle blinks, sits upright. "Yeah. Right."

"Yeah. So."

They both get off the bed. The TV is blue again, the DVD sticking out of the player. Jisung kicks at the clothes piled on his floor while Chenle packs up his backpack. He slings it over his shoulder and heads for the door.

Jisung turns, turns again — and again — and Chenle does as well, and their voices are harmonizing—

"But, I mean—"

"We could, I don't know—"

They stare at each other for a second. Then Chenle drops his backpack and sits on the bed, and leans back on the bed. Collar open, head tilted, all soft shadows and brown skin and healed bites.

"It's not a chaise lounge," says Jisung.

"We can pretend."

They can pretend.

Jisung stands over him, kneels over him. Follows him down to the bed, like the vampire in the movie. And even before the blood has softened their edges, even before he's taking Chenle's face in his hands, pulling him into a blundering kiss — before there's a second of clumsiness and a tinge of blood in his mouth — he knows tonight is about to become much more than pretend.