Jisung was woken from his dream by the sound of his phone ringing. It was a specific ringtone, one he reserved for only one person, and he knew even with his tired mind and muddled thoughts who was calling him.
He had been taking a well-deserved nap after finishing an essay that was due later that night but that he had only started writing the night before. He had forgotten all about sleep, and so the moment he had finished working, his eyes had slipped shut on their own and he had fallen into the gentle embrace of sleep.
"Lele," He mumbled sleepily into the phone, his voice still groggy from sleep, "What time is it?"
"Were you sleeping?" Chenle asked him, and Jisung nodded before realising that Chenle couldn't see him, and instead replied with a quiet 'yeah'.
The line was silent for a few moments, and Jisung would have worried that Chenle had hung up on him, but he could hear the older male's soft breathing on the other side of the phone. It was like a lullaby, and Jisung could feel his eyes starting to flutter shut once more.
"Can I come over Sungie?" Chenle asked eventually.
"Hmm," Jisung hummed into his pillow, turning his head so that his phone could pick up his voice rather than having it muffled by his pillow, "Yeah, come over."
Chenle kept speaking to him for a few more minutes, eventually hanging up the phone when he left his house, leaving the younger with a promise that he would be over soon.
- 🐥 & 🐬 -
"Sungie~."
Jisung rolled over in his bed, hugging his blanket closer to his chest even as someone was trying to pull it away from him. He refused to open his eyes or to relent to whoever was attempting to rip away his fluffy source of warmth. He tugged the blanket harder, and the other person responded by doing the same thing back to him.
The person tripped and fell on top of Jisung, and only then did the younger male open his eyes.
Jisung choked on air.
Chenle was on top of him, both hands placed on the mattress of Jisung's bed, one on either side of the younger's face, the shorter male holding himself up a few inches above the taller. His legs were around Jisung's waist. Chenle was straddling him. Chenle was straddling him and it wasn't a dream, and Jisung was still half asleep, his thoughts fuzzy, and he desperately wanted to kiss Chenle.
After a few painfully long seconds of staring, Chenle awkwardly climbed off Jisung, and Jisung shook his head, trying and failing to clear his mind of the bad, bad thoughts he was having about his best friend being on top of him.
"Why are you here?" Jisung asked, his voice deep and groggy.
"Meanie," Chenle said with a pout, slapping Jisung's chest with his hand, "Do you not want to talk to me?"
'I want to do more than talk to you,' Jisung thought, and he mentally berated himself. His sleepy mind had absolutely no filter, which meant that at any moment he could say or do something wrong, something that may alert Chenle about Jisung's feelings for the older male.
"Talk then," Jisung said, "I'm listening."
He kept his eyes shut, hoping that by doing so, and by avoiding looking at Chenle's unfair beauty, he could concentrate more on the voice of the older and the words he was saying.
"So, I guess I should start at the beginning," Chenle said with a small sigh, "You know how lately Haeun and I haven't really been together as much? And so I came to you for advice and you told me to talk to her? Well, I did, just like you told me to do. We met at the park today and-."
Chenle paused, and Jisung could picture him fiddling with the hem of his oversized shirt or biting down on his lower lip as he mulled the words over in his head, trying to find the perfect way to tell Jisung what had gone down. Honestly, Jisung didn't care if Chenle just blurted it out, anything would be better than the painful and terrifying feeling that came from wondering.
"We broke up," Chenle stated simply, after a long pause that seemed to last hours, when in reality it was nothing more than a few seconds of time passed.
Jisung's eyes flew open, widening dramatically as the words reached his ears, and he started choking on his spit. Hot tears sprung in his eyes as he coughed loudly, sitting up in his bed. He felt every last bit of air leave his lungs as he stared wide-eyed at his best friend, who had just spoken words that Jisung would never in a hundred years have expected to hear.
"What?" He managed to ask between coughs, "Why would you do that? You love her, don't you?"
"It's not about me, though," Chenle replied, "It's about her. She was the one who wanted to break up. I mean, I wasn't against it. But I can't just force her to stay in a relationship if she doesn't want it. We just weren't meant to be, but that's okay."
"But why?" Jisung asked, still feeling confused because Chenle's explanations were not making any sense to him in the slightest, "Why did you and Haeun break up?"
"Because she's gay, Sungie," Chenle answered.
Oh, shit.
Fuck.
Well, that was unexpected.
"She's gay?" Jisung repeated in a small voice, "And um- How do you- I mean, uh- How do you feel about that?"
"I'm happy that she's happy," Chenle said, as though it was that simple. It really was not that simple, Jisung knew from experience that it was much more complicated than anyone could understand unless they had gone through the same thing. "I'm proud of her for coming to terms with it and realising that I'm not what she wanted, or any guys really I guess. I'm not mad or anything. It's not something she can control. I just don't know if I should be insulted that I was her reason for turning gay or not."
He laughed, his adorable dolphin laugh ringing in Jisung's ears, and the younger male tried to laugh with him, but he knew it sounded fake.
He also knew that Chenle, being the one person who knew him better than anyone else in the world, would immediately be able to tell that Jisung's laugh was a fake one, and the younger worried that he would try to question Jisung about it.
"Are you okay, Sungie?" Chenle asked, just as Jisung had feared he would do.
"I should be asking you that," Jisung said, hoping to avoid the topic of his own feelings, "You're the one going through a breakup. But you don't really look sad about it."
Jisung frowned, and Chenle giggled awkwardly. He looked down, his fluffy hair on full display, and all Jisung wanted to do was reach out and run his fingers through the dyed brown strands. Before he had the chance to notice what he was doing, he felt something soft threading between his fingers, and he blushed brightly when he realised that instead of simply thinking about petting Chenle's hair, he was actually doing it.
Jisung felt Chenle grow suddenly tense, and he retracted his hand as quickly as possible, worried that he had done something to make the older uncomfortable.
"Can I tell you something?" Chenle asked him, looking anywhere but in Jisung's direction.
"Anything, you know that."
"I know I should be heartbroken right now," Chenle admitted, "I know I should be crying and eating tubs of ice cream and missing everything about her. But I don't really. I feel bad about it because I think maybe I was using her. I think I was using her in the same way that she was using me, without either of us really realising it until now."
- 🐥 & 🐬 -
𝐼 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝐼 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘?
𝑈𝑚, 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑔𝑎𝑦𝑠-
𝐼 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘ℎ𝑦𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝑏𝑜𝑜𝑘 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝐹𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑀𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑖𝑡.
𝑂𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑠, 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑠, 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠, 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦.
𝑅𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑚 𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛: 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑦?